Sopheak Seng

To celebrate the release of Jimmy D’s much acclaimed autumn–winter 2011 collection, Until the Light Takes Us, in stores, guests were invited to the house of cool—the Service Depot in Wellington—to view a mini-film by Oliver Rose.
   Rose, who beautifully captured the Jimmy D collection at New Zealand Fashion Week, was so inspired that he approached designer James Dobson to take it one step further and create a film (shown below) that explored the themes of the collection.
   The film opens to a black spinning earth and a lone model (the hottest face of season Elena Zubielevitch, of Red Eleven) stalking a barren land swathed in gossamer fine Jimmy D silks.
   Deeply dark and highly emotive, Jimmy D’s goth girl inhabits an dreamscape world of black metal imagery (which features as prints on silks Ts and dress in the collection), creation theories and alchemy.
   Exploring the use of light versus dark, strength versus fragility and the effortlessly cool edge that is such a signature of Dobson, Rose managed to beautifully encapsulate the feeling of the collection into his video.
   The evening was also a great chance to catch-up with Wellington-born Dobson as he chatted more about the collection and explained more of his ideas.
   This was one of my favourite collections at Fashion Week, and it was great to see the pieces up close and fall in love with them once again. As always, a monochromatic palette of black and white dominated the collection. Beautifully cut silks were draped, twisted or printed and each piece could be worn a multitude of ways, while brushed cotton was cut into a great hoodie with a looped scarf.
   Dobson described returning to Wellington as ‘coming home,’ revisiting familiar haunts such as Felix.
   He had studied at Massey University in Wellington, though in the photography department. He believes that his creativity could well stem from his willingness to experiment.
   The evening was also an opportunity to closely inspect the Meadowlark body jewellery that was created specially for the collection. Beautifully crafted leather harnesses and tops were even more exquisite up-close. A must-have purchase for the winter to add to your jewellery box will be one of the specially crafted rubber pieces created for the Jimmy D label.
   Goody bags were also a fabulous treat to end the night, featuring products from the latest range of Fudge Salon Hair Products, namely the Fudge Dry Shampoo and Fudge Matte Hed Extra.—Sopheak Seng, Fashion Editor

Until the Light Takes Us—Jimmy D A/W ’11 from Ciel PR on Vimeo

Sopheak Seng, Jack Yan