From the Runway to the Airwaves: Kalang Advertising Backs PNG Fashion Week

PORT MORESBY — Papua New Guinea’s emerging fashion economy has secured a powerful new voice, with Kalang Advertising Limited announcing its inaugural partnership with PNG Fashion Week through FM100 and HOT 97FM.

The alliance places PNG Fashion Week within one of the country’s most influential broadcasting networks ahead of its 2026 program at APEC Haus on 18 and 19 September. It is a decisive moment for a platform that has spent almost a decade moving Papua New Guinean fashion from the margins into national and international view.

Under the agreement, FM100 and HOT 97FM will deliver a coordinated campaign spanning 80 radio commercials, executive and designer interviews, editorial features, digital promotion, listener competitions and live coverage from the event.

The partnership’s real significance, however, lies in geography.

Papua New Guinea is one of the world’s most culturally diverse nations, but its formidable terrain continues to shape who can access information, markets and opportunity. Mountain ranges, scattered islands and limited transport infrastructure can place communities beyond the reach of conventional campaigns. Radio has the singular capacity to cross those boundaries.

Through FM100’s broad professional and national audience and HOT 97FM’s strong youth and contemporary following, PNG Fashion Week will enter homes, workplaces, public transport and communities far removed from the capital’s runway.

For PNG Fashion Week Founder and Managing Director Philma Kelegai, that reach carries an important responsibility.

“Somewhere in Papua New Guinea is a gifted young person who has never considered that creativity could become a profession. Somewhere else is a woman whose ability to sew could become her financial independence. They may never stand inside APEC Haus, but they should still be able to hear that this industry exists—and that there is a place for them within it.”

The collaboration arrives as Papua New Guinea considers how its cultural wealth can contribute more meaningfully to national development. Fashion sits at the intersection of heritage, commerce and innovation. It converts knowledge into enterprise and creates work across textiles, tailoring, design, beauty, photography, production, retail and media.

It also offers an economic proposition uniquely suited to PNG.

Creativity is not exhausted through use. It regenerates. A technique can be taught, an idea refined, a textile reimagined and a cultural narrative presented to new markets without depleting the source from which it came. With appropriate investment and protection, Papua New Guinea’s creative capital can become one of its most enduring exports.

PNG Fashion Week has already begun that work, developing local talent and creating pathways into regional and global markets. Kalang Advertising now gives that ambition national amplification.

“This is not publicity for publicity’s sake,” Ms Kelegai said. “It is the strategic use of media to enlarge an industry. Visibility creates recognition; recognition attracts investment; and investment allows talent to become enterprise.”

By placing the authority of FM100 alongside the youthful energy of HOT 97FM, Kalang Advertising is supporting more than a two-day event. It is helping reposition fashion as productive national infrastructure: a field through which Papua New Guineans can earn, employ, trade and represent their country internationally.

The partnership also signals a welcome shift in corporate engagement with the arts. Rather than treating culture as ceremonial, it recognises its commercial intelligence and its capacity to generate contemporary forms of value.

For PNG Fashion Week, the message is clear: the runway may be in Port Moresby, but the opportunity belongs to the nation.

And this September, Papua New Guinea will hear it.

Photo caption: PNG Fashion Week representative Ms Brigette Kassman with Kalang Advertising Limited representatives Ms Rickilah Wura and Mr John Toguata, following the announcement of the landmark media partnership between PNG Fashion Week, FM100 and HOT 97FM.