Creative Change & New Energy: The Viva Team Reviews Underground Fashion Week Te Wiki Āhua O Aotearoa

The Viva team share thoughts from seven shows at Te Wiki Āhua O Aotearoa on Auckland’s Karangahape Rd.

With a focus on promoting and platforming emerging and early career artists across Aotearoa’s creative scene, Tāmaki Makaurau’s underground fashion week Te Wiki Āhua o Aotearoa returned for its second iteration with a honed focus on doing things differently.

“The promises that were made to us are no longer being kept,” the co-operative organisers (founded by friends Sophia Kwon, who has a background in animation and film; Nina Bailey, a dance teacher and model; and Billy Blamires, an AUT fashion graduate) laid out in their mission statement. “We were promised that studying hard and working harder would secure a future worth having. But no matter how many jobs we obtain or how qualified we are, we’re all barely staying afloat.”

Below, the Viva team report from a week of shows reintroducing rebellion to the runway.

Monday - Out Of Service

Designers: ANTI, 14_0_15, Schaarsartor, Josh Jozsef, South Street Forever

“Creatives refuse to work for conglomerates that care more about turning profits than cultivating the arts.”

That’s how Te Wiki Āhua o Aotearoa set the tone for their 2025 event. On night one the underground fashion week collective did just that: went underground – for Out Of Service, a streetwear fashion show “that twists office wear into a statement of rebellion”.

“Everyone’s done very typical runway shows before. We love the clothes but we’re changing the environment,” producer and co-founder Nina Bailey told me on the pavement outside the In n Out dairy on Karangahape Rd after the show wrapped, raising her voice to be heard over a throng of attendees animatedly discussing what they’d just seen. Inside, a DJ played next to the cash register – flanked by the store owners who bopped along, one drinking a can of Boss iced coffee.

“Different locations tell different stories, different collections tell different stories and different designers,” Nina continued. “Why not pick someone up, put them in a different spot and then watch the clothes?”

That’s just what they did. Show attendees gathered at studio space Raynham Park, to a conventional runway set up. After an energetic strobe lit opening, the music cut and lights blacked out. A bing bong announcement chimed and guests were told that on entry we’d be assigned to one of three tiers, or classes, who would each experience the show differently, representing our society’s pervading class system.

The upper class lounged in ‘the penthouse’ on plush white seats and were served sushi and bubbles as an interactive show played out in front of them. “They’re part of the system,” Nina explained.

The middle class had a more everyday experience, taking their seats as the status quo across the road at street level in the surrounds of a 24-hour convenience store. Models weaved through the aisles and danced against the counter. “It’s kind of the constant, even flow of life,” Nina explained of this neither here nor there class tier. “You don’t sit with either, it’s such a flat line and hard to get out.”

Attendees who purchased tickets for the front two rows of the show were assigned to the lower class. Told to leave the venue immediately, cross the road, walk through the convenience store, and descend down a set of stairs into a nondescript basement carpark. An office desk sat abandoned in the middle of the space and a Toyota hatchback was parked in the corner. We sat in the stuffy surrounds waiting our turn as the show made its way through the other venues and classes first, anticipation and intrigue ricocheting off the concrete pillars that held up the structures above.

“We’re used to these shiny, yummy runways ... let’s change where you are and see the clothes. Do you still feel the same way about it? Are you still encouraged?” Nina asked me after the show.

Am I still encouraged? More than ever. Removed from the runway, the varied interpretations of the disruptive dress code contrasted in a way that felt natural. Akin to a full bus of commuters thrown together briefly on a Monday morning, Josh Jozsef’s colourful patchwork knitwear rubbing up against the asymmetric androgynity of 14_0_15, ANTI’s peppy bubblegum streetwear skewered by Schaar Sartor’s unravelling dandyism. All soon to disperse on different paths but for a short spell sharing space.

Tuesday - In Over Our Heads & Rot & Reverence

Designers: Junes Cry, Sol Savila, Abby Santillan, Foolish, Billy by Billy, Milo Matchett

Ahead of the week’s second group show, a crowd gathered at the doors of Cross Street Arcade and formed a scrambled queue that stretched right back to Lim Chhour Foodcourt. The doors swing open at 8pm sharp and organisers usher eager attendees into the knackered arcade – the hallway lit by its usual fluorescents and the internal windows boarded with scraps of cardboard.

