The Wanakafest fashion production is being produced this year by former New York model Carrie Berkey O'Brien, who worked for 15 years at various international agencies and with luxury brands such as Georgio Armani, Donna Karan, Fendi, Chanel and Oscar De La Renta, before settling in Wanaka about four years ago with her husband Mark O'Brien and family of five young children.
Mrs O'Brien has cast and schooled the models for the green carpet and catwalk show, which this year is being held at the Mitre 10 store.
Mrs Coghill, a former employee of Arthur Barnett's store in Dunedin, got her break in modelling in 2005, when she was selected with Dunedin's Barbara Brinsley and Pamela Farry for a World catwalk show at the New Zealand Fashion Week in Auckland.
"I worked for Arthur Barnett for 100 years. [Surely not!] I did!" Mrs Coghill said in an interview last weekend.
"The three of us were asked to do it. We were so lucky and it was so much fun. It was so ridiculous. The old girls, all of our ages added up to number of the total cast," she said.
Mrs Coghill moved to Wanaka with her husband Blair about two years ago, but before that they had been coming to the resort for holidays for many years.
Mr Coghill was a pharmacist at Roslyn "for about 100 years" and had no idea what his wife got up to at fashion shows, she said.
"I don't let him come." Mrs Coghill said her teenage catwalk colleagues were all very beautiful so the competition was tough.
She was relishing the opportunity to work with Mrs O'Brien.
Miss Scurr, a year 13 pupil at Mt Aspiring College, said learning the runway trade from Mrs O'Brien had been "really good fun".
"It is really cool and I know her so well because I have been working for her family for a year. That's how I got into it," she said.
Mrs O'Brien said she had been fortunate to travel a lot with her career, doing a mixture of runway, catalogue, magazine and television work.
Having five children was the catalyst for change, she said.
She and her husband, a co-founder of award-winning Central Otago company Broken Shed Vodka, had been raising their family in Vermont and loved to ski. They chose Wanaka after travelling around New Zealand in a campervan.
"New Zealand ticked all the boxes for everything we were looking for. New Zealand is more an adventurous place for us, with clean, pure air and good education," she said.
Mrs O'Brien said she had been approached to produce Passion for Fashion after helping retailer 47 Frocks source and train models for the show last year.
Her charges were gaining in confidence and devoting a lot of time to practising.
"The highlight for me is watching everybody in the creation of the show. They've been working hard to create the mood, the attitude, to be involved. We are asking a lot of them and I am going to be extremely proud of them," she said.
Passion for Fashion is at 8.30pm on Wednesday.
