Becoming Kate

Inspired by a fabulously free childhood, Kate Sylvester has gone from making beaded sneakers as a teen to global success in the fashion world. Now life’s entering a new phase, as she deals with the loss of her father, watches her three sons forge their own creative paths and works to make the Kiwi fashion industry more sustainable.

- Judy Bailey

Kate Sylvester was a teenager when she realized she wanted to leave school and design clothes. Her mother’s response was telling. “Oh that’s all right… I’d have worried if you’d wanted to be an accountant.”

“Mum has always been incredibly supportive of me. When I was at school, I began chopping up sneakers and putting beads on them. She would drive me up to Orewa [north of Auckland] to sell them on the roadside over summer.” No surprises then, that Kate’s mother Toni was a creative person – a lover of the outdoors, a passionate gardener, a former teacher and stay-at-home mum.

Kate credits her parents (pictured right) with being hugely influential in her life. Her father, Ron, was a teacher and loved the outdoors. A dedicated tramper and climber, he passed that passion to his daughter. Kate and her family are working their way through the country’s Great Walks. “I had an incredible childhood. We had so much freedom.” Kate and her older brother Todd and two sisters, Holly and Joanna, grew up on Auckland’s North Shore, in Greenhithe.

Her parents bought a rundown house on a couple of acres there in the ’70s. “It had a beautiful peach orchard. The grass was over our heads on the back lawn, it was like a bombsite, covered in rubbish.”

It became a massive project. “Mum was obsessed with the garden and Dad worked alongside her. They were always working on grand projects and I grew up thinking that’s what you do in life, you make things and have projects.”