All Blacks, undies, and flirtation at New Zealand Fashion Week

Rugby was traded for runway at New Zealand Fashion Week on Thursday afternoon as members of the All Blacks once again teamed up with Jockey to show off their knickers.

The only scrum happening amongst the ruffles, heels, and neons of Auckland’s fashion crowd was the line to see the show itself, a famous highlight of Fashion Week.

This year the crowd seats are less full, making it a bit easier to squeeze through the thin rows to catch a glimpse of the catwalk.

Jockey’s fashion week draw card is, as always, it’s connection with the All Blacks, and there are three walking this year’s show.

For the those more sports-minded than style, don’t worry, not a second of Rugby World Cup training has been wasted as the players posing in their underpants – George Bower, Sevu Reece, and Angus Ta’avao – have all had to put a temporary pause on their sporting careers due to injuries.

Strutting down a minimalist set with light fixtures breaking up the runway, Jockey’s models delivered flirtation and fun with playful winks and kisses to the crowd, some more willing to play up the crowd’s affections than others.

Reece, Bower, and Ta’avao take the stage as Scribes’ Not Many (in the words of a 1News cameraman, “the greatest New Zealand song of all time”) plays – Reece looking shy and hunched as he throws nervous looks to the crowd, while Bower and Ta’avao play it up.

Black Ferns Amy du Plessis and Alana Bremner also took to the runway, flashing sweet smiles and confident poses.

Despite the celebrity status of the show’s sportspeople, the real stars proved to be, for want of a better word, the ‘regular’ models: the model who spun her wheelchair in a perfect flourish, an older woman lifted off her feet into the chest of a young man, the display of all bodies, because even though some of us are less willing to model than others, but we’ve all been in our undies.

When the show wraps, with a very loud “shush!” heard from backstage, the models reenter to cheers and applause – until next time, when perhaps the Webb Ellis cup can be dressed up in knickers and paraded down the runway as well.