Alexandra Owen: Climbing the ranks

Fashion designer Alexandra Owen in her Wakefield Street workroom and shop. Photo / Mark Mitchell

There are many young fashion designers in New Zealand, but few with the cerebral and quiet confidence of Alexandra Owen.

The 27-year-old launched her label only four years ago, and has quietly grown it to be where it stands today - a flagship store in Wellington, critics lauding her as one of our brightest talents, and an invitation from the organisers of New York Fashion Week to show as part of the event in February.

All of that, yet Aucklanders have largely been unable to buy a piece of Alexandra Owen, unless they happen to head elsewhere to purchase it - until now. Owen will open a pop-up store on Broadway in Newmarket from Saturday until November 29, the first time the full Alexandra Owen range will be available in Auckland.

Owen has a vision that belies than her 27 years. Rather than focusing on anything too trend-based, her designs are minimalist and intellectual, always with an architectural and tailored bent. Her label is a reflection of herself: subtle and restrained. "I'm not really into things that are loud and ostentatious," says Owen on the phone from her Wellington workroom. "Colour has never really been a big thing for me, it's always been about the shape. It has always been pared back and restrained. It's just the way I do things."

Owen launched her namesake label in 2006, a year after graduating from a fashion design course at Massey University (and half a year studying architecture). Working at iconic boutique Scotties during the day, at night she developed a range of coats, which owner Marilyn Sainty decided to sell through the stores. "Everything sort of expanded from there," says Owen. "I did a slightly bigger range the season after that and it just got bigger, and I had to branch out and sell to more people." Owen says she had always shown an interest in fashion and design, and had known for a long time what she wanted her own label to be like.

"It has always been this way; even back at high school I knew it had to be an architectural label, with a foundation based on tailoring. I knew what the aesthetic was going to be like, it was going to be a little bit brooding but very beautiful and very wearable."

It's this unshakeable confidence and steely resolve that Owen's PR Murray Bevan acknowledges as one of the things he noticed first about her.

"Alexandra is a unique girl, with no shortage of confidence and belief in what she does. Back at Air New Zealand Fashion Week in 2006, Alexandra turned up on the doorstep of my showroom with an invitation to come and see her the next day to view her collection. She'd done her research, found out who I was and what I did, and decided we were the right partner for her. From there it was an easy decision to say yes, based on her collection and where I could see she was headed. It's been fantastic to be a part of Alexandra's growth as a label since then."

This growth included a stand-out show at NZ Fashion Week last year which saw Owen's star shine even brighter, with many calling it the show of the week and applauding her for bringing a maturity and international feel to the young local fashion scene.

Because of this maturity, Owen - like so many young designers before her - has been called the "next big thing" in New Zealand fashion, but she rejects the pressure and hype such a title involves. "I'm not really into things that are based on hype and are a flash in the pan - I don't like things that are 'cool' or 'now'. I try to avoid those things as much as possible. I'm not really a cool-now person."

Owen's international feel will be put to the test in February, when she will show a new collection as part of New York Fashion Week. IMG, who organise the event, approached Owen and Bevan via email in June and expressed their interest. "The original email was extremely positive, saying they'd been tracking Alexandra's progress and that she'd been generating quite a lot of buzz among their team," says Bevan. "I called Alexandra about it that day, just to let her know and so she could put it into her thoughts for the year ahead, and she went right back to them and secured a spot at the event." IMG is being a tad secretive about it all of course - when we contacted them for a comment, all they would say is that they don't confirm designers until much closer to the event and "at this point we don't have anyone on our schedule for February". Nevertheless, it is still an important milestone for the four-year-old label - and the young New Zealand fashion scene. "The context of this is very important for a young New Zealand designer. Karen Walker is our leader in pursuing and succeeding at international fashion weeks, and she's been working hard at that for a decade. What this invitation means for Alexandra is that a similar path could now be carved out for her, with the right amount of hard work, persistence and resources," explains Bevan.

Owen's response to the news was typically composed. "I just sort of thought that they would have sent it to everyone in the world, so really not a big deal. But then Murray said that he had never been approached by anyone before, other than for Australian Fashion Week, and that we should see it as a big deal. I looked into it a bit more - we always thought that we would go offshore as soon as we could, but it wasn't going to happen in the short term. But then we started to consider, well, why can't we do this sooner?"

Owen visited New York in September to take a look at the event (NYFW happens twice a year, in February and September). "It was a little bit big and scary to be honest - it was very commercial. The tents have a McCafe at the front, and Tresemme is the sponsor - it's a bit more American than you'd expect," explains Owen. "Most designers do their shows off-site over there, and we thought instantly 'this [the tents] is not really the place for us'. We had a lot of advice from various people we met over there, media and PR, who said to do it smartly and do it from a small thing and grow it from there."

The collection that Owen will showcase in February was created in June to be shown at NZ Fashion Week, but she loved it so much she decided to save it for her New York debut. Inspired by the films of Italian director Luchino Visconti, Owen says the range is "absolutely my favourite collection ever.

"It's all very moody and dramatic. There was a particular film I was watching that was all about Italian opulence back in the day, aristocratic - it's very slightly like the Sofia Coppola Marie Antoinette - a depiction of that time, but a more embellished and slightly more modern version. There's a lot more texture, and everything's a bit more lavish than usual - but still in our subtle palette, a lot of sculpture and a lot of form."

We will have to wait until February to see that, but for now her spring/summer collection at the pop-up store will have to keep fans satisfied. That collection features beautiful pearly colours, tailoring and new silhouettes, and it's based on a book about gentlemen's tailoring. "It was like a history of British etiquette, tailoring and Savile Row, that sort of thing. I had two ideas in the back of my head: a really clean, very crisp, very pearly palette that I wanted to work with; light pearly silvers, but nothing futuristic.

"And then I had the British shapes and shirts and beautiful tailored jackets and bow ties going on in my mind as well."

•The Alexandra Owen pop-up store will be open from Saturday November 7 until Sunday November 29, Tuesday to Sunday, at 44 Broadway, Newmarket.