Dunedin, New Zealand: The Fashion Mecca You’ve Never Heard Of

We’ve been exploring the best bits of New Zealand with our friends at Contiki.

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The flight into Dunedin subjects you to the sort of preposterous beauty totally unique to New Zealand. This landscape, the pristine rolling green of hills and gullies, the Neverland bays of islands and inlets, forces you into obscene language. You actually think, and then use, words like ‘majestic’ and ‘spectacular’.

But it isn’t just the natural beauty people are coming for. Previously blowing through NZ mainstays Auckland and Wellington, sartorial winds are now stirring the South Island city. A procession of international grade Dunedin designers and labels has fashion bloggers all around the world trying to pronounce its name.

Quartered amongst the extreme display of nature, the city is getting dressed for the annual iD Fashion Week. Even the usually modest airport has been made-over with the work of local street-style photographer Amy Parsons-King. Parsons-King’s blog Femme Hysterique shot to notoriety when she began capturing, what she calls “the unique and relatively untapped fashion culture in Dunedin”. This isn’t just boast; more successful designers come from Dunedin and the surrounding Otago region than anywhere else in New Zealand. Worthy of note considering this is basically the arse end of nowhere, topographically speaking. If New Zealand is shaped like an upside-down knee high boot, Dunedin is the hidden part over the back of the calf, where you’d sneak in a flask.

So why are there so many excellent collections from this tiny city? Is it the dramatic landscape that inspires the sui generis, or the melodramatic Gothic-revival architecture reflecting in the vast glass fronts of the new?

Probably, it’s something more practical. Both the University of Otago and Otago Polytechnic each have several dedicated fashion programs which have turned out headline labels like NOM*D, Hailwood, Liz Findlay of Zambesi, Twenty Seven Names and Company of Strangers. All strong examples of the Dunedin style, which is definitively a thing: In step with the rest of the world, Dunedin designers have this radical sense of prerogative, with a tendency towards dark colour tones, intelligent trans-seasonal layering and dexterous use of natural fibers including a penchant for possum fur  – maybe it’s because they are so far removed geographically from other ‘fashion’ cities that they have this freedom of form.

Company of Strangers designer Sara Munro is also on the committee for the iD Fashion Week, and subscribes to this inspiration source: “It’s the isolation,” she says. “We are lucky to be so isolated that we can get stuck in our own bubbles without pressures of trends around us.”

She credits Dunedin culture, too. “There’s also a great community of sharing knowledge here too, less competitive in feeling I guess. We have an amazing School of Art and School of Fashion here, and there’s constant collabs going on between them.”

Like most Dunedin labels, Sara’s Company of Strangers works with a lot of elemental materials — leather against silk and heavy silver, for instance — and I wonder if it’s the wild romance of the landscape she borrows from. But she shuts that down. “I just love the luxury of using silks and leathers together, and natural fibres are so hard wearing, so they function amazingly well for our needs. I like making soft and drapery look hard ass.”

Sara believes the high concentration of viable labels has more to do with nurture than nature. “I studied at the Otago Polytechnic School of Fashion and I would absolutely contribute my, and other Dunedin designers’ successes, to Margo Barton. She was my design tutor and has been completely dedicated to growing and educating fashion designers for many, many years. She still helps us out, she’s an amazing ongoing mentor for so many of us. I think she’s actually slightly mad or maybe just never sleeps; I don’t know where she finds the time to do all she does.”

Daniel Kwok, of solo label Kwok’s Revolution, also credits iD Fashion Week creators Otago Polytechnic for “providing an amazing learning environment for students, especially the creative side of the campus. There is no rule on what we can do and what we can design. It gives you a lot of freedom on what you want to become as a designer.”

This month’s iD Fashion Week will host a week of events strung between the two major highlights: the iD International Emerging Designer Awards, an international fashion design competition, and the iD Dunedin Fashion Show held at the iconic Dunedin Railway Station — a unique structure able to host one of the longest catwalks in the world, at 110m. In its sixteenth year, iD has continued as it began: to showcase and support emerging local designers, and to engage the community in the rich design culture that thrives in its midst.

Sincere in its intentions, iD runs to a tight break-even budget every year, and is registered as a charitable organisation. The committee Sara sits on is made up from a volunteer group of professionals, all in it for the love of the game. “It’s always difficult to get funding and support for fashion,” she says, “but I think the council has realised that without events like this, the city itself will suffer. This isn’t just about fashion, people flock from all around to spend a weekend shopping and eating out. It just makes complete sense to me that the council should support their local businesses to help grow them.”

The festival transforms the entire city into a fashion utopia; free screenings of Bill Cunningham New York looping at the public at gallery, lectures on the relationship between art and fashion, runway shows and vaulted tours through the city.

But sheltered in the arms of a long dormant volcano, Dunedin herself is the principal garment. The Peter Pan collar curves of Otago harbour is home to fur seals and sea lions. There’s a colony of the world’s most rare penguins and albatrosses who return each year from the Southern Sea just to nest in these rocks, presumably for the view. It’s one hell of a show.

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What To Do In Dunedin

Shopping:

Hit up George Street to make valuable monetary contributions to local designers, and giftwrap your personhood in some serious style.

Plume — 310 George Street: Stocks stuff like Comme De Garcons and Rick Owens, but also has an excellent range of  Zambesi, NOM*D and Jimmy D, etc.

Slick Willy’s — 323A George Street: Everything. Best collection of NZ designers going. A total must shop.

Company Of Strangers flagship store — 320 George Street: Check out C.O.S healthy sized current range of clothing a jewellery at the flagship and you’re likely to run into one of the designers on any given day.

Arting:

Gallery De Novo — 101 Stuart Street: Great contemporary art from the Otago region.

Lure Gallery — 16 Dowling Street: A swish exhibition space for contemporary Dunedin jewellery designers Blue Oyster Gallery: Lots of rad experimental art, supported by the council as a not-for-profit space.

Reading:

Get a feel for the local look by checking out Femme Hysterique and Dunedin Wears The Pants.

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iD Dunedin Fashion week runs from April 18-26; for more information, head here.

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Alice Williams was one of the original creators of and long-time editor for Melbourne print magazine, SPOOK. You can read her at Pedestrian TV, The Vine, SPOOK, Daily Life but she looks better on Twitter @awildwilliams. 

Feature image by Chris Sullivan/iD Dunedin

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Discover the real NZ with Contiki. It’s more than the land of adventure and scenery; it’s the experiences we don’t always hear about, like the music, the art, the food, the culture and the fashion. Find out what sets NZ apart from the rest of the world here.