The wedding show must go on

Dresses hang in the Vinka Designs workroom. Photo / Megan Anderson

Earthquakes, family legacies, and models supplanting brides.

These are just three of the things New Zealand's finest bridalwear designers are bravely contending with in the build-up to Fashion Week's very first bridal show.

New Zealand Weddings editor Melissa Gardi dreamt up the concept last year at Fashion Week, and has been working to realise it ever since.

"I thought, 'My god, it would be great to see bridal wear on that catwalk', and so it started tick-tocking in my head over the last year," she said.

With the go-ahead from Fashion Week director Pieter Stewart, Gardi went about recruiting designers.

Louise Anderson, Vinka Design, Anna Schimmel, John Zimmerman, Kate Dowman and Jane Yeh will all send their boutique gowns down the runway, alongside fashions from menswear designer Crane Brothers and flower girl designs by Modes.

Gardi also enlisted the help of Viva fashion editor Ana Macdonald, music director Sophie Findlay, and Marissa Findlay as producer of the show. Marissa, who is simultaneously producing the Zambesi and Designer Selection shows, says the novelty of Gardi's show has made it an exciting project to work on.

"It's obviously a lot more fairytale than what I would normally do," she says.

"It's a good excuse to look at some frocks. Traditionally, in the old days, [designers] used to finale on the weddings dress, and it's not something that people focus on these days."

The response from the designers, says Gardi, has been both phenomenal and inspiring.

"They're coming to the table with such unique visions, a lot of excitement, a lot of enthusiasm, and a lot of hard work.

"Right now they're going to wedding season: they're busy making gowns for brides whose weddings are in December, but in the meantime they're creating these gowns. They're putting a lot of time into this."

Facing not only the demands of clients and Fashion Week, but working amidst the devastating effects of the Christchurch earthquake, Louise Anderson's decision to remain in the show has been a significant one.

"I nearly pulled out, it just got a little bit too much," the award-winning designer explains, our conversation punctuated at one point by another of Christchurch's relentless aftershocks.

With her CBD shop cordoned off for a week after the quake and traffic jams making access difficult, Anderson has gone to great lengths to continue her work.

In a heroic effort, Anderson had her husband, a volunteer firefighter, ensure the building housing her shop was stable before venturing into the area to grab a carload of gowns and materials - leaving little room for the family.

"We filled the whole car up - we filled it up so much we couldn't take the three kids home, so we left them at my parents," Anderson laughs.

After retrieving both children and materials from the rattled city, Anderson's sewing mechanic assisted her by loaning and setting up sewing machines and overlockers in the living-room of her Lincoln home, which was undamaged by the quake.

The stress of the earthquake and its aftermath wiped a week from Anderson's Fashion Week preparations, and she has reluctantly had to compromise in order to maintain her presence in the show.

"I was not feeling well, it was just really getting to me," says Anderson, who was with her family at Hanmer Springs when the quake hit.

While Anderson will remain in Christchurch to maintain her commitments to both her family and her brides - who continue to fly in for fittings - she is sending staff to Auckland to take over NZFW preparations. She has also had three dresses loaned from clients to ease the burden of half-finished gowns.

"It's a bit of a compromise ... and I'm not the sort of person that draws the line - I usually go completely over the top and don't know where to stop - but I've had to draw the line and go, 'that's it, that's all we can do', and that's the ticket."

In the workroom of Vinka Design, a level up from tired Queen Street faces, rolls of fabric line the walls like logs of cream-filled cakes. Pastels, gauze, bright whites and shimmery things fall softly in the corners. Austrian crystals drip from lined-up gowns.

Founded by New Zealand fashion matriarch Vinka Lucas, the company - now run by Vinka's daughter Anita Turner-Williams - sees Fashion Week as a culmination of over 50 years of bridal design.

"This is the first [Vinka show] under my leadership," says Turner-Williams.

"Vinka herself used to do fashion shows each year. It used to be a big event, these shows. There was one time where Princess Michael of Kent came to see the fashion show in New Zealand - right up here in the Hyatt.

"I wasn't allowed to be in that particular fashion show because I had my two front teeth out (naturally I was very sad that I was replaced), but my brother Leonard modelled a page boy outfit."

While Vinka often comes up to the workroom to offer her own opinions on the designs - taken "constructively", says Turner-Williams - there's respect on both sides.

"She's giving us space to do what we're doing. She's very proud of what we've been doing, and she's so happy that her label has been kept going."

The show is not only exciting for the designers, says Turner-Williams, but the brides themselves.

"They just can't wait, they think it's wonderful. They feel really proud, I think, that they are getting a gown from us and that we will be showing. It's something special for them.

"This is the most significant gown they'll ever wear, period, so how they feel about the lead-up to this gown being made for them is really good. It's special - it's a special time in their life."

Used to designing exclusively for the bride, however, creating dresses for runway models has come as something of a shock.

"It's a little bit scary," says Turner-Williams.

"You want the gowns to look like they've been made for them, not just hanging off them.

"Normally we're designing for a bride, and we know the body we're working with, so it's a little bit different for us, because we're working ahead to create these gowns in time. We need to anticipate a size and then create it and then alter it."

For all the designers, however, the show has presented a chance to give the bridal industry its due.

Crane Brothers designer Murray Crane, who specialises in formal and special occasion menswear, sees the addition of bridal wear to NZFW as a promising one.

"All the bridal designers they're using are at the top of their game.

"I think it's a clever idea what they've done. They should do it every year."

For Gardi, the bridal show is a chance to pay tribute to the work these designers put into attiring their brides.

"I really admire and respect these designers, and I think what they do is incredible.

"There's just so much that goes on when putting together a wedding gown, and these gowns are not mass-produced - each one is made by these designers uniquely for whoever their bride is."

Ultimately, it's this enigmatic bride-to-be these designers are looking to inspire as they catapult their designs down the runway, merging romance with fashion.

Gardi puts it simply: "By putting this show together we're doing something for the bride-to-be.

"It's for New Zealand brides."

* The New Zealand Weddings magazine bridal show is on today, with a special second show, free for the public attending Fashion Weekend, on Saturday 25 at 5pm.