Pop CultureMay 23, 2021

Never forget Kate Winslet’s shopping spree in Masterton

Senior writer

While everyone waits with bated breath for the next episode of Mare of Easttown, Alex Casey is hung up on a very different Kate Winslet episode.

It feels like you can’t go anywhere without hearing someone talk about Kate Winslet’s cop drama Mare of Easttown at the moment. “Who killed Erin?” a fellow train passenger shrieked, frantically pressing the green button while they assessed their notepad of clues. “Are you team Guy Pearce or team Evan Peters?” a barista wailed over the milk frother. “Got any vapes for sale?” a Trade Me user commented while simultaneously bidding on a giant grey snood.

While we all lose our minds waiting for the next episode of MoE to drop, there’s another Kate Winslet episode I would like to return to that is equally as thrilling and mysterious.

It was February 10, 2013. John Key was the prime minister of New Zealand, Macklemore’s ‘Same Love’ was enjoying its third week at number one in the charts, and Kate Winslet was inexplicably in the Wairarapa town of Masterton, ravenous for handkerchief hems and affordable gold lamé belts. When she graced Pagani Queen Street (not that one) with her husband Ned Rocknroll (his real name at the time), it was a true blue Kiwi media storm (four+ articles).

Many, many years have passed, but I refuse to move past this essential moment in New Zealand’s rich Winslet-based history. Why Masterton? Why Pagani? Why $300? Why was Peter Jackson there? Why me? Why anything? Who killed Erin? Let us revisit the mystery that briefly captured the nation, long before Kate Winslet was a regrowth-wielding grump with a penchant for twist-top beers and catching prowlers.

The visit

It was a sunny day, about 23 degrees, when Kate Winslet, Ned Rocknroll, Katie Jackson and Peter Jackson strolled down Masterton’s Queen Street on February 10, 2013. Stuff reported that the motive for their visit was unclear – but did note that Winslet and Rocknroll had recently married in New York. Could they have chosen New Zealand for their honeymoon? Nay, lassie. Reputable sources reported they honeymooned in Scotland at the start of 2013.

Perhaps New Zealand was their next stop to thaw out after the sub-zero temperatures of the Scottish Highlands? Perhaps they had packed so heavily for Hogmanay that they forgot their summer wares? Perhaps their good mate Peter Jackson, who owns a humble $12.8bn hobbit hole in nearby Matahiwi, had nothing but Mithril vests to lend them? Perhaps Winslet could have whipped some clothes up herself, had The Dressmaker not been two years in the future.

Perhaps… their only option was to hit the nearest shops for some fun, fast, funky fashion.

The purchases

As someone who grew up in the Wairarapa, I’ll be the first to say that the region is not famous for its fashion. Sure, these days it might be all “Trelise Cooper this” and “tweed waistcoat on a vintage bike that” but, back at the start of the 2010s, things weren’t half as haute couture. Masterton had a Farmers, it had a Warehouse, it had a Ballentynes (note the subtle spelling difference; the storied Christchurch department store this is not), it had a Pagani. If I was a Hollywood starlet under the pump for new threads, flanked by my embarrassing barefoot mate, I’d probably march straight into a Pagani too.

At some point, Jackson and Rocknroll peeled off and left the ladies to shop while they got a coffee and a green tea at Cafe Iberia (which still operates to this day). Once she was inside the store, Stuff reported that Winslet “tried a few things on” and was “perfectly friendly” to staff. She bought two cocktail dresses – one black and one poppy print – one red short-sleeved blazer, jewellery and a pair of aviator sunglasses. “She didn’t even try the sunglasses on,” shop assistant India Kawana said at the time. The bill? $300.

The locals

Perhaps my favourite part of the saga is how the locals reacted in the papers at the time. India Kawana, first on the scene as the Pagani cashier, couldn’t believe her eyes. “No way, it can’t be,” she told Stuff at the time. “This is Masterton.” In the same article, local photographer Philip Brazier noted that the whole outing was pretty low-key, with Winslet dressed “pretty casually” and Jackson attracting the most attention from the public due to his “bare feet”.

Shop assistant Kawana later lamented not getting an autograph from the star, but not all the locals were as enthused. In fact, although he had devoted much of his life to moving pictures, cinema owner Brent Goodwin wasn’t about to bloody go up and bloody bother Winslet on her shopping spree. “I would rather die than interrupt their almost anonymous visit to the town,” he told the NZ Herald. Other M-town celebrities including LadyHawke, Jemaine Clement and Ben Boyce were not approached for comment.