It feels apt for the evening’s thesis, which explains that Rot & Reverence would explore “the delicate balance between decay and splendor” and embrace “the poetry found in the aged, discarded and forgotten”.

The countdown to the runway begins with the crew, clad in black, walking down the centre of the arcade. Parting the sea of attendees, they gesture towards the walls and ask people to assemble in single-file lines on either side of the hallway. This is the set-up for the runway, the organisers finding no-fuss function in the existing architecture. This is when Āhua is at its best – messing with audience expectations and emphasising a creative energy specific to Karangahape Rd.

Once the crowd is properly arranged, the lights are shut off to be replaced by a red glow and freestanding industrial lights.

Two pairs of dancers emerge from the centre of the runway, near a stairwell and a service elevator, and each duo make their way down the runway with dynamic, reactive responses to a thundering electronic track.

Then, the first set of models, dressed by Junes Cry, arrive to set the tone. They are dressed in distressed knitwear, with trailing, unravelling sections that floated as models walked and posed. It is an explanatory opening statement – yarn woven, attached and contoured in unconventional, skin-baring ways that imbued the people wearing them with an angsty attitude.

Zodiac Street follows, with a collection that references military wear and textures in both sturdy and gauzy materials. The garments have a ghostly quality, emphasised by the quiet detachment of the models (and the wielding of two scythes by the final wanderer).

Nineties trends met an apocalypse with a collection from recent AUT graduate Abby Santillan. The streetwear ensembles featured excessive layers of marked, raw-edge denim, along with gothic lace and silver hardware.

Suits and gowns are torn apart by Foolish, who finds more interesting silhouettes in the remains. Collars, corsets and Frankenstein pinstripe pants were playful in their deconstruction of classic silhouettes – their remaking made evident by contrast stitching. Skirts and tops are also sewn to create pockets of volume, contrasting the intense structure with something softer.

A collaboration between Billy By Billy, the label produced by organiser Billy Blamires, and Milo Matchitt is the last to show. The collection is full of brash textures – think fur, leather, wool, dark denim and metal hardware. It’s feral, grungy and dramatic, and the crowd is loud in their approval.

To close the show, the group of designers take a lap together – all donning smiles in contrast to an angsty runway. This final walk proved the disintegration and distress of the clothing can be a cathartic exercise. The united, rebellious aesthetic is surprisingly hopeful when observed altogether. – Madeleine Crutchley

Wednesday - The Uncommon Thread

Designers: Giulia Zigliani, QQ, Pixie Pyxis, Poison Spike, Nethasha Abeysinghe

The Uncommon Thread is a group show at the main venue, Raynham Park, where the set designers still find a way to challenge the format. The runway is broken up by eight full-length mirrors, to amplify the theme these collections will all share.

The five designers are grouped by how their clothes interrogate and deal with personal identity. The description for The Uncommon Thread reads:

“Searching for individuality as an escapism tactic, outsiders within our own communities.”

Giulia Zigliani opens the show with a comprehensive collection. It begins with a restrictive, enveloping coat and metal collar and relaxes to light, airborne garments that encourage and highlight every little movement. The final design, which sees the model bare their torso in a sheer white shirt and skirt, is a relieving end to the collection. This storyline, which celebrates momentum towards freedom, is crystal clear (and the one I enjoy most from the week).

Sculptural and mod-inspired garments are served by designer QQ, as well as a side of plushy fruit salad (carried down the runway in a sailor’s cap and matching handbag). The approach is serious and surreal, and I find myself smiling at the contrast of these silly organic shapes and the sharply cut garments.

In perhaps the most colourful showing of the week so far, Poison Spike’s designs find joy in prints and 3D applications – my favourite is a vibrant blue shift dress with red and pink loops hanging from the neckline. It’s perfectly playful and reminds me of chewing gum.

Flowing ensembles from Nethasha Abeysinghe, inspired by the sari, close the show. Sheer fabrics, in shades of rich plum, olive and golden shades, are draped across models’ bodies. Subversion appears with the addition of pleats, ruffling a tiny crop top and folding across a sweeping full-length skirt.

