NEW ZEALAND FASHION MUSEUM - Key Persons
Barbara Lee began her career in fashion design when she was working as a receptionist in Christchurch when she was 20. Although she could not sew, she could draw. One day a local manufacturer, Gary Brown, came into her office and saw Barbara's sketches of "long, thin ladies" wearing dresses on her blotter. He offered to turn her sketches into a reality if she opened her own store.
In the summer of 1968, Barbara rented a shop in the White Hart Arcade on Cashel Street. Gary Brown made the garments and Barbara's friend Paula Ryan, a graphic designer and model, designed her first label - and the brand Granny's was born.
Donna Tulloch design from the Otago Polytechnic School of Design and New Zealand Fashion Museum exhibition, A Darker Eden, consisting of an all-in-one 3-dimensional Italian lace dress and cape. The pants have zippered knees and the belt is an archival piece designed by Donna in the 1970s.
Although she has sometimes worked very successfully with prints and patterns, Donna's current output is mostly monochromatic. She especially loves playing with the many shades of black.
In Auckland for New Zealand Fashion Week in 2002, world-renowned fashion commentator, author and academic Colin McDowell singled Mild-Red out for praise. He had heard of Zambesi, WORLD and Trelise Cooper before coming to New Zealand, he said in a radio interview, but Mild-Red was a complete surprise. "I saw a label earlier this week called Mild-Red. I had never heard of this label and I was absolutely bowled over by the sophistication and elegance and maturity, the control of it all, beautiful shapes, beautiful subtle colours. It could have been from most of the capitals of the world. It was really that good."
Being based in Dunedin hasn't prevented Donna Tulloch from exhibiting and selling her designs globally. She sells throughout New Zealand and Australia and is also stocked at Galerie Paris in Yokohama in Japan where, in 2008, she had both a solo and joint exhibition as part of the Triennial of Contemporary Art. The joint exhibition was a collaboration with the New Zealand sculptor Graham Bennett who created flexible, articulate spiny sculptures to accompany and be worn with and on Donna's outfits. One of Donna's pieces for this show featured The Pride of New Zealand tartan, a black, grey and white plaid designed by Dunedin bespoke tailor Ivan Coward with help from John Clark of Alliance Textiles.
Donna Tulloch in her Dunedin headquarters. Image © Donna Tulloch.
Euan was prolific as a fashion photographer throughout the next few decades. He captured on camera the creations of Christchurch's young star milliner Ailie Miller who made hats with the quaint label, Dollie Vardin. He also shot extensively for Barbara Lee, as she went on to establish her successful new shop, Panache, and for numerous other designers such as Gaye Bartlett and Brigid Brock. Significantly he also photographed for Don Hope and Paula Ryan's glossy new magazine Fashion New Zealand (later Fashion Quarterly). "He was a leader in black and white processing, with an eye well beyond the norm," recalls Paula.
Euan never planned a fashion shoot, preferring to keep things flexible. By the 1980s, he was operating out of a studio that was originally a dance-hall built by his grandfather in 1910.
Gaye's grandfather Joe Lewis came to New Zealand from England and settled in Wellington prior to World War One. A tailor by trade, he set up a group of tailoring shops and, in 1926, participated in the takeover of an existing company which became Fashions Ltd, the family firm. During World War Two, the company was requisitioned to make uniforms for the New Zealand armed forces. After the war, Joe's sons Tony and Bill joined him in the business which continued to operate from the Gas Company Building in Wellington's Courtenay Place.
Working on two ranges, Stylemaster and her own, as well as managing the Gaye Bartlett shop in the Shades, eventually took its toll. In the late 1980s, Gaye sold the lease on the latter, parted company with M G McCaul and set up a costume jewellery importing business, Gaye Bartlett Promotions. She continued with the knitwear collections she had developed as part of her range at McCaul's, and produced a small linen range under the Gaye Bartlett label.
Liz Mitchell grew up in the suburb of Glenfield on Auckland's North Shore. The eldest of four children and the only girl, she was especially close to her mother, Aileen (who died in 2012), whom she describes as a very stylish and beautiful woman. Aileen, a trained draughtswoman, created and sewed clothing for herself and 'made to order' for her daughter. "I was much better at giving her instructions than sewing," Liz laughs. Both loved knitting.
