Te Aho Tapu - The Sacred Thread - Fashion Showcase
Description
Like the woven strands of muka, each thread carries a story, a connection, and a legacy.
Experience an evening to celebrating the artistry of weaving, craft, fashion, and storytelling. Enjoy a showcase of ancestral weaving, hear from leading creatives in an inspiring panel discussion, and witness a runway featuring designers from diverse cultures whose work honours tradition.
Celebrate culture, connection, and creativity in one extraordinary evening.
2 hour - Canape & Beverage Package
Showcase of Ancestral Weaving
Panel Discussion - Featuring Key Creatives
Showcase of 4 Designers
Designers & Panellists
Panel Convenor: Natua Kaa-Morgan
By day, Kaa-Morgan is an educator at Te Wānanga o Aotearoa, weaving kaupapa Māori into every facet of her mahi. But her influence extends well beyond the classroom. Through her vibrant social presence at @na_teatua, she showcases not only her impeccable style and thrifted fits but also her deep knowledge of Aotearoa’s fashion landscape. Her ongoing video series Hinenui te Pūweru: Aotearoa Fashion is a standout —thoughtful, well-researched, and unapologetically focused on uplifting Māori and Pasifika designers. This combination of style and cultural stewardship makes Kaa-Morgan one to watch — and one to learn from.
Panelist: Liz Mitchell Designer
Liz Mitchell MNZM, is one of New Zealand’s leading fashion designers, specialising in bespoke tailoring and championing New Zealand wool. Working out of her Auckland-based atelier, Liz and the team are passionate about the handmade craftsmanship of couture - creating clothes of timeless elegance, quality and sustainability.
Panellist: Misty Scurr
Kei runga te kōrero, kei raro te rahurahu: soothing words above, but meddling below. Attributed to the Ngāti Awa chief Tamatearehe, this whakatauākī is Misty Scurr’s guiding philosophy. It carries a warning: smooth talking can be used to cover treacherous intentions. A textile practitioner and educator with fifteen years in the trade, her practice drawing on whakapapa spanning Aotearoa (Rongomaiwahine, Rongowhakaata, Ngāti Kahungunu, Ngāti Hine), South Asia, Eastern Europe, and England, she challenges systemic exploitation in global fashion, bridging the gap between industry image and production reality. Her early career brought consecutive Supreme Awards at the Miromoda Indigenous Fashion Competition, collections at New Zealand Fashion Week, and recognition as a designer on Project Runway New Zealand. The 2013 Rana Plaza collapse, felt personally through her Indian heritage, marked a turning point: she rejected conventional industry practices and rebuilt her work through her label, The People, using sovereign methods, pre-existing materials, and local supply. As Founding Director of The Ancestral Pace, she equips consumers, practitioners, and institutions to trace the true cost of production, advocating a future where design aligns with intergenerational responsibility.
Panelist: Nigel Borell
Nigel Borell is a distinguished artist and Māori Arts curator whose profound impact on Aotearoa's arts landscape is epitomized by his creative direction of the groundbreaking exhibition, Toi Tū Toi Ora: Contemporary Māori Art
Panelist: Dr Bobby Luke Campbell
Dr. Bobby Luke (Ngāti Ruanui) is a transdisciplinary designer, filmmaker, academic, and designer of Campbell Luke. Grounded in Kaupapa Māori and Indigenous design methodologies, his practice explores the intersections of fashion, storytelling, and social innovation to reclaim and reimagine Māori cultural narratives through design. He completed his PhD in Design with the thesis Kākahu Hou: Breath of Cloth, examining Māori textiles, cultural narratives, and Indigenous knowledge systems. His work has been presented at New Zealand Fashion Week, featured in national and international exhibitions, and recognised through invitations to speak, curate, and collaborate across Aotearoa and internationally. In 2023, he was highly commended for the Kīngitanga Prize and, in 2024, was recognised in Vogue Australia's Vogue Vanguard as one of the emerging voices shaping the future of fashion.
