Page 34 - Fiji Traveller Issue 4

SUGAROSE SHINES AT

FIJI FASHION WEEK

By Ben Wheeler She explains ‘Na I Dabedabe’ is a reference to handwoven
ceremonial mats, an important part of Fijian and Pacific cultures.
Sitting in the darkness at the final night of the Fiji Fashion Week, “You sit on it when you're coming over as a visitor and the
having already seen several designers parade their collections hosts want to pay their respects, or they want to thank you or
up, down, and all around the catwalk, I take a moment… appreciate you. It’s a Fijian way to say thank you. We also use it
I am enjoying this far more than I thought I would. Perhaps I during weddings, for a new-born baby, for death.”
am now a Fashionista? It would certainly make for an interesting As I listen to her speak, I gather that both the title and the
new hat. Metaphorically speaking, that is. Suddenly, gently, my incorporation of these traditional materials and practices in
inner monologue is interrupted. Woozy synths fill the Vodafone these pieces are, in a way, a long-awaited and much deserved
Arena and paint-spills form psychedelic swirls of colour and light kindness to herself – an acknowledgement and celebration of
on the venue’s huge electronic backdrop. how far she has come.
A complex emotional chord had been struck. Thinking back
now, it still gives me goosebumps. I decided I must know more.

DAUNIBAU BURST ONTO THE FASHION SCENE with her
first collection ‘Black V Tiri’ at Fiji Fashion Week in 2010. There
“THOSE WERE MY INTENTIONS,” Suva-based Sugarose she received the Emerging Designer of the Year Award. The
designer Atelaite Daunibau tells me as I excitedly recount the following year she presented her ‘Emotions’ line.
experience. “I wanted people to feel a certain way.” Looking back on this busy and difficult time, she explains
She conceived of the collection’s storyline, inspired by her that she felt like she was substituting feelings of grief and loss
return to Fiji Fashion Week after a nine-year absence, while with an urge “to create for the sake of being in a show; because
traveling across Viti Levu for work. When she arrived at the somebody else was telling me to be in the show.”
gig in Nadi, serendipitously, she would hear the music that tied These feelings of detachment gave rise to feelings of
everything together. inadequacy – the Imposter Syndrome that clouds so many
“We were out on the beach for a wedding,” she explains. vibrant creative minds.
“They were saying their vows, the sun was setting, it was getting “I knew how to design, I knew how to storyboard,” she says.
dark, and it was going to rain.” The soundtrack to this decidedly “But I thought to myself, ‘How can I be a real designer if I’m not
cinematic moment was ‘Innerbloom’ by Sydney-based creators going to make my garments? I cannot call myself a designer if
of sublime dance pop RÜFÜS. I’m not able to sew!’”
“I was going through some stuff,” she says and pauses. “Just Despite these doubts, another successful and celebrated
life in general.” collection, ‘Gypsy Heart’, followed in 2014. It was shortly after
“While I was watching and listening, it resonated with how I felt this, however, that her beloved grandmother passed.
at that time. I knew I wanted to call my collection ‘In Full Bloom’ She allowed herself to mourn, processing her feelings, and
and when I looked up the title of the song, it all just merged, it at the appropriate time, re-energised, Dunibau enrolled with the
married together. It was like I’d come full circle. Australia Pacific Training Coalition to study Certificate III Applied
“So, I called the collection ‘Na I Dabedabe In Full Bloom.’” Fashion.
We’re sitting in her Suva shop, its ceiling fretted with “I decided to stop messing around!” she says with a smile.
fluorescent bulbs that seem to fire directly from her mind, in a She has since graduated, and this year marks an important –
visual analogue of this moment of inspiration. and triumphant – return to Fiji Fashion Week.

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