iD Fashion Week guest Doris de Pont has moved on from designing to cataloguing the DNA of New Zeland fashion, Jude Hathaway writes.
Doris de Pont knows fashion.
She writes about it, gives talks about it, curates exhibitions about it and for 25 years designed inventive collections that have left an indelible mark on the New Zealand and international fashion design scene.
In 2013 de Pont was made an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to fashion. The honour is well-deserved.
She is a regular visitor to Dunedin, where she keeps a sharp eye on the local design fraternity and has been directly involved in the iD Dunedin Fashion Week as a guest speaker and panellist at various associated events for some years.
This year she returns to the South as the official national guest to iD, her major role that of a judge for next Thursday's iD International Emerging Designer Awards.
She will also add some de Pont magic to the iD Dunedin Fashion Shows at the Dunedin Railway Station on April 24 and 25 by way of a special collection she is putting together for the catwalk.
''It is a tradition that the guest judges present some of their work on the railway station runway but because I am no longer practising as a designer I thought I would curate an Anzac collection; presenting a sampling of Australian and New Zealand designers to mark our relationship in light of Anzac Day on April 25 and the World War 1 commemorations,'' she explained''To this end, I thought a reprise of the designers who were brought together for `Together Alone', the 2009 exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, would be an elegant approach.''
The iD show audiences have a treat in store, the collection comprising outfits from the four New Zealand and three of the four Australian designers whose work was highlighted in the event.
New Zealand was represented by notable labels, World, Zambesi and Doris de Pont from Auckland and Dunedin's own Nom*D. They featured alongside Australia's Akira Isogawa, who was the international guest designer for iD in 2011, and other well-known labels MaterialByProduct and Romance Was Born.
The garments showing at iD will not be the same as those in the gallery exhibition, but the distinctive style of each designer, including de Pont's, will be as astutely highlighted at the show as they were in Melbourne.
Her design style, which has been described frequently as ''audacious'' was seeded back in the 1970s when she sold garments through little boutiques that were beginning to spring up while she completed a degree in psychology, anthropology and political studies.
After graduating, de Pont completed a teaching degree and taught for 15 months. In 1978 she decided to move to the Netherlands from where her parents had emigrated to settle in Auckland shortly before she was born.
There she did part-time teaching and began making garments again, this time supplying them to a boutique in The Hague.
''In those days there was no such thing as designers having their own labels. The clothes were simply sold on a commission basis,'' she recalls.
Five years on she came back to New Zealand, started her Doris de Pont label and opened her first fashion store, which she called Design: Doris de Pont.
It was a heady time in fashion and, as her business thrived, magazines began featuring her work. Her profile was also lifted by way of the annual Benson and Hedges Fashion awards, her entries always accepted and in 1990 her perseverance was rewarded when she took away the Hugh Wright Menswear Award.
Her originality began to be noticed.
''I like originality but it must also be well-executed,'' de Pont remarked adding that she does not go out to design for any particular age or stage.
''At heart I am a classicist, this possibly coming from my background. My mother's family were tailors and we received regular clothing packages sent from Holland. But while I enjoy classicism, it has to have a bit of a `whack' to it.''
One feature of her work was her love of designing ''open-ended'' clothes, giving people the opportunity to place their own signature on them. This is not to say that she was unaware of trends.
''I think any designer, no matter how non-conformist, is interested in hem lengths, cuts and colour palettes and generally how people want to dress. It's important people can find a connection with garments.''
Her originality in the early days of the Doris de Pont label came from such features as appliqué or the use of furniture and swimwear fabrics and it was through this fascination with fabrics and textures that a partnership with textile designer Adrienne Foote was formed and the new label DNA (Doris `N' Adrienne) was established. It was a successful partnership that lasted eight years until, in 2002, Foote decided to leave the business and de Pont purchased the company with her husband, Tejo van Schie. All her future collections came under the Doris de Pont label.
What also followed were numerous inspirational collaborations with artists who designed prints that de Pont would use as a basis for her high-wire collections. She also called on the skills of Dunedin milliner and now the Otago Polytechnic fashion academic leader Dr Margo Barton to create headwear.
This love of collaboration is all part of de Pont's inclusive nature and led to her first engagement as a guest speaker at iD, where she talked about her work with artist John Pule, whose lithograph inspired de Pont's autumn-winter 2004 collection entitled ''Let's Gather Here''.
''It was all about identity and fashion, which is also the subject of my talk next week in Dunedin,'' she pointed out. This will centre around the identity of Australian and New Zealand fashion, which is also a nod to Anzac Day.
Two years ago she came south in an official capacity to chair a panel discussing the new publication, Black: The History of Black in Fashion, Society and Culture in New Zealand. An exhibition on the same subject was curated by her at the New Zealand Fashion Museum to coincide with the launch of the book.
''Identity through fashion is a topic that I am inclined to be obsessed by,'' she admitted. Perhaps not surprisingly, de Pont followed the concept up this year with a museum exhibition in which she presented evidence of a distinct link between the colour black and Dunedin fashion, entitled ''A Darker Eden: fashion from Dunedin''.
''I love Dunedin and I enjoy iD, particularly the emerging designer shows. `The new' is always interesting; seeing what young people are working with and thinking about, for here is where the future of fashion lies.''
But she sees the past as equally important.
''It shows from where contemporary design has come.''
One aspect of fashion she has watched develop in recent years is the diversity that has allowed women - and men - the opportunity to dress with more individual style.
''Think back to the '60s when you saw women in their 50s and 60s in the short mini-dresses their daughters and granddaughters were wearing and which were not really appropriate,''she pointed outDe Pont's penchant for the past is clearly illustrated by her return to university studies in 2009 to complete a postgraduate honours degree in museums and cultural heritage.
This was soon after she made the surprise announcement of her retirement from designing following the launch of what was to be her final collection ''X My Heart'' for the summer of 2007-2008.
But anyone knowing Doris de Pont would be aware that this was not a time for her to rest. It was simply an opportunity to establish new directions for her rich creativity.
This came in the form of the New Zealand Fashion Museum (NZFM), which she was instrumental in establishing as a Charitable Trust in 2010 and of which she is a trustee and curator.
''While studying I'd learned just how important fashion is to social, cultural and political landscapes and how under-represented it was at many museums,'' she said. The NZFM is remarkable in that it has no fixed abode other than an online address and it is a museum dedicated to the recording of New Zealand's rich fashion past, making it relevant for the present and future.
This bold venture with no grand building or physical collection through which to share the stories of New Zealand people does so instead through the quality of its research, its publications (including its first e-book) its online museum and award-winning pop-up exhibitions.
It's good to know that de Pont's verve, vitality and immense fashion knowledge has found a fascinating, new creative niche.
Doris de Pont at iD
• Doris de Pont, curator of the New Zealand Fashion Museum and iD Dunedin Fashion Week's national guest, will present a discussion on fashion and identity. Dunedin Public Art Gallery, Thursday, April 23, 12.30pm. Gold coin entry.
• She is on the judging panel for the iD International Emerging Designer Awards, the show for which is on Thursday, April 23 at the Dunedin Town Hall at 7.30pm.
• De Pont has also curated a show of Australian and New Zealand designers as part of the iD Dunedin Fashion Shows on Friday and Saturday nights, April 24-25, at Dunedin Railway Station.
For further information on the New Zealand Fashion Museum visit www.nzfashionmuseum.org.nz