As the models walk the runway, they each take time to pause and admire themselves in the mirrors. It appears they’ve each been coached by the designers to perform different movements. In some instances, they lean in and look close. Others stick out their tongues or hit ethereal poses.

These choices, for me, reveal something about the goals of the creatives. Are they pursuing pure childlike joy? Reclaiming a part of themselves previously lost? Seeking an understanding of their upbringing? I come away feeling as if I’ve experienced a coming-of-age – and grateful for the vulnerability they have shared. – Madeleine Crutchley

Thursday - No Kingdom Come

Designers: Pascal Silliman, Ella Fidler, Ellanne, Elizabeth May, Evulwrld

Guests have always reflected the ecosystem of a designer’s show, and here it’s no different. The growing queue is young, though not exclusively, and cool in that urbane, art-school way. What does that look like in 2025? A slurry of eclectic references — romanticism, noughties dystopia — muted colours, and an edge that feels at home on the storied Karangahape Rd, which is the busiest I’ve seen it in ages. Young photographers dash past, coming from the previous show, as do a few extra chairs, before we’re let into Rayhnahm Park, homebase for Āhua. Sliding on to a seat I’m asked if I’d like some glitter. It’s a genial makeup artist armed with a brush, applying it to the early arrivals as the venue fills up.

Looking around to take it all in (an impressively slick operation) I see at the start of the runway a Grecian birdbath wrapped in vines — a fitting tableau for a show built around the “twisted realms of fairy tales — where magic no longer offers salvation and the comforting promise of happy endings dissolves into shadows’. Fifteen minutes until start time, a plummy voice comes on the loudspeaker, inviting us to “freshen up in the powder room”. Seats are filling up, standing too, and it seems like this will be more traditional than the week’s other events — Monday night saw showgoers decamp to the convenience store across the road.

The voice warns us the show is about to start, and start it does, with pounding bass and a ballerina lurching elegantly (yes both those things at once) out on to the runway like a woman possessed.

It sets the tone for the show, which starts with angelic designs from Ellanne. The first model, swathed in a white silk skirt, hands long-stemmed roses out to the crowd. She’s followed by a medley of romantic looks — including a particularly lovely gold dress with a bubble hem, styled with white stockings and shoes — gliding down the catwalk with a choreographed sensuality.

Beth Davidson-Sims’ models look like they’ve been dredged from the seabed in the best possible way. Are they sea nymphs or stowaways? Who cares. Her Elizabeth May collection is particularly cohesive, with different iterations on pearl-adorned raggedness — including the sublime Symone Tafuna’i in white underwear (or perhaps a bikini, again, who cares) that calls to mind sea froth and oyster shells.

Fairy tales are explored most literally by Ella Fidler, up next. She has Grimm-worthy fraus in white blouses and heavy (furnishing?) fabrics, great hand knits, and even a knight — hers is armed with silvery denim and a metal corset, both great.

Speaking of great, Massive Attack is playing now, as Pascal Silliman transports us to the fall of Rome. Pascal’s material sensibility is very nice, with models wrapped in shades of madder and wine, baroque fabrics and sensual silk chiffons.

Then our ballerina is back, but this time she’s not alone; Odette is followed by Odile. Āhua’s black swan wears a matching balaclava and dances like she’s possessed which, according to canon, she is. I don’t know why but this feels so punk.

On that note, it’s time for Evulwrld, the most dystopic of the night’s designers and the one that earns the biggest cheers so far. The label’s online presence is low-key, and that mystery makes what’s unleashed on the runway even better. Black-clad models come out at breakneck speed to thumping music. A gimp-masked sophomore exit charges down wrapped in a leatherette apron. Others are emblazoned with low-fi feeling graphic text — a longstanding convention for anti-establishment designers, acknowledged by Evulwrld via a twist on Vivienne Westwood’s famous Vive Le Rock T-shirts. Here and now it’s Vive le Evulwrld and the model’s dagging a sword.

They and the others return for the encore, doing the standard loop of the runway and then keep looping — is this buffering in real life? — before Evulwrld’s designer comes out, grapples with the gimp-masked model in a brilliant piece of runway theatre, dragging them offstage.

