New Zealand Fashion Week: five young local brands to watch from millennial designers shaking things up
Up-and-coming brands Georgia Alice, Wynn Hamlyn, Jarrad Godman, Rachel Mills and Ryan Turner are all run by young New Zealand-based designers who are looking to take the country, and the world, by storm
New Zealand’s fashion industry is going through something of a millennial reboot at present.
Three of the brands that will appear at New Zealand Fashion Week this year – Maggie Marilyn, Georgia Alice and Wynn Hamlyn – won’t be unveiling winter collections. They will, instead, present excerpts from the cruise 2019 collections that they have just presented in showrooms in Paris.
Eschewing the traditional New Zealander designer route of focusing first on home and Australian retailers, these globally ambitious newcomers are aiming straight for the world.
None are higher profile than 24-year-old Maggie Hewitt, the founder and designer for Maggie Marilyn which, since launching two years ago, is now stocked at over 70 international retailers including Net-a-Porter, Bergdorf Goodman and Lane Crawford.
These up-and-coming designers are appearing at the same time a new generation of New Zealand creatives are taking the world by storm, such as Grammy Award-winning singer-songwriter Lorde and choreographer Parris Goebel, who has worked with Justin Bieber, Jennifer Lopez, Nicki Minaj and Ciara. That’s adding to the energy generated by the election of 38-year-old Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, the world’s youngest female political leader.
