With a background in wardrobe for theatre, movies and commercials, anti-fashion designer Dave Roil (Ngāti Porou/Te Āti Awa) creates high-end alternative couture with an edge.
As part of The Deal, which is a collaboration between Tink Lockett and Gisborne photographer Roil, some of his designs will also be displayed. Held at Tairāwhiti Museum, the April 21 show will include as models people from mental health advocacy charity Hear4U. The show will be complemented by hangings of Lockett’s large-scale photographic prints on silk of models adorned in Roil’s designs.
Designer of Hand Sewn Atelier stays away from the main fashion industry and only uses upcycled or repurposed fabrics. No patterns are used and all garments made by him are sewn manually. He takes apart work clothes and transforms them into fashion-art. Additionally, he creates unique designs from materials like blankets, bedsheets, and tablecloths.
“I’m not commercial,” he says. “I’m completely self-taught. My niche is antifashion. My clothing has to be wearable for the office as well as at the cafe.”
Roil says that the anti-fashion movement originated in Japan, as a response to 1980’s excesses with big hair and bright heads. Roil then moved it to New York.
“They set up this store with clothes laid out on tables and a couple of garments on racks. Customers saw it as an art gallery.”
Roil’s first brush with the fashion world began when he worked in the PR department of Wellington’s high-end Park Royal Hotel. Roil took over the task of organizing a fashion event at his hotel from his boss.
“I’d never done anything like this before. The layout had to be designed exactly as the models requested. I also was responsible for the production of $300,000.
“The fashion show was an ordeal. I didn’t want to do it again, but it gave me a base for what I’m doing now.”
While working in the hotel’s corporate environment Roil held a part-time job at the Costume Cave, a costume and clothing hire service for company film, theatre, school and events.
“That was my fashion school. It was necessary to know how to put everything together. I learned about authentic costume at the Costume Cave.”
Part-time employment was offered to him at a theatre, where he steam and hung costumes. But when he decided to join the Costume Cave to learn from a costume designer, he discovered how to upcycle.
Roil was a designer of alternative clothing for men at The Freak Space from late 2007 to the end.
“I take the corporate uniform . . . the suit, and cut it, change it around and sew it back together,” says Roil on his LinkedIn page.
The fashion design and photography collaboration was Lockett’s idea/brainchild.
“I met her three years ago,” says Roil. “She’d been stalking me on the Internet. She took some photos and next minute she’s got me on a Marquis magazine cover, my first ever.”
Shooting for the prints was often stalled due to Covid, but over the past three years Lockett amassed images of Roil’s designs. To showcase her fashion-styled shooting, and to make 14 fine art images to complement Roil’s work, she used local models and locations to create the images.
“I created specific imagery from garments Dave has made for this project,” says Lockett.
“The 14 prints feature local people as models and locations such as Ulverstone and Titirangi-Kaiti Hill. Each of these images will be printed on silk to be hung as large-scale works at the museum during the fashion show.”
The Deal, a collaborative project between anti-fashion designer Dave Roil and Gisborne photographer Tink Lockett, Tairāwhiti Museum. Opening Night April 21st at 6.30pm Roil’s outfits and Lockett’s prints will remain on display in the main gallery until June 18.
Cold case
Blood-stained floorboards, documentation and magnified photographs that include images of where Roil’s mother’s body was found in a Wellington boarding house in 1972 will also feature in The Deal.
Roil will exhibit the material in his efforts to uncover the truth about his mother’s death.
Although the cause of Margaret Walker’s death was officially recorded as the result of asphyxiation due
Roil, acute alcohol poisoning
He believes that his mother was killed and has since collected evidence to support this belief.
material over close to four decades
It is possible to show it.
The mystery of his mother’s death has been covered in TV shows Cold Case and Sensing Murder.
Margaret was born in Gisborne and died at the unlicensed board house. Evidently, she had fallen from a top-of-a staircase.
Roil never met his mother; he was taken from her by the Department of Social Welfare “which was concerned a young woman estranged from her husband would not be able to care properly for her new child and his twin sister,” reported New Zealand Herald journalist David Fisher in 2005.
Also, he claims he has evidence that could indicate a reason why police should not look too closely at her death.
“I asked to have the floorboards for evidence,” says Roil.
“I still have them. The floorboards are covered in blood from one side to the other. In the show, you will find floorboards. I’m also bringing back blown-up evidence. It has nothing to do with the dresses or models, but it is the centrepiece.”