Dynamo vows: We'll be back

By FIONA HAWTIN

Designer Kate Sylvester has withdrawn from October's Fashion Week because her young public relations and sales manager, Rebecca Wadey, is battling breast cancer.

"We knew we couldn't do this show without her," Sylvester told the Weekend Herald.

Delays in getting treatment for the 26-year-old at Auckland Hospital were set to affect preparations for the show, which was to be a 10-year celebration of the design business built up in Auckland and now exporting to Britain, Australia and Asia.

"I was really looking forward to doing Fashion Week but it was just getting too risky and virtually impossible," said Ms Wadey.

She was diagnosed with the disease in April, has had a mastectomy and is awaiting radiation therapy.

Sylvester said Ms Wadey, who has worked with her for more than half her career, was a key part of the business and getting her well came first.

"The public perception of a show is you make some frocks, find some models and there's a fashion show, but it's a very small part of the whole," said Sylvester.

"I do the frocks," she added, but then came Ms Wadey's role, the equivalent of two full-time jobs.

Ms Wadey organises sponsors, caterers, venues and juggles guest lists, seating plans and press packs. On top of that, she prices the collection, sells the range to buyers and was planning a post-show trip to Australia for follow-up sales.

Things started going wrong for Ms Wadey during a regular breast self-examination. "I'm the only person I know my age who does examinations regularly," she said. But she is now speaking out to prompt greater breast cancer awareness among young women.

"When they told me I had cancer, it was the most surreal thing that has happened to me. I was quite shocked, but I thought: 'Oh, well, they'll take out the lump and I'll be on my merry way and it won't really impact on my life at all'.

"That was Friday. By Monday they were telling me I'd have to have a mastectomy and chemotherapy and my hair would fall out."

Ms Wadey has no health insurance, thinking she did not need it at her age. But her parents paid for her to go private and have the mastectomy and reconstructive surgery immediately.

Four public health service chemotherapy treatments were on schedule, but the radiation therapy she was meant to be half-way through by now has not started.

A month of gruelling treatment is due to begin in two weeks. "It's a full-time job getting better," Ms Wadey said. "You're constantly going to doctors' appointments, being treated like a lab rat."

The hair loss was harder than losing a breast. "I don't think I'm vain, but it was really hard.

"My boyfriend and friends came over and we gave me a Mohawk and then finally shaved it all off. When you have no hair you're that cancer stereotype like in TV movies. I can't wait to stop wearing the damn wig."

But she is already looking forward to next year's Fashion Week. "I'll be back with a vengeance."