Probus presents: World of Wearable Arts winner Kate MacKenzie

Kate MacKenzie’s World of Wearable Arts Supreme WOW Award winning work, Wanton Widow. Photo / Getty Images

CHB Probus will have World of Wearable Arts winner Kate MacKenzie as a guest speaker on Monday July 10, at the CHB Municipal Theatre in Waipawa.

Kate, a Havelock North artist and designer, was the Supreme WOW Award winner in 2014 with wearable art work Poly Nation, and won again in 2022 with Wanton Widow, a garment judges said “perfectly captures what we mean when we say wearable art”.

WOW boasts a huge following each year domestically and overseas. More than 100 designers from across the globe made up the finalists last year. The stage show showcasing the top designs and garments, held in Wellington, is New Zealand’s largest theatrical production.

Kate is only the second competitor to win the Supreme WOW Award twice.

She said Wanton Widow started with the idea of creating something out of old furniture.

”I wanted to use a china cabinet and then work through what I could make as the skirt, and then what could I do the bodice in. I came up with a sewing machine bodice, because they both look like they came from the same era.”

She explained that the contrast in style and theme between her two winning pieces was because she liked to change what she works with.

”I get bored easily; I just have a rule that I don’t like to use the same material more than once. What I like is to invent new things, that’s why I do it. It is the excitement of discovering something new and inventing something no one has seen before.”

• Probus, a friendship group for retired men and women, is inviting the public to come and hear Kate speak, at 10am on Monday July 10, at the CHB Municipal Theatre in Waipawa. RSVP to Jo Brabyn, phone 027 448 1784.