NZ fashion's big money-spinner launches today

By NZPA

Monday 21st October 2002

New Zealand's apparel industry launches its largest money spinner today with the opening of the annual L'Oreal Fashion Week in Auckland today.

In only its second year, L'Oreal New Zealand Fashion Week is the flagship event on the New Zealand fashion calendar, attracting maximum overseas exposure for local firms.

New Zealand's designer fashion industry generates annual fashion sales of about $100 million, with $40.6 million of that being export revenue.

Tony Milich, managing director for the Sabatini label, said his company picked up about $250,000 in orders as a result of last year's fashion week.

Mr Milich said the fallout from the September 11 attacks in the United States just prior to last week's inaugural fashion week had deterred overseas buyers and media.

However, this year's winter fashion show promised to be better.

"It's already turning out to be much bigger -- we ourselves have got over 100 buyers that we do business with in Australia coming," Mr Milich told National Radio today.

"We've been the catalyst for bringing out more buyers because Trade New Zealand has used us to get Australian buyers from further afield.

"To a large extent New Zealand designers do very well in Melbourne, but in Australia there's a lot of states and they want everyone to be here."

An international event in New Zealand made it much cheaper and easier for local designers to launch big campaigns on the world stage, he said.

New Zealand Fashion Week starts today with the first of more than 25 fashion shows, featuring 46 labels, beginning tomorrow.

Designers range from the well-established Kate Sylvester, Carlson, Zambesi, World, Trelise Cooper and Nicholas Blanchet labels to the newer houses of Federation, Hailwood, Tango and Billy Zamoisky.

Along with overseas fashion media, this year's overseas industry delegates include buyers from Selfridges, Liberty's and the House of Fraser in London, and Sex and the City stylist Rebecca Weinberg.

The majority of buyers are from Australia.

Outside of Auckland other centres, notably Wellington and Dunedin, hold annual fashion events but they attract less offshore interest.

An Industry New Zealand-commissioned report into the fashion industry found annual growth rate of about 10 percent, and discovered the industry was about $60 million larger than previously thought.

Fashion Industry NZ executive director Paul Blomfield, who prepared the report, told Industry NZ magazine Venture that fashion would become a $350 million to $500 million a year industry in the next decade if it maintained its current growth rate.

Trade New Zealand apparel account manager Anne Chappaz told NZPA that Australian buyers had been surprised last year at the calibre of New Zealand designers at the Fashion Week.

"When they came last year they didn't think they were going to find such an exciting range of new labels, so they'd already spent a lot of their budget in Australia before they'd arrived," Ms Chappaz said.

"This year they've come knowing what New Zealand can offer, so they've kept back money ready to buy."

The entire apparel industry earns $260 million a year in foreign exchange, with Australia buying 66 percent of New Zealand's exports.

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