“My whole life I thought, ‘Don’t buy this because it doesn’t go with that’, but it actually doesn’t matter. One time I wore three colours – hot pink, orange and yellow – and went, ‘Today I’m dressed as a sunset.’ Everyone laughed, but I was like, ‘You’re going to remember it, aren’t you? How that girl turned up dressed like a sunset!’
Starting a fashion label was far from my mind growing up on my parents’ small farm in Kinohaku. I fell in love with animals early on and we all mucked in as a family. I reared a lamb every year and was feeding cattle by the time I was 10. My first career choice was a vet, but I sucked at science, so did a sports degree and an arts degree. I then managed a squash and tennis club in Cambridge before becoming a mortgage broker, which I still do today alongside Velma & Beverley.
During my teens, I helped my mum Robyn with a project about the challenges in the New Zealand wool industry and as I got older, I realised someone needed to take the bull by the horns and set up a consumer-driven product with awesome ethical and rural-based values.
I wanted to make a beautiful product from New Zealand wool. I also wanted to make New Zealand wool cool again. It was big until the eighties, then synthetic took over.
This story is from the November 30, 2020 edition of New Zealand Woman's Weekly.
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This story is from the November 30, 2020 edition of New Zealand Woman's Weekly.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
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