Kate Sylvester is riding on a high after her success last week at Australian Fashion Week. She shared her behind-the-scenes diary exclusively with Viva...
Girl love
Midway through this afternoon I fell in love. I'm in Sydney preparing for Fashion Week and when I'm doing a show, falling in love means we've found our muse - the opening girl who perfectly sums up the look and spirit of the collection. This year it looks like we'll be opening with a crazy little androgynous Czech called Janka.
After last year and the war medal furore [when Kate was was forced to apologise to the RSA after using war medals in her show "Royally Screwed"], we really wanted to be recognised for just doing a great show with no distractions. One week out from show day, I'm ensconced in an apartment casting through masses of models.
For "Take a Hike" we have created a character - as we always do. Our models need to be mountain climbing, scroggin'-eating lion hunters. "Plain beauty" as our stylist Karen Inderbitzen-Waller calls it. Long hair is in, freckles are good, peroxide is bad. One girl was dismissed because she'd be the one in the tramping hut trying to plug in her hairdryer.
Karen and I have worked on so many shows over the years we've evolved a unique collaboration. She gets involved early on and we slowly build an entire narrative around the collection. We build in layers, and I think this is why there is such depth to our shows. One of her strengths is her eagle casting eye, and slowly we create our gang of intrepid explorers. It's relentless but thrilling as the standard of models is very high. The third member of our menage-a-trois is Avril Planqueel - ex-model, technical whiz, digital assistant and resident chef and editor. By day's end she has connected computers, iPods and Blackberries, developed hundreds of casting photos and whipped up gnocchi with prosciutto and basil for dinner.
Shoe love
Very happy at the end of a very intense 17-hour day. The morning was model madness. We were trying to fit our booked girls from yesterday and were besieged by random odd-bods. Karen is too soft to turn them away, the poor things drag themselves all over Sydney going to casting after casting so she diligently photographed strays. In the midst of this chaos good things happen; we adopt two of the strays and add them to our beautiful lineup, dropping a couple of weaker links.
By mid-afternoon things have calmed down and we have a dream run of serene fittings on super models. Nothing is better than playing dress-up with life-size dolls. Nothing, that is, except opening a delivery of show shoes. Shoe hysteria ensues. We walk in them, make still-lifes of them, stroke them ... Come 6pm we dash to a Diet Coke shoot. We can't do a show without sponsors and we are part of a stable of brands Diet Coke are really actively supporting. We even have a giant billboard in Kings Cross.
Boy love
I crawled around on the floor a lot today. But if you're going to be on the floor, it might as well be lacing beautiful boys into killer Doc Martens. We skipped casting for boys, as we only have three in our show and two of my favourite Kiwi boys are in Sydney. We picked up one extra stray, done deal. Straight to fittings.
Every fashion week the Medina on Crown becomes the unofficial New Zealand embassy. Home away from home for New Zealand brands. There are fewer attending this year but the Stolen Girlfriends Club team on their own feel like they have swallowed the hotel. Are they cloning themselves? I think Marc Moore has decided to make it his mission to lure Karen off the straight and narrow, but Karen has blinkers on. Nothing about Karen is half-hearted and when she commits to a show, she gives it her all, which is why working with her is so exciting.
Hair love
Sunday is the hair and makeup test. It's always exciting to see what Liz Kelch and Kenneth Stoddart bring to the jigsaw, which is how I think of a show. They do not disappoint. Liz creates fierce eyebrows for our intrepid explorers. Kenneth picks up on the earth and plastic reference in my brief and interprets it with a slick sheen of controlled hair running straight back from the forehead, and dishevelled "tent" hair cascading down. Janka looks strong, beautiful, brainy - that girl could definitely wrestle a lion.
Wayne love
It's always an incredibly reassuring moment when my partner Wayne finally walks in the door. I have to be away from my family for a least a week to do a show, so Wayne always comes over at the last minute and will be back on a plane the morning after the show.
He is the creative director of our shows which means he creates the environment that our collection inhabits.
This season he has made a background visual of a trek through urban wilderness disappearing slowly under an avalanche of plastic pink paint.
