In the third installment of our Te Wiki Āhua o Aotearoa story, we find ourselves seized by the echo chamber. A space where the glamour is loud, the pressure hits harder and the line between opportunity and exploitation becomes dangerously thin.

This is not your hero’s journey. It’s a mirror held up to an industry that grooms and consumes. Where control is dressed up as mentorship, and creativity is traded like currency. Yet, we find ourselves returning. Not because it’s easy, but because it matters. Our stories matter.

We give everything because we know, every season of Āhua, that this might be the last time we get to make this stand. We’re a community of young, scrappy, and hungry creatives that show up to the arena seemingly ill-equipped and eyes bigger than our stomachs.

Every show this August 22nd – 30th is more than just a runway, it’s a declaration. It’s a stand for what we value, what we protect, and what we carry forward as a community.

Runway 14

Show Title - On Behalf of

Dunedin once clothed the nation. A city of mills, makers, and industrial craft. But when production moved offshore, its legacy was buried beneath silence and steel.

Still, the thread held.

In the absence, something new took form: a fashion culture built on resilience, darkness, and defiance. While others moved with the current, Dunedin stayed. Creating with intention, not approval.

On Behalf Of brings four designers; Existence, Lior Blaq, WideSkyMine and Flax Hubzzy from the southern fringe to the Auckland stage. Not to ask permission. Not to seek validation.

But to show that Dunedin never stopped.

It just kept working in the dark.

And now, it speaks.