Fashion Week Diary: Trelise's Bad Look

Last year Trelise’s show got me all worked up as I saw it as implicitly anti-feminist. This year’s has got me all worked up due to its racism. Have Dame Trelise and her workroom been living under a rock? Didn’t they notice the furore surrounding the use of cultural appropriation, specifically that of the Native American Indians? In the past couple of years alone, Victoria’s Secret have been forced to apologise and edit all references to a head dress from their televised show, No Doubt had to reshoot an entire music video, and Pharrell Williams/Elle magazine, Karl Lagerfeld, and Khloe Kardashian have also come under fire for using race as window dressing.

Or was Dame Trelise aware of this and using the motif deliberately to grab headlines? Even more disturbing is the large number of Trelise Cooper supporters who are cross with what they see as political correctness ruining their social outing of the year. Leading these is Fashion Week’s own Dame Pieter Stewart who appeared on television this morning defending the head wear, describing it as “beautiful”.

Luckily we have a raft of New Zealand designers who know how to generate noise in a much more tasteful way, such as Nom*D who opened Fashion Week with seven balaclava-clad drummers – and provided us with ear plugs in case said noise was not to our taste.

Watch: Rebecca Wadey discuss the Trelise Cooper show, and the rest of Fashion Week day 2, on TV3’s Fashion Front Row.