The fallout

Needless to say, this was the biggest thing to happen to Pagani since the invention of the statement belt. Pagani’s national manager Julia Forbes told Stuff she was happy that their “clothing ranges appeal to Kate’s eye for designer flair.” For some reason that I love and adore, stylist and soon-to-be-real-housewife Angela Stone was called upon for comment, surmising that Kate may have been motivated by the need for either a “throwaway wardrobe” or the fact that she wanted to fit in with locals.

Twitter was slightly less charitable. “Kate Winslet in Masterton, having been shopping at Pagani – next you’ll be telling me she’s eating KFC in Huntly #standardsareslipping,” tweeted one punter. “Kate Winslet just got clothes from Pagani?!? Now we don’t just share a name, but taste in scratchy, ill-fitting leisurewear,” tweeted her namesake. Others provided alternatives: “I’d have thought Kate Winslet to be more of a Max person. Isn’t Pagani all overpriced nylon formal dresses and sequinned boob tubes?”

The legacy

The 2013 Kate Winslet x Pagani collaboration remains the hugest headline to come out of the much-derided chain store, save for a small controversy in 2015 when they advertised for a “fit model/receptionist”. Sadly, the Masterton Pagani branch, described as “one of the last remaining niche fashion outlets for fashion-forward women in Wairarapa”, closed down in 2016. The site is now occupied by Beds4U, committed to bringing you comfortable, brilliant-value beds, and mattresses at the lowest prices.

Although people may now visit 120 Queen Street, Masterton, to get a good night’s sleep, let us never forget the fever dream afternoon of Kate Winslet giving us one of the greatest celebrity-in-New-Zealand-moments ever committed to print. Maybe even the best tale of her career. Titanic? Sinking ship. Heavenly Creatures? Get to hell. When it comes to epic twists and movie star budgets, Kate Winslet’s shopping spree at Pagani in Masterton is about as perfect as it gets.

Anyway, who killed Erin?

Keep going!

Karen from Finance, daring to dab on the RuPaul’s Drag Race mainstage

Pop CultureMay 22, 2021

Drag Race Down Under power rankings: A glamdickulous twist!

Sam Brooks

Contributing writer

Karen from Finance, daring to dab on the RuPaul’s Drag Race mainstage

The fourth episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race Down Under aims to shake up the competition with a shocking twist, but just reinforces the status quo.

They brought back Art Simone. They didn’t have to bring back anybody, but they brought back Art Simone, the assumed frontrunner.

The producers had three options: They could’ve have brought back Jojo Zaho, the indigenous queen who went home first, and who had a lot to offer the competition. They could’ve brought back Coco Jumbo, who perhaps wasn’t ready for the competition but was still fun onscreen.

But no, they brought back Art Simone, the second eliminated queen, and it’s kind of shitty. I’ve already gone on about Drag Race’s race problem, and I won’t harp on about it much more, but from a production standpoint, did this competition really need another white queer with a huge ego and a a bit of an attitude problem?

That’s not a rhetorical question. The answer is no.

As Elton John said, the bitch is back. (Photo: TVNZ)

Episode four brings us that dreaded Drag Race staple: the found materials challenge, where the queens have to make an outfit from trash meticulously assembled by RuPaul (as an aside, I can only imagine that Look Sharp made a killing off this episode). For well over a decade now, some queens have arrived without ever so much as glancing at a sewing machine or wrapping their manicured fists around a hot glue gun, and it shows. The found materials challenge ends up being the end of the line for a shocking number of otherwise talented queens, and it genuinely saddens me to see Anita Wigl’it, who was one of the frontrunners, go home because she wasn’t as good at making an outfit as she should have been.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about the episode is its tight focus on the workroom . The challenge is in the making of the outfits, and the episode uses this opportunity to Lay Out The Drama™. I don’t think I’ve seen two queens on Drag Race go at each other quite like Scarlet Adams and Elektra Shock do here. Scarlet (with accomplice Etcetera Etcetera) attacks Elektra repeatedly for her looks on the runway, and even calls her out on showboating last week. Elektra gets defensive, understandably so, and they throw barbs at each other throughout the episode. It makes for a dramatic, but not especially pleasant, viewing experience.

