2025
Friday October 30, 2025
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The last week of October is PACIFIC RUNWAY week. Everyone knows this [and now so do you].
PACIFIC RUNWAY made its debut at Carriageworks on October 30, 2015, a hugely significant event not just a personal coup for its founder
…but PACIFIC RUNWAY [and Seiuli] had already made an impact when it launched in May 2012 at West Leagues Club, Campbelltown.
A meant to be a one off event was recognised as being significant by the revered Leo Tanoi, a multi-disciplinary artist and arts curator [plus ex rugby league pro player].
In 2013, Tanoi, who was working at Casula Powerhouse, invited the founder of PACIFIC RUNWAY, Jannike Seiuli, to be a part of the Pacifica Festival, held at the Casula Powerhouse, where it stayed until 2015.
In 2015 the then CEO of Carriageworks and regional art expert in Indigenous and Pacific culture Lisa Havilah invited the visionary Seiuli to hold Pacific Runway 2015 at the venue. Read more about Havilah below gallery.
1. Read; STARLIGHT on JANNIKE SEIULI here.
2. Read: Why TS34: Why Jannike Seiuli Started PACIFIC RUNWAY here [31/10]
3. Read: FLASHBACK FEATURE from Pacific Runway 2018
4. Read: Publisher’s Log: Outfits and Outstanding Memories from 2015-22 [31/10]
The legendary show may have walked its finale in 2022 but lucky Sydney got a pop-up show earlier in the month, October 5th, back at its birthplace Campbelltown as a highlight of another event [Read more about the event here on TS].
Queen Street is a fitting place name for a street runway show celebrating the platform created by local fashion royalty JANNIKE SEIULI
.. and even though the temperature reminded us that Campbelltown occasionally snows, the models and the designers turned up the heat and MC and long-term PacRun team member, Livvy Swan made sure the audience brought theirs
.. and even though the temperature reminded us that Campbelltown occasionally snows, the models and the designers turned up the heat and MC and long-term PacRun team member, Livvy Swan made sure the audience brought theirs
Pacific Runway audiences have seen this young dynamo, Mariah Alone grow up.
IG @riah_alone
IG @riah_alone
From owning the runway as a child model to designing her own collections to opening the show, singing and welcoming us to Country.
This year again her sparkly melodic tones, a mix of Fijian, Tongan, Aboriginal and Italian ancestry, welcomed us all, and of course she wore a designer who showed
[ gallery on site soon, keep checking 
]
]PACIFIC RUNWAY is a much loved symbol of Pasifika success, the audience hadn’t just gathered, they attended.
Talavou opened the show and hello, I want all the Kiekies and THAT FAN 
[ the Kupesi fan ]
[Kiekie is an ornamental girdle worn around the waist, mainly worn by women, traditionally on semiformal occasions and in our modern fusion times, as evening wear.
Stunning and stylish wearable artwork that is also cultural.]
Talavou handmake their stunning pieces, which as well as being unique, modern, cultural fusion, fashionable accessories, are representative of the designer, Elayne Tukuafu’s Tongan heritage and culture.
I have always loved this about Pacific designers, their unique way of incorporating where they have come from to show you where they’re going 
It was a treat to see many familiar and PACIFIC RUNWAY Family, faces like model Maggs Lani, and mega design names like PUBLIC ISLAND SOCIETY and E’VANA COUTURE. For a while there, when contemporary multiculturalism was trending in Sydney, these were known names.
It’s inspiring to see they, the aforementioned designers, are still creating, still following their creative calling star.
INFORMATION FOR THINKERS:
1. Havilah is from Berry, an affluent part of the South Coast but was very familiar with Western Sydney; Seiuli, and her magnetic platform, being the ex Director of Campbelltown Arts Centre and Deputy Director of Casula Powerhouse.
Havilah has had a very blessed career trajectory in the Arts, despite not being an artist. She is known for her profit making focus and for bringing people to the yard but this Kelisa didn’t need milkshakes despite being born on a dairy farm.
Havillah has a knack of spotting actual art, a good talent that can become exploitative in the wrong hands.
The wrong hands tend to have wrong feet that stand on the shoulders of the trending demographic, or indeed they use the demographic to further their gains.
Rest assured that Havilah is well respected and is looked upon as the saviour of Pacific Arts.
Here is how her career started, proving that if someone who was described in school as “disengaged and uninterested” [as per Havilah’s Wikipedia page] can go on to become one of Sydney’s ” most dynamic and hard-working cultural figures” AND the foremost expert in Indigenous and Pacific Arts and Culture.
Despite not being a Person of Colour.
Good optics though.
1. ‘While I was studying at the University of Wollongong, myself and a couple of friends established a contemporary art space called Project Contemporary Art Space. We were able to get financial support from the local council as well as support from Dion’s Bus Company who gave us the space.”
– ‘Lisa Havilah on Art, Culture and Place.’ – Nation
2. “At the age of 21, she and her then boyfriend, now husband, ceramicist Glenn Barkley, managed to find a space and get funding from a youth arts grant, Wollongong Council and BHP to create a new gallery, which they ran for four years.” – summarized by Wikipedia from an article in AFR Jan 2020
1. “I use my personality as a barometer. When people don’t like me on sight I know and I know why. So, in 2015, when I first met the CEO of C…”
This story is in PUBLISHER’S LOG: Outfits & Outstanding Memories from PACIFIC RUNWAY 2015 -2022.
2. FEATURE – Why Is It Still a White World? Despite their proven track record of mediocrity. Why is profit the proof of success? Why is a white non artist, not at all associated with culture until it became profitable, considered the expert in CULTURAL ART?
In the YEARBOOK Dec 2025.
The Mend.