EVERY year, Style Fiji chooses a cause. For its 15th anniversary the committee has chosen two, and both of them work quietly at the hard end of Fijian life.
The first is FJN+, Fiji Network Plus, the national network of people living with HIV, and it is working through the hardest period in its history.
HIV cases in Fiji have risen sharply over the past two years, and more than half of the people who know their status are not yet on treatment.
That last number is the one that matters, because treatment exists and it works. What keeps people away from it is more often fear than medicine.
Stigma stops people testing, stops them collecting their medication, and stops them telling anyone at all.
This is the ground FJN+ works on. Registered in 2004 and run by and for its members, it makes home visits, provides peer counselling and treatment advice, arranges transport to clinic appointments, supplies nutritional help and holds monthly member meetings.
What it offers is something no campaign can buy.
A peer counsellor who has received the same diagnosis and walked into the same clinic can reach a frightened person that a poster never will.
That is what Style Fiji guests will be funding on November 7.
“These are our neighbours, our friends and our families,” said Style Fiji committee member and fashion designer Samson Lee.
“Fashion gives us a platform and a voice, and this year we are using it for dignity, and for replacing stigma with understanding. Nobody in Fiji should be facing this alone.”
The second partner returns from last year. The Fiji Mobility Alliance, known for most of its life as the Spinal Injury Association of Fiji, was formed in 1993 by people with spinal injuries, for people with spinal injuries, and has hundreds of members nationwide.
The organisation supplies wheelchairs and other mobility devices free of charge, assesses and fits them properly, then maintains, resizes and replaces them as people’s needs change.
It also arranges carers, runs employment schemes and advocates for accessibility.
For a family in a village with no footpath and no ramp, a correctly fitted wheelchair is the difference between a room and a country.
Style Fiji guests raised approximately $F50,000 for the organisation in 2025. It returns as a partner this year because the need did not end when the gala did.
“A wheelchair is not charity, it is access,” Lee said. “It is how someone gets to work, to school, to church, to the market.”
Both partners are Fijian organisations, run by Fijians, for Fijians, and both spend their year doing work that rarely makes the front page.
On November 7, for one night, it will. With just over two weeks to go, the committee is still welcoming new partners, cash pledges of any size and donations of auction and raffle prizes. Every dollar raised on the night goes to the two charity partners, and the ambition for the anniversary year is to surpass the $F50,000 raised in 2025. Businesses wishing to purchase tickets, sponsor or pledge can contact the committee at info@style-fiji.com
Style Fiji 2026, “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” takes place on Saturday November 7 from 6pm at the Sheraton Fiji Golf & Beach Resort, Denarau Island. Tickets and tables are on sale now from $F300, information online at www.style-fiji.com, or buy in person in Suva from Samson Lee’s on Butt Street and in Nadi from Rosie Tours at Martintar.
