Angela Lewis puts her name on the line

Experience has taught Angela Lewis to trust her instincts when it comes to design. Picture / Carolyn Robertson

One of the strangest things about it all is seeing her name everywhere. Because for almost three decades Angela Lewis has been quietly, successfully, working behind the scenes at some of New Zealand's best-known and most popular labels.

Now the diminutive designer has launched her eponymous label - and is already turning heads in an industry which is well known as being tough to crack. Her elegantly beautiful range has been hailed by some fashion critics as big news.

Lewis couldn't help but be in the business.

Her father, Bill, has always been in the fashion industry, manufacturing various mainstream names under licence here - Lewis remembers how during her school holidays, she would make coffee and tea during showings of the range. And for a long time her brother David had the licence to make international label Esprit in this country.

Lewis herself helped to set up Auckland designer-to-the-stars, Patrick Steel's diffusion label, PS, before she launched large American label, ABS, into New Zealand, as well as starting up her own mainstream labels, Saga and Soulo.

Now Lewis, whose company employs 25 staff, has finally decided to design a range - and use her own name on it.

"It is a little bit strange," she admits of seeing her name on her clothing range, "because I was always quite content to be behind my labels."

Lewis laughs that in an industry in which she is so well known, no one has mistaken her for some 25-year-old ingenue fresh out of fashion school.

However, she says, there is a new lease of life to her work and there are some distinct differences between the clothes she was making before and those she is producing now.

"It's more about my own expression," she explains. "And there is perhaps more of a definitive handwriting."

Additionally price point is clearly not as much of a factor - but creative design is. Lewis and her design team now get to experiment with higher priced, fancier fabrics and more complicated patterns (which take longer to make and are therefore more expensive).

The result is a very feminine first collection. It's been named "Metropolitan Goddess" and draws on memories of a childhood holiday in Greece and North Africa. The frocks involve complicated cuts, soft tailoring and elaborate draping with an occasional ruffle and the odd subtle smattering of sequins thrown in. Other similar local labels would include Trelise Cooper and State of Grace, although Lewis' looks are probably a little more urbane than costume-like.

It did take the genial designer some time to decide on an eponymous line. "There were quite a lot of people around me telling me I should do it," she says. "And then I think it was all about feeling a passion, a desire to just do something that's different. Because I think you get to a point where you just want something more. Life is all about [the right] timing."

And design, she has learned over the years, is all about trusting your gut instinct. "Go with what you feel," she advises any other designers, young or older, also starting their labels.

"Over the years you'll get all those experiences: the knocks, the breaks, the good and the bad - all that stuff that happens in any business life. But I'd say what's most important is, while remembering all the things you've done, to go with your own creative flow."

And with good responses already recorded in the Australian and New Zealand markets after her recent launch, that's one piece of good advice that has clearly begun to pay off for this savvy businesswoman-turned-designer.