Thursday, September 18, 2008

Uncross your legs Auckland - and offload your swag Bryant Park!



Following on from our series on hunky fashwranglers with eastern European backgrounds and first names ending in the letter 'o', meet New Zealand Fashion Week seating director Ricardo Simich.

While Simich's Australian counterpart Miro Kubicek comes to the fashion week seating business via a personal protection background - and a possible special forces secondment - Simich runs his own luxury brand marketing agency (ONE) which reps, among other companies, BMW and Taittinger.

But that doesn't mean Simich is a pushover.

"My Dad was Minister of Police" he told me this morning. "So I always have shiny shoes".

Simich has an interesting sideline which throws light on what is rapidly developing into another frockwriter series: designer swag.

We've been talking recently about models and the propensity for some, if not many, designers to pay models in "trade" - ie stock - as opposed to hard cash.

It seems Erin O'Connor might not be the only one who's thought of flogging her free stuff.

Simich regularly travels to New York with Maria Williams, the founder of NZ website designerexposure.com - which, according to Simich, specialises in designer swag offloaded from New York fashion editors and celebrities.

The latter get paid in cash for the swag - and Williams resells it with a markup.

Simich reports that Williams' clients include Nina Garcia from US marie claire and Project Runway, Sharon Stone and Kimberley Stewart.

Oh and Crown Princess Marie Chantal of Greece.

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