Slice of mango

Jaeha Alex Kim. Photo / Babiche Martens

With so much talk of fashion labels in financial strife, stores closing down and cutbacks, here is a fashion story that will hopefully make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside. Local designer Jaeha Alex Kim's designs are set to be sold in Mango stores. This is a big deal.

Quite a massive deal in fact. For those of you who are fashion illiterate or just a little bit clueless when it comes to European chains, Mango is big-time.

Walk down a street in Spain and you'll see a Zara, you'll see an H&M, and you'll see a Mango. Walk five more minutes, and you'll see another Mango. Penelope Cruz has done a line for them with her sister, they have "it-girls" like Daisy Lowe, Julia Restoin-Roitfeld and Elvis' granddaughter Riley Keough in their ad campaigns, and there are currently 1223 Mango stores around the world.

Needless to say, the opportunity for a New Zealand designer to have that sort of mass international exposure is, well, priceless.

The 23-year-old Auckland based designer was one of 10 finalists in the recent El Boton-Mango Fashion Awards, and was flown to Barcelona last month where his designs were judged by a panel that included Oscar de La Renta, model Jerry Hall and Project Runway's Nina Garcia.

Kim may not have won the first place prize money - that went to another Korean-born designer, Lee Jean Youn - but the judges were so impressed with Kim's collection that they decided to produce it for their flagship stores anyway (along with the winner's collection).

The range is a variation of the collection Kim showed at Air New Zealand Fashion Week at St Matthews in the City last year. Called "Call Me Princess, My Daddy Says So", Kim says the collection is based around the idea of "a girl standing in front of a shattered mirror, looking at herself and her parents; and she gets kind of gloomy". Deep huh? That translates into a clash of the dark and naive; lots of ribbons, draping, shirts and Kim's signature jean with shattered glass detailing. He will produce a higher end version of the range to sell in New Zealand and Australia.

The Mango trip was clearly a memorable one for Kim, who is typically low-key and humble about the experience. At the awards after-party, he rubbed shoulders with model and fashion magazine favourite Daisy Lowe ("She looked so normal."), V Magazine's Steve Gunn, Nina Garcia ("really laid-back; very understated.") and Beyonce's sister, Solange Knowles - "I have not heard of her".

"You kind of get numbed by them [celebrities]. At first I was like, oh my God, Nina! But then you look around and it's like, they are human after all; they still giggle in the corner with their girlfriends." Kim seems far more excited when talking about meeting and bonding with the other finalists, designers from Britain, Australia, Germany, Spain and Belgium. "I learnt so much from meeting them. I wasn't practising with using a lot of materials as a designer, but now I'm going to expand. I'm going to produce smaller, tighter collections, but using amazing materials...

"It's good to challenge yourself again and again. I think I had to go out of New Zealand to come back and feel refreshed."

Since Kim's memorable Air New Zealand Fashion Week show in 2007 - where he presented a collection inspired by the film Edward Scissorhands - he's been described as one of the most exciting graduates to recently emerge from the local fashion schools, fashion's wunderkind, and yes, the Next-Big-Thing. Hype and pressure were palpable, with, at times, a disproportionate amount of attention put on the designer.

There was a recent newspaper article in the Sunday papers about money problems, which seems slightly ridiculous when everyone is currently struggling to some degree.

But that is now beside the point: Kim says he has paid off his debt, is shrugging off the pressure and Tall Poppy Syndrome, and is moving forward. This Mango coup has helped his confidence, and bank balance. "There were so many times I regretted having my own label; I always wanted to work under someone. But now I kind of go, 'you know what? It's good I did my own thing'."