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Waitakere City Council has canned its next year's grant to the city's iconic Trash to Fashion show to save ratepayers $170,000.
Featuring glamorous garments made from recycled materials, it won a gold medal at an international award for events produced for under $250,000.
But the price of backing a big show - drawing up to 400 entries from all over the world - has proven too high for the council, despite its lofty environmental aims.
The show lost money in the last three of its 11 years and took a two-year breather.
A nervous council finally voted to end subsidies for it at a confidential budget meeting on Friday.
The council's partner in the event, Keep Waitakere Beautiful Trust, says the schools' version of Trash to Fashion event will continue but it was aspiring for young people to show their creativity to a larger audience.
"It won't go ahead funded by the council but we will move heaven and Earth to keep it going," said trust chairman Iris Donoghue.
A special Trash to Fashion Trust was being set up to seek sponsorship for the show, she said.
"It's disappointing but we can understand that councils have to cut their spending."
She said the council had said it would make a matching grant if $200,000 in sponsorship was found.
"We didn't quite make that level."
Council culture and community chairman Judy Lawley said Mayor Bob Harvey, herself and others battled to keep the show as a "fantastic Eco City event".
"But we felt that council could not justify to its ratepayers giving it the sort of money that it needed."
Councillor Derek Battersby said there was a feeling that the event has been around for a long time and had reached its potential.
"It was with sadness that we had to let it go, because of the cost to the ratepayer when a lot of people in the community are struggling."
He said he was sure the council would continue to support the schools' version with $40,000 a year as part of its educational and community programmes for waste reduction.
