For two decades Dame Pieter Stewart held the anchor seat at the end of the front row of every show at New Zealand Fashion Week (NZFW). A visible and unmissable presence, dressed in a black trouser suit or black blazer, skirt, leggings and boots.

Her seat, A50, at the end of the front row was perfectly positioned and strategic. Close to the entrance / exit from which buyers, media and guests spilled and from where she could keep an eye on the whole room as well as be accessible to the ushers and ensuring all was as it should be.

While her visibility and attendance showed respect and support for each fashion designer, whom she would congratulate without fail, backstage after every show, as well as check in. Stewart’s support was unwavering because they were also her clients, and she never lost sight of her vision.

Portrait of Dame Pieter Stewart DNZM.

She founded NZFW in 2001 “to provide a world stage on which to showcase dynamic and innovative New Zealand fashion”, and to make it a profitable operation.

Criteria for designers to be involved (New Gen and Grad designers exempt) was that they had to be producing a regular collection and be export ready. The event drew local and international buyers and media, and Stewart ran the ship for 20 years.

However, to understand Stewart’s position and journey to becoming founder and managing director of NZFW, one must travel south to Canterbury. She was born Pieter McKenzie, in Christchurch, schooling at Saint Margaret’s. She married crop and sheep farmer Peter Stewart and worked as a part-time model while raising a family.

In those days, models were mostly independent, and people knew where to find her if they wanted her to walk their collection. Among them were department store Beaths, designer store Lonies, swimwear for Lane Walker Rudkin, Selby coats and Cantwell Creations.

First image: Dame Pieter Stewart modelling for Beath's, 1970s. Second image: Stewart modelling a summer ensemble, 1970s.

Paula Ryan had established Paula Ryan Model Agency in Christchurch and was keen to bring Stewart into her stable, though initially she was resistant because she lived in the country and was a busy mother of four. She did, however, model on occasion for Ryan and eventually began teaching evening modelling courses. Then one day, out of the blue, Ryan telephoned her with a proposition. To buy Paula Ryan Model Agency.

“I remember I was in the kitchen, and she said, ‘Do you want to buy a model agency?’ And I said, ‘I don’t think so, I’ve never thought of anything like that’. Paula explained she wanted to sell because she and her husband [Don Hope] had started a magazine called Fashion (1).

“So, I thought about it and when Pete came in for lunch I said, ‘I think I’d like to look at this business’ and he said, ‘What do you want to do that for?’ and I said, ‘Well, it might be a good idea’.”

She bought the business in 1981 and changed its name to Pieter’s Modelling Agency two years later because by then the magazine was well-established, and people found the Paula Ryan connection confusing.

First image: advertisement for Pieter's Model Agency, 1980s. Second image: Advertisement for Summer Sensations 2, a show of dance and fashion 1983.

It was the beginning of Stewart’s experience in event management, producing shows which she called Summer Sensations, which had virtually every model in the agency learning and practising choreography by well-known choreographer Maggie Burke for three to four weeks. The shows were danced, rather than walked, and a lot of fun, remembers Stewart. “I basically fitted the clothes to the story. It was a way of entertaining people. Now you think, ‘Oh, we could have saved ourselves so many problems if we just sent them down the catwalk one by one’.”

Ryan called on her again in 1985 to join the Fashion team and Stewart took on the role of contributing editor. The magazine was rebranded Fashion Quarterly (FQ) in 1986 and it was run by a team of four – Don Hope in sales, Ryan as editor, Peg Johnston as writer and Stewart. “I was anything and everything else really,” says Stewart. “Paula, with her incredible eye and creativity designed all the layouts for the graphic designers, organised the content, while Don sold all the advertising and Peg wrote the copy. I backed up and did whatever else was needed. It was the biggest learning curve of my career and invaluable because it formed the basis of what I did for the NZFW magazine.”

Stewart stayed with FQ for three years until the magazine moved from Christchurch to Auckland in 1987.

It wasn’t long after that another opportunity came knocking in the guise of the Christchurch-based Corbans PR team, Sue Rickerby and Merryn Corcoran. Stewart was still coordinating shows through her model agency and had just staged Canterbury Collections. The Corbans PR team wanted something that was a national presence and would raise the profile of the wine label. They wanted to do televised fashion collections and naturally approached Stewart to coordinate it.

