Monday, September 28, 2009

Charles Darwin at NZ Fashion Week

I’m back! I was away in Auckland for Fashion Week and let me tell you, I had a front row seat in Halsey Street on Thursday night. I couldn’t see Adrian Hailwood, Pamela Anderson or my old friend Stacey Gregg anywhere. Then I saw my old friends Stephanie Johnson and Peter Wells and realised that I had come to the wrong venue.

This was a publishing event, the CLL Writers’ Awards. So instead of gorgeous young models we got Martin Edmond talking about “doubt and wonder”, extrapolating wildly from a phrase Charles Darwin wrote in his journal upon seeing New Zealand for the first time in December 1835. (Read more about this in Martin’s brilliant book from earlier this year, Zone of the Marvellous.)

Still, I reflected after a second glass of Peregrine pinot noir at Soul later that evening, literature is fashion of a kind. Just not so glamorous. And with fewer Pamela Andersons.

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