Four New Zealand labels, a helicopter option, an after-party with two of the country’s most in-demand DJs, and the woman who once ran sponsorship for New Zealand Fashion Week are behind Waiheke Island’s newest event on the calendar. Fashion Fiesta lands at Batch Winery on Saturday 19 September 2026, and its founder, Myken Stewart, is the first to say it isn’t Fashion Week.
“It’s meant to be a fun gig with some fashion and all the other stuff,” Stewart says.
That “other stuff” is very much the point. Fashion Fiesta is built as a hybrid – part runway show, part party, part networking event – and Myken has designed it deliberately to sit somewhere between the three.
The Batch Winery, Waiheke
From NZFW to Waiheke
Stewart isn’t new to this world. Her mother, Dame Pieter Stewart, launched New Zealand Fashion Week (NZFW), and Myken joined the event in its second year, in 2002, after a decade living overseas. Her job wasn’t the runway – it was brand management. Over 19 years at NZFW she secured a $1.5 million sponsorship budget across more than 60 sponsors, landed Air New Zealand as naming-rights partner in 2004, and ran Fashion Weekend, the public-facing side of the week, from its launch in 2010.
Along the way, Myken built the relationships that now underpin Fashion Fiesta. It was through NZFW that she first connected with David Jackson, who was running Stonyridge Vineyard on Waiheke at the time and helped bring Pamela Anderson to the island for the event during the GFC-era sponsorship push of 2009. Jackson now runs Batch Winery, the venue hosting Fashion Fiesta.
“We have the trust, respect and history,” Myken says of working with Jackson again. “We made good stuff happen for the profile and the results.”
DJ Rose Alice will be on the decks for the Fashion Fiesta afterparty.
Waiheke has always been in the background of Myken’s career, even when she wasn’t officially working there. In the early 2000s, she and her sister Gabrielle started bringing DJ decks to Stonyridge on Sunday afternoons – an informal tradition that became one of the island’s first vineyard parties, and a thread that runs straight through to Fashion Fiesta’s after-party, where Gabrielle returns to the decks alongside DJ Rose Alice.
Four labels, one runway
The Fashion Fiesta runway itself with Miss B and MC Tali runs around 30 minutes, with roughly ten looks each from four New Zealand designers – WE-AR, Augustine by Kelly Coe, SHEN Clothing and Hailwood – modelled by a cast from Red11 including Lorraine Downes.
WE-AR, based on Waiheke, brings what Stewart describes as a natural, relaxed island aesthetic to the show.
WE-AR SS26/27
SHEN Clothing brings Island Resort and Mumma Pantry’s Kiri Rose – also a Red11 model – walking as a SHEN muse.
Shen Clothing
Hailwood spans daywear through to eveningwear, and its designer Adrian Hailwood has also done the design work behind the Fashion Fiesta brand itself. He and Stewart started at NZFW in the same year, 2002, and worked together for 19 years there.
Hailwood
Augustine by Kelly Coe, a label that sold out its Fashion Weekend show within hours.
Augustine
Not Fashion Week – and not trying to be
The comparison to New Zealand Fashion Week is inevitable given Stewart’s history, but she’s drawn a clear line between the two.
NZFW was a trade-facing week built around shows, media and industry. Fashion Fiesta is designed as a single afternoon-into-evening event for the public – accessible, social and unpretentious, with fashion as one ingredient rather than the entire menu.
Tickets range from $20 to $160, with the runway show and after-party both included in the main ticket, and a standalone $30 after-party-only ticket available (early bird $20 until 10 September).
Guests can also add a Heletranz helicopter transfer to the island through iTICKET – described by Myken as “a discreet, premium transport option” that sits alongside standard entry rather than creating a separate tier of guest once on site.
“Everyone walks through the same door. Everyone gets their bubbles. Everyone experiences the fashion, music and party together,” she says.
Fashion Fiesta founder Myken Stewart.
The details
Fashion Fiesta at Batch Winery Saturday 19 September 2026, 2:00pm–6:00pm, plus after-party 129 Carsons Road, Waiheke Island
Get tickets HERE