Narrative arc complete and “the line between dream and nightmare” crossed, I slip out on to the street. - Emma Gleason

Friday - Mark Of The Maker

Designers: Rhoda Nunn by Emma Muir and Nature of Mercury by George Oliver Park

If there was ever the stereotype that emerging shows were all bravado and raw hemlines, this contemplative pairing of designers proved there’s plenty of charm in well-made clothes that traded Brat energy with some renditions of jazz standards and Amy Winehouse. Opening the night’s show was a spellbinding mini concert that stopped the audience in its tracks.

Summer dresses, coquettish-looking miniskirts matched with striped tops overlayed with bikini tops in the same fabrics indicated a whimsical design aesthetic that both Pōneke-based Emma Muir of Rhoda Nunn and Ōtepoti/Meaanjin-based designer George Oliver Park have both developed - and on this occasion, expertly complemented on another in a seamless showcase.

One look - a pale blue cowl-neck halter top matched with a drawstring, red and pink striped midi skirt and red mules - was described by my seat neighbour Jess Molina as a look reminiscent of Carrie Bradshaw “even down to the way she walks”.

From culottes featuring an additional peplum to the clever trompe-l’œil effect of string bikinis patched on to fitted T-shirts, to be able to tie humour into a collection of well-made cotton separates, denim outerwear and even a red leather skirt with fringing detail, showcased a confidence that will serve both these designers well if they choose to make a living from these clothes - because people will buy them. - Dan Ahwa

Friday - Tell Me I’m Pretty

Designers: Banshee, Shebert Lemon, Izzy Miscico, Bridie Chapman, Siriene Yotwong

What if the walk of shame wasn’t? Friday’s show Tell Me I’m Pretty set out to redefine it as “a strut of power”.

A short film, detailing in hazy glamour the events of a night out and its aftermath, set the tone, and then the first model hit the catwalk — hood up and legs out to an already hollering crowd. More looks from Banshee followed, and it’s easy to see why designer Kayla Rousselle has built a cult following with the deconstructed sleaze of her grungy club gear that looks just as good, if not better, on the street in full daylight. And isn’t that the point of this show? A model fumbles with her handbag before misting herself liberally with body spray and stomping down the runway.

Next it’s a cohort of bombshells in the brilliantly provocative knits from Cisco Bella. Designer Izzy Miscico’s whole thing is “sexy sustainable fashion” and, compared to the ascetic simplicity that’s come to define much of ethical fashion, it’s a refreshing proposition.

It’s all fabulously bratty too, so of course Charli XCX’s Von Dutch starts blasting as a troupe of dancers take to the catwalk and bring the club to us.

Next it’s suiting up (kind of) with Siriene Yotwong, who took that old magazine cliche of “boardroom to bar” and ran with it — upcycling all the way. The looks meld deconstructed corporate attire with eclectic frivolity.

More turn-of-the-century tropes were twisted by Sherbert Lemon. Clad in camp femininity with the volume turned way up, designer Laylah Hannaford’s angels and coquettes are worlds away from their forbears. Eat your heart out Victoria.

The Tell Me I’m Pretty models warrant a shout-out of their own. Bringing personality and spectacle that’s welcome after decades of serious, stoic catwalking, you can feel the influence of Auckland’s flourishing Vogue scene. Creative change and new energy don’t come from a vacuum.

Last of all is Bridie Chapman, whose upcycled designs capture the chaos of picking yourself up on the morning after. Standouts were a pair of repurposed jeans blown out into flares, a halter top made from old neckties, and a two-piece assembled from old leather gloves.

The party’s not over though. We’re treated to one more Charli XCX number, 360, from the dancers — all now armed with bitchy little purses filled with confetti and a large amount of attitude. The designers take their bow, and the runway is soon overrun with well-wishers, family and revellers as the event slides into a party. It’s full circle really.

I feel high on the energy as I leave the venue, heading out on to Karangahape Rd in the full throws of Friday night, blown away by it all. Moved too.

It’s not lost on me that these designers came of age during the Zoom calls, lockdowns and social distancing of the pandemic years, and that context rattled around my head in the hours and days after the show. I don’t think you can go through all of that and then take revelry for granted, nor take it too seriously. Both were apparent on the runway and the exhilarated crowd. Above all, it was a salient reminder of the rebellion in sex, hedonism and unapologetically living. And god it was fun. - Emma Gleason

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