Tell us about how The Shelter goes beyond being just a fashion retailer and has become a lifestyle destination?
The Shelter is about not only the products it stocks it is also about the personalities of our clients and our designers that shape the environment. We support emerging designers in NZ including some that have previously worked with us and well as bringing international brands to our shores in a curated way unlike what you will see anywhere else. It is an environment that fosters relationships so that our lifestyle and artistic beliefs and traits align. Our clients are more like friends of The Shelter, and we love to work with them on creative pursuits Like the story and photoshoot we ran on textile and fibre artist Christine Robson on our inspirational people. https://www.theshelteronline.com/inspiration/in-focus-christine-robson
As well as fostering special relationships with our clients, we also strive to nurture our family of designers housed in The Shelter. Having a store that focuses on so many creative talents, it is important that each brand gets the opportunity to bring it’s own vision direct to the clients. Upon visiting The Shelter, you will often find one of our local designers on site. Some have arranged days when they are instore and available to talk and explain their designs to the clients. Others just them pop in to discuss things with us, or to create or unveil their latest creative vision in our window space.
The Shelter space is a flexible environment where everything is moveable allowing us to align the space to fit the function. One of our designers Lela Jacobs curated an Artist Gallery space at the back of The Shelter showing works for several months from leading New Zealand Artists. https://www.theshelteronline.com/inspiration/the-shelter-gallery-all-the-hooks-exhibition
We also recently welcomed Kevin Thorne Jewellery to our space in The Shelter, a local up and coming designer in residence. He has been known to a create a special piece for a client in a matter of hours so the client could wear it to an event that evening – hugely talented and a genuine delight to share a space with.
When you enter our world at The Shelter you can feel how we love to work and support the creative talents and we are constantly striving to create a community through our in-store and online experience and events to connect, showcase and inspire. Covid 19 has meant we’ve had to change how we connect with our Shelter family and we’re really looking forward to being able to host our community in our beautiful space often again.
Do the brands and pieces you have on offer at The Shelter reflect or mirror your own values/the values of The Shelter?
While I select the brands we represent within the Shelter, the designers themselves curate their offerings like it was their own space – showing pieces that are important to them and reflect their collection’s theme and vision. This is very important to us as it allows each brand to cement their own identity within our home. All our brands have values that reflect and align with the Shelter values, we foster creativity with our designers, we like to inspire our community and all our designers have a focus on sustainability. Our New Zealand based designers manufacture mainly in New Zealand, keeping our 4-5 local New Zealand businesses working for every piece they produce and allowing us to know our products will tread as lightly as possible on the planet.
Tell us how you navigate the tension between offering timeless pieces and seasonal pieces at The Shelter?
In today’s world, this tension is no longer relevant as seasonality has become less important than longevity of design. You should fall in love with a piece as it suits your personality and lifestyle and purpose, not because it is summer or winter or “on trend”. When buying our international designers collection’s like Issey Miyake, Rick Owens, and Uma Wang, they will always offer transeasonal sections to their collections, as most brands nowadays span the northern and southern hemisphere. At The Shelter, we will always have an offering across all seasons. For example; we will have a curated selection of coats from the northern hemisphere and swimwear instore all at the same time. Our clients are often travelling so it’s important to us to house pieces for any occasion as well as each and every season.
What seasonal trends have surprised you this year?
I suppose in a world where sustainability is becoming such an important consideration and new synthetic fibres have been shown to be harmful to the environment, it is intriguing to see the popularity of the Puffer jacket styles in all the designers collections. I understand the useability of these styles makes them popular, so I have been heartened to see so many of our designers tackling this design with sustainable options. One of our Shelter designers, Henrik Vibskov, has put sustainability at the forefront of design and was been awarded a PETA award for ‘Best Down-Free Collection’ for its range of coats with Ecodown® – a feather-free filler made from recycled plastic bottles.
https://www.theshelteronline.com/inspiration/designer-profile-henrik-vibskov
What standout pieces do you currently have on offer in store?
The latest pieces from Issey Miyake 132 5. have just landed in store. Known for his pleats and folded techniques, this collection is not only outstanding as his pieces are timeless intellectual design, but made entirely to be worn in a 3 dimensional form on the body, and can fold with origami precision into a 2D completely flat design. The perfect piece for wardrobe economy and any travel suitcase. You must see this in real life to understand the cleverness of this design and I personally feel as he is such an iconic designer. Everyone needs to aspire to have a piece of Issey Miyake in their forever wardrobe.
https://www.theshelteronline.com/designers/issey-miyake-132-5