The other thing the episode provides is a good shuffle of the rankings. Etcetera Etcetera falls to the bottom for a look that doesn’t quite achieve what she thinks it does, Kita is safe for another week for a look that recalls a McDonalds playground ball pit, Maxi Shields impresses with an outfit that’s a cross between a garment bag and Vivienne Westwood, while Art Simone and Scarlet Adams give their usual high fashion, high taste looks.

Unfortunately, Karen is in the bottom for playing a character (Schapelle Corby, who has recently made her own pivot into reality TV stardom) rather than designing an outfit. She deserves some props for trying to make the best of a boogie board, but… it’s not the challenge. Thankfully, she kills with a tremendously clean lip-sync – a compliment when you’re performing along to an anondyne Dannii Minogue song ‘I Begin to Wonder’ – and remains in the competition.

Most impressively, Michelle Visage coins the word “glamdickulous”. Webster, are you there? It’s me, Sam. I’ve got an addition for you.

Onto the rankings!

ELIMINATED: Anita Wigl’it

Boo! I actually quite like this outfit – even if we’ve seen a dress made out of ripped pages on the runway multiple times – and Anita sold it. However, her approach to the lip-sync was a bit more manic than the song called for (when was the last time you associated any outpouring of emotion with a Minogue?) and it sent her home. It’s sad to see her go, because it’s so clear that the judges love her, and I hope her three episodes have made her as much of a favourite with the wider audience as they have with me.

I’ll be wigli’ng it forever, y’all.

7. Etcetera Etcetera

And all the rest, and all the rest.

I would’ve put Etcetera Etcetera in the bottom not just for this outfit – which read more $20 than 1920s – but for sheer hubris. The Drag Race producers are like Greek gods! They will punish overconfidence swiftly, because it makes for very good drama!

In saying that, Etcetera had a really lovely moment in front of the mirror, talking about what it means to be non-binary, and their relationship to their gender in and out of drag. It’s thoughtful, it’s eloquent, and once more, it’s an example of the kinds of difficult conversations and complicated topics that Drag Race is opening up to the mainstream. More of this, less hubris.

6. Karen from Finance

Look, if you put a sewing machine in front of me, I’d probably default to playing a character as well. I’m not sure that character would be Schapelle Corby, but hey. A rare misstep for the queen, only lifted up by her dabbing (as seen above) and a lip-sync that shows she’s not here to fornicate arachnids.

5. Elektra Shock

It feels like damning this queen with faint praise when the judges commend her for her look, one that sees her sliding into safe, rather than the top. It’s a fine look, and Elektra comes off well, if very defensive in this episode.

4. Kita Mean

An example of a queen selling a $50 look for $100. I love Kita Mean, and can’t wait to see her truly excel in this competition. At the moment it feels like the right challenge hasn’t come by for her – it might be a sketch challenge or some sort of promotional challenge. Also, we’re halfway through the season. Eventually the safes rise to the top or they become the bottoms.

3. Art Simone

Look, she’s great and makes for great TV. But it’s a Choice™ to bring her back, and one I don’t agree with. The look is nice! It’s pretty, it’s pink, it’s on theme. Who cares.

2. Maxi Shields

In contrast: I care deeply about Maxi Shields. She makes what had to be a cheap garment bag from The Warehouse look like couture, and she is such an effervescent presence onscreen. It’s the first time that she’s felt like a genuine contender rather than someone I just like to see onscreen.

1. Scarlet Adams

Another week for Scarlet Adams, another week where she feels like a clear frontrunner. Not only do her shorts get Michelle Visage to coin the term ‘glamdickulous’, she turns out a look that you could put on the rack with very few alterations. Is she especially nice? Not really, but there’s a reason why Miss Congeniality is never the winner of the show. This is RuPaul’s Drag Race, not RuPaul’s Kindly Nun Race. I would watch that, though.

Note: Etcetera Etcetera goes by they/them pronouns out of drag. They go by she/her and they/them in drag. From now on, these rankings will refer to her as she/her in drag, so as not to other from fellow contestants.

RuPaul’s Drag Race Down Under airs on TVNZ2 at 8:30pm on Saturdays, and drops on TVNZ on Demand earlier that night.