NY Fashion Week: Prabal Gurung Fall 2013

Military touches are shorthand in high fashion for strength and confidence. Gurung added some exclamation points, specifically citing as his muse a woman in combat. There has been much in the news - and Gurung is a newshound - about the Pentagon's decision to open more on-the-ground options to women and also technological advances in women's body armour. "They're redesigning the whole uniform for women because all this while they've been wearing men's uniform,'' he said backstage. That led Gurung to think about women's empowerment, all the way to women he read about from the Ukraine who are coming together in self-defence against human trafficking. There were smart jackets with gold hardware and some with red-and-black brocades, crisp navy suits, and leather harnesses over stretch-crepe dresses with sexy slashes on the bodice and asymmetric peplums and hemlines. There had to be a little femininity mixed in with the aggressiveness, Gurung explained, because it's femininity that gives women their best tool "to rule a man's world.''

Army exercises under Mt Ruapehu
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Army exercises under Mt Ruapehu

The New Zealand Army has been busy holding exercises at the Waiouru training area. This included 12 days of Exercise Vengeance involving Victor Company from the 1st Battalion, Royal New Zealand Infantry Regiment and Exercise Brimstone held by The School of Artillery. Photos by Mike Scott / NZ Herald

ANZAC Day service in Auckland
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ANZAC Day service in Auckland

Auckland War Memorial dawn service, Hobsonville civil service and the Devonport parade. How Aucklanders remembered the ANZACS. Photos / Hayden Woodward, Dean Purcell and Alex Burton

Sydney mourns victims of Bondi Junction attack
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Sydney mourns victims of Bondi Junction attack

Seven people died at the hands of a knife-wielding attacker at the Westfield Mall in Bondi. The people of Sydney come to pay their respects the day after the tragedy unfolded. Photographs by Rick Roycroft for the Associate Press

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