The Corbans Fashion Collections began in 1990 with two black-tie dinners at the Sheraton Hotel (now The Cordis), Auckland with fully choreographed shows where each designer had their own section. The collections were filmed over both nights from different angles and spliced together for a one-hour television special.

“It was something these people had never seen before or since. And it rated quite well for some time, but it was blatantly commercial,” explains Stewart. “It was to sell garments and give fashion a profile and to give Corbans a profile, which it did.”

Barbara Lee showing at Corbans Fashion Collections, 1993.

Locations for the event moved over the years from the Auckland Town Hall and Kohimarama to the ASB Stadium where Stewart also learned how to abseil just because she wanted to give it a go. Initially she was petrified to leave the beam but at the end of the day she was confidently swinging from the lighting rig.

This was pre-internet, so the only way you could see the upcoming trends was to attend a physical show or get your hands on print media. FQ also played a huge part, printing photographs of runway collections from Corbans Fashion Collections in the magazine, in the style of Collezioni (a style-bible of runway photographs from Milan and Paris including both Pret-a-Porter and Haute Couture collections).

First image: Vamp show in the 1993/1994 Corbans Fashion Collections. Second image: Expozay in the Corbans Fashion Collections in the early 1990s.

The participating New Zealand designers received huge mileage from the event. “It was the start of putting New Zealand fashion designers on a national stage and getting them well-known, and it worked,” says Stewart.

By now, she had formed her own public relations and promotions company, formed in 1988, which became the umbrella organisation for work in promotions and television production, and later during the development of NZFW.

It was through the Corbans Fashion Collections that Stewart met and began building relationships with New Zealand designers, which would be so valuable when founding NZFW and why she was the obvious choice to take the lead. She did this with the Corbans Collections when, after five years, the wine label stepped away as a naming partner. From then on it became known as the Wella Fashion Collections and Stewart took over the television production when the PR girls stepped aside.

It was the golden age for live fashion shows on national television until TVNZ decided it didn’t want fashion programmes anymore, canning both the Smokefree Awards and Wella Fashion Collections. The Corbans and Wella Collections ran from 1990 to 1997. Stewart produced a final Wella Fashion Report – a four-part television documentary style programme on the fashion industry screened on TVNZ from 1998 to 1999. Thereafter, there was no platform in New Zealand for designers who, by now, were quite used to showcasing their wares.

Meanwhile, across the ditch, New Zealand labels WORLD, Zambesi, Moontide and Wallace Rose were making headlines as the first New Zealand labels to be invited to show at Australian Fashion Week in 1997. WORLD and Zambesi in particular caught international fashion attention for their originality.

Karen Walker and Kate Sylvester joined the Australian Fashion Week lineup the following year and the enthusiasm continued. "Even before the third Mercedes Australian Fashion Week had begun, the word was out on the bush telegraph – "New Zealand is the new Belgium (2)"… this means that a group of Kiwi designers is emerging with a distinctive, fresh style,” declared fashion writer Maggie Alderson in the Sydney Morning Herald (May 1998).

It spurred a momentum that led to four New Zealand fashion designers being accepted into London Fashion Week in 1999 – The New Zealand Four – Karen Walker, Zambesi, NOM*d and WORLD, supported by Trade New Zealand and Wools of New Zealand. With New Zealand’s leading designers winning headlines in Australia and around the world in prestigious media outlets including TIME magazine and CNN Style, there was palpable interest in New Zealand having a fashion week of its own.

With her extensive experience in fashion shows and all the logistics that accompanied them, Stewart was the perfect person to be able to pull together and lead an event featuring dozens of designers, thousands of guests and VIPs and hundreds of models. She quietly canvased key industry players and pulled together a strong team to put the first NZFW together. Stewart proposed an export-focused event to bring in buyers and media from overseas.

Around the same time former model Jennifer Souness (who with her then partner, Italian fashion event producer Marco Maccapani, had produced the second spring/summer NZ Four show at London Fashion Week in September 1999) was planning a New Zealand Fashion & Culture Week to be held in Wellington which stalled Stewart’s plans until it failed to secure the funding it needed to go ahead.

Meanwhile, Stewart secured $75,000 in Government funding and L’Oreal came on board as naming partner. NZFW was timed for October to follow the last of the Northern Hemisphere Spring/Summer shows in September and ahead of Australia’s Melbourne Cup when the unthinkable happened in New York on September 11, 2001.

