Gallery Highlight
New Zealand
Fashion Museum Auckland, New Zealand
‘We are what we wear’ is a maxim that captures the essence of the New Zealand Fashion Museum’s mission: to stimulate conversations about how we fashion our personal and social identities by what we choose to wear. Established in 2010, the museum has no building or physical collection but instead documents, records and shares the stories of the clothes and people that have contributed to the development of the unique fashion identity of Aotearoa New Zealand today. It leads the dialogue about the significant role of clothing and adornment in our self-representation and identity through insightful storytelling, exhibitions and an active social media presence. The selected hats were made decades apart, but they all illustrate the creativity, inventiveness and sculptural artistry of the milliner.
More information
www.nzfashionmuseum.org.nz
Lindsay Kennett Jewelled toque, 1957 Made from cream satin and decorated with a burnt orange jewel
Located far from the fashion centres of Europe and America, New Zealand milliners often improvised to achieve the latest looks seen in the international fashion magazines that were read by local women. Import restrictions made it difficult to bring in overseas labels, resulting in an industry of resourceful hat makers who nonetheless kept up to date. It helped that the British Colour Council released colour forecasts
ahead of the season, which enabled the fashion industry to anticipate which colours were most likely to be promoted. In 1957 Auckland-based milliner Lindsay Kennett used a cake tin instead of a hat block to make this cream and burnt orange jewelled toque. The popular style was modelled by Robyn Garland and photographed by Ted Mahieu for in-house publicity. For almost 40 years, Lindsay was one of the main suppliers of model hats to major city department stores and fashion shops in smaller towns around the country. He was a prolific designer who produced two seasonal collections each year.
Margo Barton Match, 2003 Made from moulded perspex
The knit patterning of a discarded baby bonnet has been translated into the print that features on this moulded perspex bonnet. This is 'Match', part of the series Hatch, Match and Dispatch which Margo Barton made to present at Making an appearance: An international conference on fashion, dress and consumption at Queensland University of Technology in 2003. Margo describes it as the first piece that allowed her to take her design process from the computer and plant it back in the physical world. “I decided to stop trying to represent straw or felt in the computer, and instead to embrace the futuristic immaterial materiality no matter where it existed." This, and other explorations with this rigid material, serves to draw attention to the unique sculptural possibilities inherent in a hat.
50 | the hat magazine #92
Photo: Copyright: All Rights Reserved, Image © Margo Barton
Photo: Copyright: All Rights Reserved, Image © Kennett Archives
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