The arts and culture capital is abuzz, with the World of WearableArt® (WOW®) spectacular arriving this month, and it’s of little surprise QT Wellington, the capital’s favourite quirky hotel is closely connected to this unmissable event.
QT Wellington has partnered with World of WearableArt to bring an exclusive display of original wearable art garments to the design-led hotel, not only for the duration of the WOW Awards Show season 26 September to 13 October 2019, but continuing in 2020.
With art and design being the heart and soul of the hotel, QT Wellington General Manager, Garth Solly is delighted that QT Wellington has the unique opportunity to showcase a variety of incredible WOW garments.
“QT Wellington continues to capture the heart of the capital’s creative culture by delivering a unique experience blending art, design and a dash of the absurd. We are thrilled to showcase this collection which guests and visitors to the hotel can easily view in the Long Gallery by the porte-cochere and inside our art-filled lobby area.”
The garments on display during the WOW Awards Season will be the 2014 Supreme WOW Award winner, Poly Nation by New Zealand designer Kate MacKenzie. This garment will be accompanied by Something Wicked This Way Comes by Wellington designer Eve Gilliland, Feminine Mettle by Frank Strunk III, United States, and She Only Sees With Mirrors by Rodney Leong, New Zealand.
Then from mid-October, several of US designer Julian Hartzog’s garments will move into the Long Gallery including Come Fly With Me, Like Nothing I’ve Ever Seen Before, Starship Girl and Girls in Ribbons. Hartzog’s Like Nothing I’ve Ever Seen Before won the 2017 International Design Award: Americas.
Along with the World of WearableArt exhibition, guests can also enjoy the hotel’s own art collection that honours the property’s history through the evolution of the diverse art within its walls.
“Together with the hotel’s own eccentric and eclectic art collection on display throughout the public spaces, this unique Julian Hartzog exhibition highlights the hotel’s passion and support of art and design and provides another reason for visitors and locals alike to visit QT Wellington long after the WOW Awards Show season has finished,” says Solly.
QT Wellington’s Hippopotamus Restaurant & Bar will offer twice-daily high tea sittings (12pm and 2.30pm), and in true QT style, for bookings made during the WOW Awards Show season, Executive Chef Jiwon Do will wow all guests with a quirky culinary twist – a spectacular Edible Art starter inspired by Gustav Klimt’s The Kiss.
The dish, which Do has named ‘Yellow’, features Pāmu Deer Milk panna cotta, white chocolate, saffron and sauvignon blanc paint, freeze-dried Manuka honey, turmeric caviar, kawakawa oil, crispy venison salami and bee pollen.
To top off the ultimate World of WearableArt experience in Wellington, Solly recommends a night in one of the hotel’s new Gallery 4 rooms, launched late last year, which each have their own bespoke artwork by a New Zealand artist adorning the walls.
“Just as with a WOW Awards Show, you can expect the unexpected when you stay in our Gallery 4 rooms. Guests can luxuriate in artistic brilliance complete with all the perks that people have come to know and love from a QT stay,” says Solly.
QT Wellington is proud to host WOW’s finalist designers at an exclusive function at the hotel’s Asian-inspired eating house Hot Sauce. This key event is an opportunity to congratulate designers and farewell them from Wellington before they depart to their home countries all around the world.
To find out more and to book go to www.qthotelsandresorts.com/wellington while tickets to the 2019 World of WearableArt Awards Show are on sale from worldofwearableart.com/tickets