There's a tension I’ve found, between being a Creative or Artist, and a business owner. Between process and outcome. Some musings on how to dance between spaces, and work arounds I'm building into life.

 

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The other night we shared a photo of Willow Jean Prime wearing our Manawa Titī dress that was captured in connection to the Waitangi commemorations. She was standing next to Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern.

And to be honest, I wasn’t prepared and hadn’t fully anticipated the reaction or some of the backlash that we’d encounter by sharing the image. Continue reading

The summer break also gave us time to put in the research to a corner of our business that has been sitting increasingly uneasily with me.

As my interest and knowledge of gardening and composting has grown- so has my hunch that perhaps the ‘Home Compostable’ courier bags we have been using aren’t all they’re marketed to be.

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All of our paper packaging is made from 100% cotton, created from the waste generated in the production of ours and other cotton products. We visited this incredible initiative during our visit and were blown away by the way technology  and innovation is being interwoven into this recycling scheme that runs entirely off solar electricity generated onsite with a completely closed loop water system. Continue reading

It's easy to forget as consumers 1000's of km's from the point of origin, that each and every garment and item we purchase is sewn by real people, with whānau, tamariki and dreams for the future. We visited our team in India with a dream of meeting kānohi ki kānohi- face to face. To share and learn and seek connections. Continue reading

Adorning our fabrics that speak of whakapapa was the goal. But in many ways, it has become the cherry on the top, and that even without the design aspect, the integrity and whakapapa of these textiles speaks for itself. Continue reading

From a ball of cotton, not dissimilar to what you may have under your bathroom sink, to a finer and finer thread, our cotton is processed into threads after it leaves the Gin. One of the worlds most ancient skills and technologies transformed into a highly refined, industrial process that enables the production of the fabrics we clothe our bodies with each day. Continue reading

Take a look at your tshirt. At the individual threads. See how far you can follow one, what the weave looks like, smooth or textured, tight or loose. After the cotton is made into thread, it is woven on incredibly complex and efficient industrial scale looms. Our cotton fabrics are woven to our exact specifications, over and under, over and under. Aho and whenu in a dance of tension and ease, creating fabric. Continue reading

After the cotton is harvested from the field, a seed head covered in 'cotton wool', it is processed to separate the fibre from the seed at a factory called a Gin. A small but powerful process that turns a crop into a commodity, and the waste, reused to fuel the homes of those who grew it. Check out our video of our journey here to learn more. Continue reading

Understanding the whakapapa and relationships that are interwoven into the fabrics we create is at the heart of our process. So we went on a little tipi-haere to document the journey first-hand to share with you. Part one begins in the Cotton Fields of Telangana, India. Continue reading