“We were all ready to go, the designers were on board and every day somebody would ring from overseas to say they were unable to come because their companies wouldn’t let them fly. I remember standing in front of the designers at the model casting. I was virtually in tears saying, ‘I don’t think we can do it because we haven’t got any internationals coming’ and I remember [Zambesi’s] Lis Findlay standing up and saying, ‘Yes, we’re doing it. We’ve still got the Australians, and we’ll make it a fantastic fashion week’.”

Multi-brand stores in Australia were du jour, and the Australian buyers brought out their chequebooks and a new era in New Zealand fashion was born.

One international did make it, though, New Zealand expat Hilary Alexander and fashion director of the Daily Telegraph whose enthusiasm for what she was seeing was infectious. From toe tapping to the music in the front row to comforting a sobbing Claire Kingan Jones backstage after four models slipped and fell on fake snow on the runway. "It was gorgeous, it was a world record,” soothed Alexander. “Vivienne Westwood (3) only managed one and you did four.”

It was obvious to the entire audience what was going to happen as the first models began slipping a bit, Stewart recalls. “As it got worse and worse, I was very grateful of my quick escape seat and ran out the back to tell them to stop the snow machine to find Pak Peacocke our production manager grinning away, totally oblivious to what was happening out the front. The snow machine had been tested prior to the show, but what hadn’t been taken into account was the warmth of all the bodies in the room which turned it into soap flakes.”

The first NZFW opened onsite at Auckland’s Town Hall with a Pacifica show and was followed with presentations by DNA, Galactic, Starfish, Zana Feuchs, Sabatini, Robin Jones, Liz Mitchell, Catalyst, Gaye & Deanne Bartlett, Paula Ryan Simply You, Carlson, WORLD, NOM*d, Dunedin Group (Dot Com, Mild Red, Aduki, Andrea Bentley); Silk Road, Verge, IPG, Saga, Caroline Moore, New Generation, Blanchet, Zambesi, Cosmos, Street, VSSP, Vamp, AnnMaree Chambers, Millennium, Holic, Luna, Sharon Ng, Insidious Fix, State of Grace, Trelise Cooper and Servilles Creative Hair Show. Not to forget Gubb & Mackie’s off-site show on HMNZS Wellington at Devonport Naval Base on the opening night.

The inaugural event NZFW, which took place with 45 designers, earned $1.9M Equivalent Advertising Value (EAV refers to PR coverage, valuing it in comparison to traditional advertising space). By year four, the EAV was a staggering $25M. In subsequent years, prior to digital reporting, the figure rose to an incredible $50M.

From those early days, NZFW evolved year on year in size, strength and sophistication while responding and adapting to the times as well as navigating the Global Financial Crisis and Covid pandemic. In order to further utilise the expensive venue setup and give partners more exposure, through the instigation of Stewart’s daughter Myken, they decided to pivot from the week’s trade event to add Fashion Weekend with shows entirely open to the public.

Fashion Weekend allows shows to be open to the general public, introduced by Myken Stewart.

Stewart and her team, which included Myken as sponsorship manager, worked hard to bring international buyers and media to the event, which is what also gave it its hype.

Some of those internationals included Sex and the City stylist Rebecca Wynberg and publicist and fashion show producer Brian Long of Apropo Showroom and Press. Long became Stewart’s international liaison for North America and was responsible for attracting a host of top media, buyers and fashion talent including Nicole Miller, Derek Warburton, Huffington Post, Richie Rich and Pamela Anderson. “He did very well for NZFW. Pamela Anderson got 90 plus international articles. It was huge,” says Stewart.

First image: Pamela Anderson and Richie Rich on the runway. Second image: Pamela Anderson, Keisha Castle-Hughes, Richie Rich. 2009, shot by Michael Ng.

Heavy hitting and respected fashion writers who made the trip included Hilary Alexander, Colin McDowell, Lisa Armstrong and Tim Blanks as well as buyers from House of Fraser, Liberty and Henri Bendel.

Karen Walker saying yes to participating in 2003 was also a pivotal moment. “That was a highlight because when we first started people used to ask, ‘Why isn’t Karen Walker doing it?’ And when she did, that took it all away.”

