On the runway

Aboriginal model Samantha Harris. Picture / Martin Sykes

Pressure, what pressure?

Australia's need to be world champion of everything is turning modelling into another competitive sport, with the latest international-star-in-the-making being Aboriginal schoolgirl model Samantha Harris. Harris is being followed by a photographer, documenting her big week, for likely sale to a magazine. Samantha photographs like a dream, but we do hear that her walk needs work.

Fashion with a cause

Wellington designer Andrea Moore chose that most venal of offerings - the goodie bag - as an opportunity for doing good yesterday. A Freeset bag housed her show press release and the story of how the bags were providing work for Indian women saved from selling themselves on the streets. Freeset is a worthy cause that exports quality jute bags. The brother of Moore's business partner works in India to provide a sustainable income in bag-making to former prostitutes, who are also taught to read and write. But this being fashion, Moore had the bags colour co-ordinated in her house colours of red and cream.

* Find out more about Freeset at freesetbags.com

Eyes on Karen

Karen Walker kept up the political theme at her opening night party, entitled Vote Karen Walker. The event doubled as a launch for Walker's eyewear collection and gave the audience a chance to play at being models, posing for keepsake photographs in her frames. Husband Mikhail Gherman was on a high from the press coverage the label gained showing in New York last week. His equally creative brother Valery, who lives in the Big Apple, was off to do former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright's makeup for a shoot.

Cutting edge

The official Fashion Week T-shirt this year appropriately comes from the ranks of the event's chief sponsor, Air New Zealand. Staff member Lianna Rogers won an internal competition to design the T-shirt, which is worn by event crew and will be on sale to the public on Saturday. "I just looked at the logo and the idea came to me quite quickly - I just visualised the koru as the handle of a pair of scissors cutting through the fabric," she said.

Appearances count

Don (same old shirt and tie) Brash may have been in a new Murray Crane
suit at opening night, with wife Je Lan in a fitted black sheath with a brave little red wrap, but it was Mayor Dick Hubbard who won the fashion stakes over a grey-suited but upbeat Prime Minister. Helen Clark won the name-game though, calling the robed one the Wizard of Auckland. A wit in the audience wondered why he was in Canterbury colours. Fashion police also noted that Air New Zealand chief executive and avowed Zambesi fan Rob Fyfe had forsaken the makers of that divisive company uniform for a natty little number, which he proudly said was made by Crane. Sharp, very sharp, but where's his corporate loyalty? But then again, that may be an oxymoron, a bit like politicians playing the ball not the man - or should that be the woman? And a few people pondered why Dr Brash felt the need to keep long-suffering Je Lan on show for some time after other politicians had left. The words "trophy wife" were quietly mentioned.

Battle of the icons

Celebrity models, thankfully, seem to be in short supply this year, as designers finally twig to the fact that putting their best frock on someone who can't walk or pose may amuse the crowd but won't look good in photographs. (It is entirely different, of course, if the celebrity in question can actually model.) Expect instead the down-home flavour to come from entertainment icons of Kiwiana. We hear the Topp Twins are down to play and Jordan Luck has been seen casing the venue. Let's hope translators of the Kiwi twang are provided for overseas guests.