Drawing was another joy. Liz's childhood creation 'Branchy' was a slender girl bearing more than a passing resemblance to 1960s supermodel Twiggy. Detailed sketches of her outfits with specifications about fabric and accessories, printed in Liz's childish hand, are now held in the Te Papa archives, along with costume designs and a selection of Liz Mitchell garments.
‘Branchy' and her wardrobe, 1965. Image © Liz Mitchell.
From this background it would seem that Liz's career path into fashion design was set early, but at Auckland Girls' Grammar in the 1970s when feminism was in full swing, girls were encouraged into 'serious' careers. Liz was good at science and maths and strongly considered becoming a doctor.
But she was also being drawn into the vibrant world of Auckland theatre. Her good friend Kate was the daughter of Mercury theatre director, Tony Richardson. Kate and Liz ushered at the Mercury and Liz often stayed over in the city for theatre parties where they met actors, directors and playwrights. "I realised there was another side of me that needed to do something with art. The combination of literature and art attracted me. I ruled out fashion though - I didn't think it was that important."
Liz enrolled at the Elam School of Fine Arts, graduating in 1979, while also working part-time at Theatre Corporate. Fashion wasn't entirely left behind. As a student she'd made items for emerging boutiques, including punk designer Miranda Joel's Pussyfooting. She also did costume design for David Blyth's 1979 punk film, Angel Mine, and costumes for Mary-Jane O'Reilly's fledgling Limbs Dance Company.
In 1981, Liz got an Arts Council grant to study at the Australian Opera Company. Two years later she headed to London on a British Council Grant to work with designer Russell Craig, whom she'd met in Auckland. They worked on productions for the English National Opera, the Scottish Opera and Opera North, before she returned to a design job at the Mercury.
Her UK experience had taught Liz that Kiwi designers had much wider opportunities than their British counterparts. She applied for a job as a costume designer with Television New Zealand in 1984 thinking it would lead to set designing. Instead it was to open the doors to her future career in the fashion industry.
The first TVNZ assignments on the Steel Riders and Seekers series were with producer Janice Finn, who was busy developing a local soap opera. Set in the offices of a fashion magazine controlled by the wealthy Redfern dynasty, Gloss premiered in 1987. Its over-the-top fashions quickly became even more compelling for viewers than the scandalous storylines. As well as creating new garments each week, the design team led by Liz and Enid Eriksson, borrowed from local fashion houses such as Zambesi, Marilyn Sainty and Trelise Cooper. No one minded the exposure, and Liz developed networks within the fashion industry.
Liz has shown at several New Zealand Fashion Weeks and in Australia. She was guest designer at the iD Fashion Week in Dunedin in 2011. She loves the excitement and ‘pure theatre' of putting a collection on stage.
Liz put her company into voluntary liquidation in 2010. Having survived breast cancer earlier in the decade, she was able to survive this business setback by rebuilding her brand as a leaner entity. Adversity has given her inner strength and renewed creativity. It has also taken her back to her core strengths.
Liz's focus is on bespoke tailoring, working with exclusive fabrics, selling directly to local and international clients. Her skilled team is unique today in providing a personal service with exquisite tailoring and couture with an attention to detail. She also relates to women of the baby boomer generation's desire to keep contemporary and stylish.
Marilyn Sainty describes her generation as "the lucky one" that "could do anything". The products of what Marilyn chose to do - "to create what was missing" - are precise, elegant and often witty garments that both reflect and transcend the dates of their creation.
That her clothes reflect a time but are not anchored in trend, results in part from Marilyn's design drive: "I was always interested in making wearable clothes that had some strength about them, that were exaggerated in some subtle way."
In 1967, 19-year-old Marilyn left New Zealand to live in Sydney. Her sister, Val, was working in the city as a window dresser for the fashion-forward boutique chain In Shoppe. Marilyn had already begun to design and sell a few items, some of which her sister wore. In Shoppe's owner, David Sheinberg, liked one of these garments and asked Val where it came from. Marilyn applied for a job and "before I knew it, I was working there too."
Although Marilyn was hired on the strength of her design, the practice at In Shoppe was to study and reproduce the latest fashions from London and Paris, which David sourced through international contacts and regularly imported. Access to these was inspirational, but original designs by Marilyn and her colleagues were rarely put into production. Even though her own designs were not realised at In Shoppe, the experience allowed Marilyn to hone the workroom skills she had gained while working for Elle Boutique owner and designer Wendy Ganley (later Hall) in her hometown of Hamilton.
