Patrick Steel organised sensational fashion events at the Auckland Museum, the Railway Station and the Regent Hotel. He made this jacket for a show at the Regent and, as was often the case in those days, there was a bit of a scrum backstage afterwards when clients claimed the runway pieces for themselves. The owner of this jacket won the race that night and bought it at the show. Even when it had passed its use by date she could not bring herself to discard it and eventually returned it to the designer. This suit encapsulates the excess of the 1980s and it was Patrick Steel, the fashion face of that decade, who copied it from an Emanuel Ungaro design. Read more about wearing the colour black in the New Zealand Fashion Museum publication Black: The history of black in fashion, society and culture in New Zealand.