What’s your favourite…

Building?

The Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark – a mid-century style gallery built into a grassy hill on the seaside.

Object?

Shoes.

Clothing designer?

Internationally Dries Van Noten, locally Juliette Hogan.

Clothing brand?

Vince, Zucca and Camilla and Marc.

Fashion project you’ve had a hand in?

A shoe designed in collaboration with Veuve Clicquot and a ‘celebration of shoes’ cocktail event we hosted with Jimmy Choo in Auckland last year.

Fashion project that isn’t yours, but you’re envious of?

I love any new ideas that surprise and delight…

What first drew you to design?

The love of shoes and wanting to wear something that was limited edition, innovative, colourful and playful on my feet.

Where does inspiration come from for you?

I design selfishly based on what I want to wear myself… but get excited about travel, music, film and requests from friends.

Do you have a design ethos/motto you abide by in your work?

Happy feet. We are designing shoes that make people happy when they are wearing them.

Do you have any creative side hustles going on outside of your line of work? If so, what?

Raising a two-year-old daughter!

How has technology impacted on your work? How do you think it will impact on it in the future?

It’s an ever-changing part of the business that is enabling us to communicate to manufacturers in eight countries, manage logistics and dispatch to over 100 stockists throughout New Zealand and Australia. It allows us to have direct access to our customers and followers through social media conversations. It’s vital to any business, and will be even more so as our traditional retail and ecommerce model shifts and develops.

Who are some of your design heroes?

Dries Van Noten, Isabel Marant, Rei Kawakubo, locally Simon James and Nat Cheshire.

Best design-related advice you ever received?

Stay true to your brand values and don’t try to be everything to everyone

What do you enjoy the most about working in this industry?

That it isn’t work for me… it’s a passion and makes every day an exciting, challenging process… I feel really lucky to have found a career that doesn’t feel like work.

How do you define New Zealand’s fashion design culture?

Innovative, sophisticated, premium quality, timeless.