Another personal milestone moment for Stewart was Air New Zealand coming on board as naming sponsor in 2004. “Air New Zealand was launching a new magazine and uniform, and they wanted to be seen as a fashionable and stylish airline and had a number of KPIs including staff engagement and we were able to help with those, and they helped us take it to the world and enabled us to grow and look after internationals.”

Image 1: ANZFW advertisement, 2008. Image 2: Dame Pieter Stewart opening ANZFW 2007. Image 3: Dame Pieter Stewart and Air New Zealand CEO Rob Fyffe, 2008.

The impact that NZFW has had on the New Zealand fashion landscape is undeniable. New Zealand apparel generated $220M in foreign exchange in 2001 and jumped to $305M in 2004. It has become an invaluable platform for the local fashion industry and has launched countless careers and brands, and seen fashion designers became household names and celebrities. A conduit bringing together fashion, music, creativity and commerce. In the very beginning there were very few stylists and certainly no fashion PR agencies (4). If you were a hair or make-up artist, you were there with your competitors “under the best ever cool vibes” – it was the place to be. It was also vitally important for local fashion media who regarded NZFW as the fashion equivalent of the Olympics in terms of scale and performance as well as the sheer stamina required to report on every show.

Work hard, play hard brings the vibes to NZFW. These images: 1. Backstage hair team. 2. Backstage makeup, 2013. 3. Media centre at the tents. 4. MAC Sponsored opening party, 2011. 5. Ambient music supplied by local DJs. 6. NZFW audience and front row, 2009.

Along the way NZFW has adapted to the times to make fashion more accessible and promoted sustainability, all while helping to grow the sector into a significant contributor for the economy. New Zealand’s Fashion, Clothing and Textile Industry added $7.8 billion to the economy in 2023 and contributed 1.9% to GDP (5). Not only did the design community thrive – but everything to do with fashion came together at NZFW.

Stewart’s contribution was recognised by her appointment as a Dame Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit (DNZM) for services to fashion and the community in the 2012 Queen’s Birthday and Diamond Jubilee Honours.

That year [2012] Stewart also launched NZ Fashion Festival – a consumer-facing event (as opposed to the trade-focused NZFW) of group shows held in the evenings at Auckland’s Shed 10 over five days. It was held in March, showing in-season collections – partly to create a new event in the opposite season to NZFW, but also to make sure NZFW could keep on their full-time staff with two events over the year. Two years later the event was shelved when alterations to the building began. Once complete, the Fashion Festival was unable to use the venue as its timing clashed with the cruise ship season and passengers were processed at Shed 10.

New Zealand Fashion Festival campaign image featuring model Penny Pickard, 2012.

In 2015, realising that as a private business, she couldn’t keep running NZFW forever and her wing woman Myken (now mum to a 2-year-old), she began thinking of a succession plan and announced that NZFW was for sale, though it took time for the right buyer to come along. An unsuccessful three-year buyout in 2016 saw her taking the company back and it wasn’t until May 2021 that that vision was fully realised when she sold the business to entrepreneur and executive chairman of Whitecliffe College, Feroz Ali.

Stewart felt it was time to go back to community work in the health and education arenas, which had occupied much of her time until around 2008 when Fashion Week became all absorbing. Time to get off the fashion treadmill and pass the baton.

Always a staunch supporter of New Zealand fashion, Stewart is looking forward to attending NZFW 2025, this time as a guest at several shows, including Zambesi on 28 August 2025, in Auckland’s Shed 10.

Text by Carolyn Enting. Banner image: NZFW staircase, 2012.

Thumbnail image: Dame Pieter Stewart, 2010.

Published August 2025.

Footnotes:

1. Fashion Quarterly (launched in 1980 by Paula Ryan and Don Hope) began as a retail catalogue distributed for free in Christchurch letterboxes. Originally titled Fashion, separate editions were launched for Auckland, Wellington, and Dunedin/Invercargill before merging together in 1982 to form Fashion New Zealand. Then rebranding to Fashion Quarterly in 1986.

2. Drawing parallels with the Antwerp Six from Belgium.

3. Referring to the time Naomi Campbell famously tumbled on the catwalk in Vivienne Westwood platform heels in 1993.

4. Showroom 22 was New Zealand's first dedicated fashion showroom and PR agency. The showroom was launched by Murray Bevan in April 2002.

5. Threads of Tomorrow Report (2024)