Panelist: Dr Rangituatahi Te Kanawa
Rangi Te Kanawa, Conservator of Textiles specialising in the stabilisation of Maori textiles. Director and founder of Muka Textiles Ltd, Rangi researches and developing toward a sustainable Muka textile industry.
Master of Ceremonies: Otene Hopa
Māori Cultural Consultant and Advisor. Experienced in facilitating team building workshops, cultural intelligent training and public speaking nationally and abroad. Tikanga advisor fluent in Te Reo Māori. Professional background in Education and Career development. Has a strong Māori focus and is a skilled MC of events.
Designer: Samsara Jade of Samsara Studio - Designer
Ko Samsara Jade tōku ingoa. Ko Ngāpuhi tōku iwi. Layers of whakapapa breathe through me. Weaving is a language through which we remember, connect, and carry the stories of our tūpuna. Rooted in toi Māori and expressed through contemporary fashion design, I create taonga that honour the enduring relationship between body, whenua, and memory. Through the woven language of connection, my practice honours whakapapa, contributing to the living evolution of toi Māori and mātauranga Māori by carrying ancestral knowledge into contemporary expression. Where nature exists not as background, but as tūpuna, storyteller, and living presence.
Designer: Jumaanah Vahora of Manzil
Manzil - As a recent graduate of Sustainable Fashion Design, I have been dedicated to exploring the relationships between clothing, culture, and understandings of self shaped by the complexities of diaspora. Refl ecting on lived experiences, postcolonial theory, and traditional dressing systems, I approach design through acts of remembrance, embracing the diffi cult negotiations between home, distance and the parallel evolution of identity and place.
Designer: Charli Nikora
Ko Charli tōku ingoa, Ko Ngāti Tamaterā tōku iwi. Nō Hauraki, Malaysia, Ireland, me England okū tīpuna, Kia ora, I create kākahu that weave together both Māori raranga and European hand-crafts. A lot of my mahi is inspired by my learnings from my honours thesis, where I explored the impacts of colonisation in Aotearoa, especially on tangata whenua, my tīpuna, hand-crafts and therefore, kākahu. I played around with traditional European clothing, with a bit of revengfulness, ‘othering’ them as if they weren’t the norm. I would put a shirt on as if I'd never seen one before, wrapping myself in clothes, instead of inserting myself into them. I began to re-connect with my Māori heritage, as many mixed tangata can relate to, and celebrate mātauranga Māori through learning about Te Whare Pora and raranga. I’ve always loved making things by hands and learnt to crochet around 5 years ago inspired by my nana, so learning to weave felt very natural and grounding, despite it being lost knowledge in my whānau. Blending this knowledge together I created my collection ‘Mana Wahine’. It is an envisionment of what kākahu could be like today in Aotearoa, a blend of history and culture, they also reflect my lived experience being a culturally mixed wāhine. I have also taken my interests into styling, motivated to contribute to the re-establishment of Māori heritage within contemporary fashion.
Designer: Kaelyn Tongia Bendall
Tuatara as a creative entity exists as an ever evolving conversation between all iterations of myself and acts as a platform to personify my existence as a Biracial Papua New Guinean, Pakeha Nonbinary person. Specialising in unconventional crochet and knitwear. My practise is heavily influenced by the impacts of colonisation and working outside the standards introduced by the west. Likening my pieces to living beings that tell a story, I draw heavily from the natural lifecycle to inform my practice. Using only sustainable fibres allows the garments to reflect the lifecycle and be returned to the ground at the end of its life as we all do. All my work is rooted in hybridity, exploring my lived experience as a hybrid in a post colonial world, reinterpreting imagery seen in Papua New Guinean Tattoo culture through crochet and knitwear. Whilst acknowledging and paying respect to Aotearoa as the land I was brought up in. Being brought up in a postcolonial country has given me the privilege to examine the wrongs done to my ancestors and attempt to right those wrongs for myself and my whanau in my practice. Exploring hybridity not as a loss, but as an evolving conversation between heritage and present self.
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