Introduction

HOGGING THE LIMELIGHT

I have never tried making a silk purse from a sow’s ear, although I’m now officially infamous for matching a pearl and jewel encrusted, frothy cream tutu ball gown with a boar’s head.

The stage was New Zealand Fashion Week 2004 and the actress was a model, who wearing this work of art, sashayed down the runway to open my aptly named Feral Beauty show. It was my third show at Fashion Week, and after achieving little recognition from the fashion press for my previous two, I was determined to make an impression this time.

Feral Beauty explored the juxtaposition of extreme beauty with extreme ugliness, integrating the boar’s head, several stuffed birds and coloured possum fur, into glamorous, feminine garments embellished with pearls, sequins, gold and beading. I was pleased with the evocative collection and as my partner Tony and I drove from Waikato to Auckland to stage the show, he asked me what I hoped to achieve with it.

“Front page of the Herald would be great,” I shot back, tongue planted in my cheek. While I did hope for some press after the show, I certainly didn’t imagine my glib prophecy would come true.
From the moment the model wearing the boar’s head walked onto the runway to the strains of Black Panther (a dark, moody song from the Once Were Warrior’s soundtrack), it was clear that the collection had captured our guests’ attention. It also struck a chord with the national press if the coverage the following day was anything to go by. The show made the front page of the New Zealand Herald, the Dominion Post and the Waikato Times. It was also well covered by the Christchurch Press. The major television networks also picked up on the boar story, and there was even an international news story on Shanghai television! A few weeks later the show was back in the New Zealand Herald after being satirised in a Sideswipe cartoon.

But as the week went on Feral Beauty started getting attention for all the wrong reasons. A few newspapers published rumours that the model had been terrified about wearing the boar’s head, and that I had strong-armed her into doing it. There was also talk that the head stank and still had bloody remains inside, neither of which was accurate. The model had been specifically engaged for the outfit and she was incredibly excited about wearing the head, which contained a bicycle helmet that had been built up and surrounded by fibreglass.

All the same, it wasn’t long before the animal rights activists got in on the act. They slammed me for my SPCA connections and pretty much intimated that I had shot the birds out of the trees myself. I found it bizarre that so many articles were being written by journalists who had obviously not done their research and who hadn’t even bothered to call me for my viewpoint.

The old saying ‘be careful what you wish for, you might just get it’ was starting to ring true for me. It had always irked me that I wasn’t taken more seriously by the fashion press who seemed to have pigeon-holed me given my generic clothing roots. But the shock value of Feral Beauty ensured it received publicity beyond my wildest dreams and it would be months before the fuss eventually died down. I had got exactly what I wished for. The boar had hogged the limelight, yet while I thought the attention would mean everything, I actually found the reverse to be true. It was everything and nothing at the same time.

Throughout all the years I had strived for recognition, I had believed that achieving media coverage at the highest levels would align me with top artistic designers. But it didn’t, for the simple reason that I wasn’t one of them. That realisation was the defining moment of Feral Beauty for me. It highlighted the pointlessness of what I had believed to be so important. While it was true we had gained the ultimate exposure, whose lives had changed? What difference did it make to my bottom line, or to any of my philanthropic endeavours? What difference did it make to the type of person I was? The answer was that it had made no difference whatsoever.

I could never have imagined the impact Feral Beauty would have prior to the show, but it proved a massive tipping point. Even as Tony and I drove home to Hamilton straight afterwards (just as the media maelstrom was kicking into gear) I could feel a shift in my thinking. I realised that I would never be accepted by the fashion elite of New Zealand, and that I was destined to be regarded as an upper mainstream designer. But finally, I was okay with that.

Instead of wanting to be recognised for being someone I quite clearly wasn’t, I became fiercely proud of the way I had managed to brand myself as a designer while I was attached to a relatively mainstream label. And I celebrated the fact that I was financially successful in an industry in which it is notoriously difficult to succeed.

There is still reference made to ‘Annah Stretton’s pig’ in the media today, but I don’t look back on its coverage of the show as a high point of my career. My business goals and milestones, philanthropic achievements and personal triumphs mean far more to me than any media profile I might have gained.

Feral Beauty was simply added to the list of other pivotal events in my life - alongside a debate over Right Brain and Left Brain theories with my father and brother; some chance comments by a work colleague about starting my own business; a simple question that Tony asked me about my clothing; and the offer to purchase a struggling business magazine. My decision to pay it forward by involving myself in philanthropic and mentoring work has also changed my life and become increasingly important to me.

Over the last few years I have found myself in huge demand as a mentor and rarely a day goes by when I am not contacted by someone seeking help or feedback. These people come from all walks of life and levels of business, from those just starting out, through to incredibly capable and high-profile business people, and even television celebrities. I am also regularly asked to share my knowledge by speaking at an ever-increasing variety of meetings and events.

More and more often I found that these conversations and meetings would end with the same questions.

“Do you have some notes or information you could give me to take away?” or “You have so much knowledge and such a great business story, why don’t you write a book?”

Apart from a few columns I had written for Her Business magazine a few years earlier, the rest of my knowledge remained safely stored within me. While I could easily impart the appropriate sound bites to the people I was mentoring or to the groups I was speaking to, I liked the idea of creating a more permanent reference that could help a wider range of people. Writing a book felt like a natural extension of my mentoring work, in fact it was almost being driven by the people I was helping and offering advice to.

But rather than presenting the information in a business textbook format, I decided to weave it into the story of my own personal journey. As the writing process has evolved, the book has also inadvertently documented both my personal and business history, which has been an exciting spin-off for me and for the people closest to me.

It was never the object of this book to be a branding exercise for my companies. Rather, it is a book about documenting a relatively successful business life, and through the lessons I have learned and the knowledge I have gained, helping business to become stronger. With so much information squeezed into one package, I have summarised the main business points in several of the chapters for easy reference.

It is also my goal to encourage others to pay it forward, in both a mentoring and philanthropic sense, as I believe there is a great deal more that most of us could contribute in these areas.

I hope you enjoy taking the journey From Rag Trade to Mag Trade with me.

Annah

To read more, purchase the book here