Spotlight : Wild Victorian -

Lindah Lepou is an award winning artist of Samoan, English and Scottish ancestry, who works across music, film, costume design and fashion. Over the last 25 years Lindah has forged a reputation for her dramatic, conceptually driven, one off garments, for which she has coined the term ‘Pacific Couture’.

She draws inspiration from the tensions implicit in her mixed lineage, and her identification as a fa’afāfine. Wild Victorian Lindah created Wild Victorian for the Bridal section of Style Pasifika in 2005 which one its category.

Following the competition, Wild Victorian was worn by two Miss New Zealands to the Miss Universe and Miss World competitions in 2005 and 2006, as their national costume. A play on the primness of Victorian fashion, the dress skims the wearer’s nipples, flouts Victorian norms, and is worn without shaping petticoats for a wild look. While utilising woven pandanus mats to make Wild Victorian, Lindah sees the garment as representing her `more introverted, contained Pākeha side', which she can only trace back to the Victorian period.