More than 60,000 people are coming to the Wellington waterfront this year to watch the World of Wearable Arts festival (WOW).
Behind the glamorous show are 400 people who work for months to put it on.
Re: News spoke to award-winning fashion designer Ian Bernhard and performer Tabitha Dombroski about how much work they’ve put into this year’s show.
Designing for WOW since age 17
Bernhard is a 30-year-old fashion designer who won the 2024 Fisher Funds New Zealand Design Award for his garment called The Red Thread.
He has a long history of submitting garments into WOW and said he has entered a total of 13 garments across 10 different WOW shows.
“The first year I entered was 2011. I was 17 at the time,” he said.
Bernhard said the cost to make different garments varies and that he’s a big advocate of not needing to spend heaps of money.
His main investment is time, spending eight to nine months working on several of his previous garments, he said.
In 2016, he won the WOW Factor Award for his garment called Incognita. He said that was one of the most time-consuming garments he’s ever made as the entire thing was hand-painted.
The garment he entered for the 2019 WOW show, called Eden, took a lot of time because it was made entirely of hand-stitched feathers, he said.
“Fashion can be quite elite as a community to come into as a young designer, and it’s quite hard to break through that ceiling.
“WOW is such an amazing place that equalises creatives, and it was so good as someone young to be able to put something forward and to be thought of as equal to established artists and designers.”
Making an award-winning piece in four days
Bernhard said he went through a break-up and then realised the deadline to enter a garment for the 2024 WOW show was the following week.
“I really wanted to enter WOW this year because it might be my last for a few years,” he said, as he plans to move overseas.
Bernhard patchworked together Japanese and antique vintage scrap pieces of fabric that he had been collecting for 10 years.
He then spent four days straight making his garment, working around 20 hours each day, he said.
Bernhard said it was “inspired by my friends and my ex-partner, and the name stems from East Asian folklore around the idea of a thread that ties souls together”.
Many of Bernhard’s friends are drag artists, cabaret and burlesque performers, and he said queer culture has a big influence on his work.
“I can’t help but be inspired by it. It’s the world I live in, and I’m very happy for that.”
Bernhard said some people may assume being a designer is a “fun job” and think it’s less work than it really is.
“It’s long hours, it’s quite taxing… It’s a lot of physical labour, a lot of bending over the sewing machine, a lot of sore backs, a lot of lying on hard floors, working on the floor,” he said.
“I don’t enjoy the process but when it’s done? Love it.”
Dombroski has been rehearsing six days a week
Dombroski is a feature artist in this year’s WOW show, doing dancing and modelling.
They performed in WOW for several years as a child, first modelling when they were 10 years old in 2010.
Dombroski is now 24 years old and a highly trained dancer, having attended the New Zealand School of Dance and John Cranko Schule, a world-renowned German ballet school.
“As a child, it was a dream of mine to come back as an adult and take part in WOW,” they said.
Dombroski said rehearsing for WOW has been “fast and furious” because it’s a “mammoth” show.
They’ve spent the past six weeks rehearsing for eight hours a day, between six to seven days a week.
The day of this interview, Dombroski woke up at 7am to do pilates, yoga and readings for their university classes.
On top of being a WOW performer, Dombroski was currently studying a Bachelor of Science in psychology because they are passionate about the mental health of performing artists.
They then headed to the performance venue at 1pm to do warm-ups and then rehearse until 9pm, with a dinner break in the middle at 5pm.
During the rehearsal period, Dombroski said they got one day off per week, which would extend to two days off per week during the shows.
“That one day off is really just catching up on life admin and washing and shopping and lying horizontal for as long as you can,” they said.
For Dombroski, the hardest part of being a WOW performer is “turning up everyday and being really calm and present… because it’s really easy to get really overwhelmed”.
They’re excited to actually get on stage and trust the rehearsal process enough to fully enjoy performing.
“The best part of being in WOW is just the scale of it,” Dombroski said.
“Having all these incredibly passionate people that are incredibly talented at what they do, all working under one roof… It’s overwhelming and really inspiring to be around.”
WOW’s 2024 show DREAM AWAKE is currently on from September 26 until October 13 at the TSB Arena in Wellington.