Marilyn Sainty (left) and Wendy Ganley in the Elle workroom in the 1960s. Image © Wendy Hall.
Before reaching her two-year anniversary with In Shoppe, Marilyn was approached by Sydney aquaintance Joan Mostyn, with the idea of joining her in business. Joan's plan was to open a fashion boutique that her husband would finance. Marilyn seized the opportunity and, in 1968, Starkers fashion boutique opened stocked with styles for Spring/Summer 1968-1969.
Joan managed the business side of Starkers and Marilyn, a part-owner, was sole designer. The third partner was fellow New Zealander Valerie Dean, also Marilyn's sample machinist. The business proved very successful; they repaid Joan's husband within a year.
Her occasional use of hand-printed textiles set Marilyn apart from many of her more commerical rivals. The fabric was expensive but incorporating it into her design imparted an artisanal quality - a handcrafted element that would become a defining feature of her garments.
From Sydney, in 1971, Marilyn took a work trip to Paris, London and New York. The travel was both inspiring and unsettling because it opened up new opportunities. "Feeling brave," Marilyn says "I considered going to work in Europe." This combined with the fact that her sample machinist had left work with a new baby, led to the closure of Starkers. "It just wasn't the same." After almost six years working in Sydney, Marilyn returned to New Zealand.
Her first stop was Hamilton, where she designed collections for Elle Boutique before deciding, after a year, to move to Auckland. While she was flatting in Freemans Bay and still seriously considering working overseas, Marilyn's mother became unwell. "I ended up buying a house and staying here and working. It was probably for the best. It would have been quite hard for me in England."
In 1974, aged 27, a now experienced Marilyn started out on her own. She began modestly, working from home designing and making t-shirts that featured subtle art deco-inspired prints. "I just started. There were no t-shirts around so I started making them. Then I made a dress out of t-shirt fabric. In those days I made what I like, put it in a box and sent it to different stores." These sold well through Auckland boutiques, including London Affair Boutique, which was where Marilyn met her future business partner Sonja Batt.
Over the next few years, Marilyn and Sonja developed a solid business relationship and in 1979 they transformed Sonja's Chez Bleu retail outlet into the first Scotties boutique, celebrating the launch with a fashion show at Auckland's chic Club Mirage. Initially, Marilyn's designs were supplemented with those of other Auckland designers. As the business became more organised, Marilyn felt compelled to produce a collection, which was something she "always found really stressful and difficult".
In the early 1980s, Marilyn was enamoured with Italian fashion, and Scotties' first imported label was that of Italian designer Romeo Gigli. However it wasn't long before Marilyn became intrigued and beguiled by the deconstructed and anti-conventional fashions of the cutting-edge Japanese designers. She recalls seeing Kawakubo's Comme des Gar çons clothes for the first time on a trip to Sydney with Sonja. "I couldn't believe it! I thought they were the most amazing things I'd ever seen."
It was after this that Sonja and Marilyn began to travel regularly to Japan to source fabrics and seek inspiration. Over the following decades, Marilyn's interest in international fashion and her openness to innovative and relatively new designers was reflected in the list of labels stocked by Scotties.
Sabatini White Winter 2005 on the runway at New Zealand Fashion Week, 2004. Image © Sabatini.
Sophisticated and chic, Sabatini sits in the upper end of the middle market making it an affordable luxury purchase. Their use of wool, and more recently leather, adds to its appeal, and the fact that there isn't an over supply.
In the years following Sabatini opted not to show at New Zealand Fashion Week so that it could focus its attention on Europe (though it was part of the New Zealand Woolmark 50th Anniversary show in 2015). The decision followed the label's success at Tranoi Montaigne in 2005 when Sabatini was invited by New Zealand Trade & Enterprise along with labels Zambesi, NOM*d, Sharon Ng and WORLD to the trade fair in Paris. One order, for nearly eight hundred dresses, placed by New York department store Searle, was only able to be half filled due to Sonny's limited production capacity. The label was a particular hit with Italian buyers who affectionately referred to Sabatini as "baby Missoni". Soon Sabatini had accounts all over Italy.
Sharon Ng's preferred palette has always reflected the wide skies and soft colours of the landscapes she grew up in. Born in Totara, Oamaru, she worked alongside her family in this small South Island Chinese gardening community and influences from this childhood are evident in Sharon Ng's long career in fashion design.