He also created a soundtrack of gorgeous, big energy happiness: Arcade Fire, Cut Off Your Hands, Vampire Weekend, Belle and Sebastian and Reckless Eric.
Wayne also arrives loaded down with thrilling things. We finally have our beautiful, custom-made girls' Doc Martens in vivid blue, yellow, green and raspberry.
The colour-matching is perfect. There was some panic when we realised a couple of days ago that they were in small boy sizes, but we have spent hours restructuring the running order so that all the Amazon 1.8m girls are in the boots.
Avril gives us an impromptu fashion show so that we can finally see our show starter, colour-blocked outfits in all their glory. Wayne also produces piles of little fimo bones made by Monique from our High St store.
Karen had spotted a necklace Monique had made for herself and before she knew it, Monique had an order for 30 pieces of jewellery in every shade of plastic colour in our collection.
We escape the hotel and eat great sashimi at Toko, the newest, grooviest restaurant in this city of new, groovy restaurants. Luckily this one lives up to the hype.
Show love
We start the day so smug and pleased with ourselves. Everything is ready, we have a whole day to line up the outfits and write the model cards. We're so cocky we decide we can go to the Zambesi show. We discover when we get down there that the central city actually had a power blackout that morning and all the shows are running almost two hours late. I wish we'd turned round and gone home then, we could have avoided the 1am bedtime ... Instead, we swan off for lunch, stay to watch a very strong Zambesi show, swirl around in chatter and air kisses and get back to the hotel to realise we've wasted half our day.
We work in subdued panic for a couple of hours finalising how packs will be run from model to model, labelling shoes, pressing suiting, and in a whirl of heels and lipstick rush out the door to smile serenely at the Diet Coke group show. Behind the smiles (or grimaces) we are hyperventilating. I sit beside Charlotte Dawson at the show which is a celebrity fest, fuelled by Australia's Next Top Model - Charlotte's one of their permanent judging panel. Back in a cab smiles collapse, panic and starvation set in. At 10.30 we eat pasta, thank God yet again for our resident French chef. At 1am I roll into bed and have nightmares that I can't get to the show because killer bees are attacking me.
Runway love
A 10am show means alarms go off at 5am, and when we arrive at the venue for our 6.30 call time there's a lone model sound asleep in the middle of the backstage floor. We sit down, also on the floor, a discreet distance away and try to eat bacon and egg sandwiches as we know it will be long into the afternoon before we'll get to eat again. Oh, the glamour. By 8am we are embroiled in full on reality tv drama when a model booker and my press agent go into battle over our running order.
It's appalling, being told we have to tip the show on its head at the last minute after a whole week of planning. But, in typical Fashion Week rollercoaster style, this fracas turns into a media bonus for us when the story starts to pop up on bloggers' sites later in the day.
By 9am we are swamped with photographers and news teams. The models are preening and posing, we're trying not to skin girls alive by zipping them into gaiters that came in a size too small and I am buzzing on pure adrenalin. At 10am the doors open out the front and we are scrambling to dress the final models who have run late from the previous show. At 10.30 I look along the line of glorious creatures I have created and I know they will climb mountains and kill lions for me. Show time.
Fifteen minutes later, my beautiful intrepid explorers march out for their finale and I take my bow. I'm told later that for the first time all week, media actually run for the backstage. We've done it!
Marie Claire's editor Jackie Franke informs me the whole room was smiling, the joy of the show was infectious and Damien Woolnough from Vogue picks up on the thank you in the programme to my dad for taking me tramping as a kid. We are jubilant, and slowly backstage clears out until all who remain are my three boys from the show waiting patiently to congratulate me. It's a sweet moment; I made something wonderful and they were happy to be part of it. But before I can blink, the next show is rolling in and we move on to the Rosemount Bar for more interviews and lots of celebration. I don't stop smiling until I crash into bed at 8.30pm.
Media love
Two days on, I'm a very happy camper. We had great reviews from Vogue, Channel 9, write-ups in three newspapers and lots of online action. Our press agent Gabrielle is sending samples out frantically between sales and we've hooked two great new stockists.
I can go home now.
