They could also just be friends and close associates, though indications are that one has professional duties. She’s dressed in black.
Robertson herself is dressed to set off her crowning silver coil of hair.
First impressions are of somber tones, with which she’s associated, but as your eyes adjust to the palette they discover the disrupting flashes of silver.
She’s explaining why she chose the particular pieces that make up her entry in the Godmothers section of Otago Museum’s "Fashion FWD>>Disruption through Design" exhibition.
It’s NOM*d DNA, the Dunedin fashion label’s creative director says of the jacket, kilt and T-shirt ensemble that practically dares you to overlook it. That would be a mistake.
"I had an obsession with men’s dinner jackets," she says.
This manifested in a collection of men’s suits.
"We took two jackets apart and then joined two different shapes together."
So it’s tailoring of the very best vintage sustainable kind. And not a gravy stain in sight, despite dating from a 2002 collection.
"Then to embellish the jacket just a little more," Robertson says, with considerable emphasis on the "little", because it’s proportionate and tasteful, "we applied the slightly sparkly jet marcasite buttons."
It was showed, as part of a collection, in New York. New York.
Stencilled T-shirts are very much part of NOM*d’s DNA. Robertson said.
The one on display in the exhibition has a fictional gig poster on the front, peaking out from behind the unbuttoned jacket.
"It has all been just concocted," she says. All of it.
"That one is called Skinny Bob." It is a particular favourite.
"Then the skirt is our reinterpretation of a kilt."
There’s a new NOM*d kilt at least once a year.
You can tell the one in the exhibition is a kilt because of a flat flap at the front. There are pleats at the back. It falls with gravity before ending in a question mark.
Both the T-shirt and the kilt are from the "Noise" collection, of autumn-winter 2015.
The exhibition proposes this notion of disruption, so were these pieces disruptive?
"Well," Robertson says, but does not say "haven’t you been listening?"
"We have disrupted those tailored jackets and we have definitely disrupted the kilt and we have created a gig that didn’t exist," she hoots.
Yes, she did.
"We always start with an idea that is quite traditional. Elements that are taken from traditional forms of clothing, mainly because I am quite interested in uniform. And I think when you talk about a kilt it is actually part of a uniform, quite often. A dinner jacket is almost like an essential part of a men’s wardrobe and so ...
"Yeah," she says. "So, I suppose, that would be right, would it?"
This last phrase ends with an upward inflection, but if it is a question it can only be rhetorical.
"In every collection we always will look at traditional garments of knitwear or men’s pants or school wear, so there is always a little bit of history involved," Robertson continues. "But we will always disrupt it or change it."
As the story comes to a close, the entourage reappears. Which is very well co-ordinated.
The talk
NOM*d creative director Margarita Robertson will talk at Otago Museum on Friday, April 23, at 5.30pm in conversation with fashion scholar Natalie Smith. Tickets $15, bookings essential.
The exhibition "Fashion FWD>>Disruption through Design" runs at Otago Museum until October.