Her engagement with traditional skills of knitting and hand-sewing can be attributed directly to her mother and grandmother. "My grandmother couldn't read patterns but if someone would knit her a full cable she could repeat it," Sharon remembers. "She used to make up her own patterns. I still have a couple of pieces of clothing that she made for my mother as a young bride from China. They were all fully hand-stitched."
Sharon also recalls her mother having a sort of uniform for work - a plain day 'qipao'. She refers too, to old portraits of Chinese miners and farmers in western suits and waistcoats that had been washed. "They were sort of organic, rather than crisp."
These are all elements that have their echo in Sharon's urban style garments. She favours comfortable workwear, the skills of crafting, and the use of natural fibres with an organic feel to them.
Sharon Ng's winning outfit at the 1991 Benson & Hedges Fashion Design Awards. Image © Benson & Hedges Fashion Design Awards.
Although it was a garment she cared little for as a designer, nonetheless the prestige of this win boosted her profile and gave her the confidence to set up her new label, NG in 1993. With this label she engaged her passion for craft practices and for contemporary New Zealand art. As Angela Lassig writes in New Zealand Fashion Design (Te Papa Press 2010), "her small, thoughtful collections play at the boundary between fashion design and art".
This draped garment, Sharon's entry in the 1992 Benson & Hedges Fashion Design Awards, was highly commended in the avant-garde category. Photo by Alison Gilmore.
In the 1990s Sharon considered moving overseas again. She travelled to Japan in 1993 and London in 1996, where she was offered a place at Central St Martins College of Art and Design. Realising she would miss her home too much, she turned down the offer.
Over the years Sharon has collaborated with prominent artists including Ralph Hotere for the 1994 Benson & Hedges Fashion Design Awards, sculptor Bing Dawe in 1995, and four garments with Phillip Trusttum that featured at New Zealand Fashion Week in 2003.
Job Titles:
- Sales and Marketing Manager
Tony Milich started his career designing under the Anthony Milich label. Image © Tony Milich.
Tony Milich's debut fashion collection, 1971. Image © Tony Milich.
Tony was a regular entrant in the Benson & Hedges Fashion Design Awards, earning a highly commended award in the Men's Fashion category in 1973, and winning the Leisure Lifestyle Award in 1987.
Fast forward to the present day and Tony helms Sonny Elegant Knitwear, the company founded by his Croatian parents Zarko and Sonia Milich in 1953. Based in Mt Roskill, Sonny Elegant Knitwear is home to labels Sabatini, Sabatini White, Aliza, Sabatini Man and Sabatini Home. They are manufactured on knitting machines that the Milich family imported in the 1960s.
It all started with fringed wool shawls spangled with lurex thread made by Zarko and Sonia in their home on a knitting machine. War refugees, Zarko was a mining engineer in Croatia and Sonia didn't know how to knit but she learned everything she needed to know. The shawls were a hit and the family firm grew, eventually expanding into apparel and opening a small factory in Balmoral before opening in Mt Roskill.
Tony was born on 11 July 1945 in Zagreb, Croatia. He was eight years old when the family came to New Zealand in 1952. His first impression of Auckland was the view of the brand new Parnell pools from the railway carriage window "which looked summery and fabulous".
When Tony joined the family business the decision was made to invest in English-made knitting machinery. He travelled to England where he spent six months in Leicester at Wildt Mellor Bromley Ltd (where two of the three machines they purchased were made), and three months in Loughborough where the third machine was manufactured. He returned to New Zealand with a thorough understanding of what they were capable of. "I wasn't a mechanic, I was more interested in what they could do," says Tony. "Then I thought, if I'm going to get involved in serious design I need to get training."
So he returned to London where he completed a two-year certificate at the Royal College of Art specialising in knitwear. "When I came back to New Zealand, that's when I felt a fully fledged designer," Tony recalls.
Tony runs the business in partnership with his sister, Margie Milich, Sabatini's Sydney-based creative director. Margie joined the business in 1990 and they introduced the Sabatini label when they felt the Sonny brand was in need of a makeover. It has gone on to become an international success and red carpet go-to for stylists and celebrities, particularly in Australia.
The training and investment in the knitting machines, upon which Sabatini creates its original fabrics to this day, are one of the reasons for Sabatini's success. "Our design philosophy and the fact that we choose our own colours and have our own fabrics makes Sabatini unique. That gives us a point of difference," he says.
