View photos from Dunedin's fashion parade.KEY POINTS:
Sunday morning, and two local fashion journalists are sitting together on a plane. They're on their way back from the ninth annual iD Dunedin Fashion Week, a series of fashion events in the southern city, when suddenly they find themselves surrounded by burly blokes in blue uniforms. No, it's not the fashion police come to arrest them for being too judgmental and making innocent designers cry. They're sitting in the middle of an Australian rugby team that played a game in Dunedin last night.
In fact they're actually sitting next to the captain of the rugby team. Two worlds, stylistically speaking, collide, and despite their sartorial differences, the fellow passengers get chatting. The fashion journalists explain what they've been doing in town and - completely unprompted - the rugby captain says he too can understand why Dunedin has to have its own fashion week.
"The style's kind of dark isn't it?," he muses. "It's quite a gothic sort of place."
Crikey. So even rugby players from Sydney have noticed Dunedin's idiosyncratic style. But is it really true? And more interestingly for all the invited media, is it of national significance - should anyone else care what they're wearing in Dunedin?
Roaming the streets during Dunedin Fashion Week you wouldn't necessarily think so.
However, looking around at the assembled crowd at the iD Dunedin fashion show, Saturday night's big event, you do see a difference. Mainly this involves the colour black. There does seem to be more of it about than normal.
In Auckland you'll get different genres of looks at different fashion gigs - say, at a Trelise Cooper show, you'll get dedicated fans with big hair and ruffled skirts - but here in Dunedin almost everyone is looking a little quirky, deconstructed or arty and nearly all are darkly clad.
As to whether there is clothing of national significance being made here, the runway tells a different tale again.
As the finale to a week of fashionable events, from library tours to jewellery displays, there are 25 labels showing mini-collections. It's a bit like New Zealand Fashion Week squished into three hours, making this possibly the longest fashion show in the country held on the longest runway, inside Dunedin's historic railway station. So just as at the national fashion week, you get all sorts of frocks - from Nom*D's deconstruction and layering to Carlson's exquisite tailoring to more mainstream styles, as well as plenty of current trends by younger labels including an 80s revival, gold and silver, painterly prints and neon accents.
There's definitely a wild streak running through a lot of the Dunedin clothes, whether conservative or not.
If you were forced you could describe its typical style as deconstructed and layered, with vintage undertones.
So where does it come from? Probably them thar hills, as the gold miners would say. Or maybe roaming the streets, doing a spot of op-shopping for vintage inspiration among that amazing, crumbling Gothic architecture, braving the gloomy climate and feeling oppressed by the brooding, bush clad hillsides that surround the town. And a lively bunch of raucous students who like to experiment - with drugs, alcohol, clothing and music, all on a budget - perhaps all this has produced that unique, dark kind of Dunedin creativity the locals are so proud of.
While Dunedin's heyday of Flying Nun bands, hand-knitted jumpers and homemade haircuts might have passed, the fact they're still holding iD Dunedin Fashion Week down here, and the shows sell out almost immediately, is a pretty good sign - a sign the townsfolk still take pride in their brand of alternative culture and encourage interesting looks. They're happier than most rural towns to have inhabitants who let their freak flag fly.
Sophie Russo, an Australian and the eventual winner of the Emerging Designer awards, had come straight to Dunedin from Paris where she'd been living and where she had prepared the collection which won her $5000 and a trip to Italy. But, having hung out in Dunedin for several days, she didn't want to go back. "I'm actually trying to get a job in Dunedin," said the young designer, backstage after her win.
She had been told at fashion school in Australia that she had a very "New Zealand" style. "I'd really like to work for someone like Nom*D. I just think there's a really good kind of underground scene here."
So there you go - when the professional rugby players and the amateur fashion designers agree, you've got to admit there's something about Dunedin.