He also credits their survival by being willing to change. In 2015 the company retired its Sonny and Sonny in Love labels, and launched Sabatini Home in response to the growing market for designer homewares. "If you want to survive and keep going you have to keep changing with the times," he says. It's this attitude that has kept them competitive
The turning point for Sabatini label was what he describes as "showtime", when the label showed at the inaugural New Zealand Fashion Week in 2001. Sabatini White's collection of long-haired hippy-esque knitted coats with shag-pile collars teamed with teensy, tight knitted shorts, wowed the fashion press, including British-based New Zealand fashion editor of London's Daily Telegraph Hilary Alexander. She dashed backstage immediately following the show and later emerged with a pair of Ugg boots in her grasp. She wore them that week too!
Walter Patrick Hart was born in 1939 in Wellington - the eldest son of five children. His father was a barrister and solicitor at the New Zealand Treasury. His mother was what Walter describes as an 'haute couture' designer/dressmaker, very well known through the Wellington region - whose work intrigued her young son.
Walter wanted to be a panelbeater, but a colleague of his father's - a government vocational minister - suggested he study what was then called 'clothing'. He accordingly studied at Wellington Technical College, nights and Saturdays - no weekday course in clothing was available at that time.
Initially entering the fashion industry as an apprentice cutter/tailor at tailoring and manufacturing company Theo Wilson, Walter completed the requisite 10,000 hours over five years. He is at pains to point out that at that time, within the 10,000 hours apprentices were taught tailoring, sewing, cutting and pressing. You were a clothing manufacturing apprentice and you learnt the lot."
At the end of the apprenticeship Walter was instructed to leave the garment industry by the surgeon at Wellington Hospital, as dust fibres and dye released in the manufacturing process were problematic for his health - his nose having been thrice-broken playing rugby. "If you break your nose one more time I will refuse to fix it," said the surgeon. He made a living working from home for a while, stovepiping jeans for his friends and cropping them a little to show the new Bodgie-style fluro socks and big shoes.
In 1963 Walter joined fashion manufacturing company Fashions Limited as a cutter. He was sent to Fashions Limited's New Plymouth plant - with 180 staff plus three external factories - on the proviso that if he put in two years, he would be then be sent to London for specialised training. Fashions Limited were tired of bringing English tailors out to New Plymouth, only to find the imports didn't like the quiet town and left before the investment in them had been realised.
At 25 Walter was duly send to London to study pattern making, the new technology of fusible interfacing and computerisation - just at its beginnings in the fashion industry - for a year. He worked at a massive factory in Luton employing many Italian and West Indian immigrants, who helped to manufacture the likes of sophisticated, beautiful coats and Goray skirts (the factory exported 11,000 per week to Europe).
On Walter's return in 1966 he was tasked with applying the methods to the New Plymouth factory at Fashions Limited's plant - not an easy job given that many of the people he was training were tailors of decades' experience and seniority, fearful of losing their jobs. The tailors' fears were never realised because the new processes required their experience - fusible interfacing or not, you still had to know how to put a garment together.
With the plant operating smoothly and the new technology in place, Walter had just returned to Wellington when Fashions Limited offered him a role in Auckland at their renamed company, Classic Fashions. They had purchased the Sportscraft label from Ross & Glendining and acquired Classic Fashions and wanted Walter to help with management of the new ventures.
In 1971, after three years working at Classic Fashions in Auckland, Walter left to manage the new Fotheringay Boutique. He worked with "clever, flamboyant" Sharman Maich to design, produce and manage Fotheringay's collections. Fotheringay had been set up by Colin Kay, owner of the House of Flackson, as a boutique above his Karangahape Road shop. "It was the first real boutique shop in New Zealand," recalls Walter.
When Vamp sales manager Wayne Brown left in 1990 to start his own label, Susie Walker joined the company as sales and marketing manager. Walter quickly noticed Susie's "wonderful creative talent". Susie had been CEO of swimwear label Expozay in the USA and Australia. Walter decided to launch in Australia in 1993 but there was one glitch - a dubious lingerie manufacturer already had the Vamp brand there. Walter declined to accept the brand holder's exorbitant offer and rebranded Vamp with a label he already had acquired from Barry - Vertice.
William Lee, 1997. Image © Barbara Lee.
In 2003, Barbara's friend Pieter Stewart talked her into showing at New Zealand Fashion Week. Her appearance propelled Barbara back into the wholesale business for the first time since the 1987 stock market crash. Pieter believed there was an international market for Barbara's designs. "There was nobody else doing quite what she was doing."