History in the making

Helen and Chris Cherry. Photo / Supplied

Chris and Helen Cherry have been vital figures in New Zealand fashion design and retail for three decades. The work they have done over that time has strongly influenced high-casual and sophisticated dress modes in New Zealand.

It is not only customer tastes the Cherrys have shaped and stimulated. A new generation of designers take inspiration from their designs and sell into markets the Cherrys' work has helped build. The labels they are now best known for - Workshop Denim and Helen Cherry - are an accretion of their astute and shifting fashion sensibilities; their collections are built at the place where a response to vogue desires meets deep-rooted, enduring trend.

At Auckland's Rutherford High School, Helen formed a strong friendship with Linzi Heron, whose passion for clothing and skill at sewing fascinated her. "Linzi subscribed to the German pattern magazine Burda. I'd never come across it before. She'd use its patterns and whip up all these clothes. I thought that was really cool."

When Heron told her she was applying to study fashion at Wellington Polytechnic, Helen decided to enrol herself. Both girls applied and travelled to Wellington for interviews, but Helen was turned down because, at 16, she was deemed too young. Undeterred by the rejection, she returned to school for another year with the intention of reapplying; the second time she was armed with a clear idea of the expectations.

"I basically put together a great portfolio and concentrated on my sewing. I made a whole lot of stuff to submit, concentrated on my art and applied again. They accepted me."

Australian-born Chris entered fashion design from a completely different direction. He grew up in Melbourne and after high school went on to Swinburne University of Technology, where he studied psychology and media studies. "That wasn't really working for me and I just stumbled into the rag trade really, starting out in production and distribution."

His first job in the fashion industry was with The Clothing Company, part of the high-volume Australian fashion manufacturing company Dowd Corporation. "Believe it or not they set up their New Zealand operation in a factory on Waiheke Island."

Having agreed to come to New Zealand in 1977 for "a few weeks" to train a local man in the company's system, Chris was sent to Auckland and assigned to the company's Nelson St distribution premises and the company asked if he would stay on. "I guess they figured, correctly, that if they'd asked me to come over here for a year at that time in my life, I would have said 'No'. It was certainly a very life-changing, life-influencing decision for me. It's how I came to be in New Zealand."

Like many young designers from that time and since, Helen was drawn to Marilyn Sainty's clothes. She had discovered Sainty's garments while studying and used to regularly visit the Wellington store, The Booth, which sold them. "Marilyn was the first local designer who made clothes that I loved."

In May 1980, Chris and business partner June Robinson opened their first store, Street Life. Now uncertain about the origin of the name, Chris imagines it was probably inspired by Randy Crawford's 1979 song Street Life. "Maybe it was in my brain because street clothing was certainly a big part of our philosophy. It was the beginning, I would say, of streetwear in New Zealand.

"It was all really seat-of-the-pants stuff. A very humble birth for the company. There was never really a plan. We just bought some sewing machines and took out the lease on the store, which was about one thousand square feet. The first workroom was quite small. Initially there was just me and June, then Christine Moon joined, and it grew slowly from there."

Street Life stocked other brands - at first to supplement the label's small collections and later to provide a rich and international retail experience, something Workshop stores continue to do. They sold some New Zealand labels, including Svelt (designed by Di Jennings and Kerrie Hughes) and work by Ngila Dickson (now a prominent costume designer for film); they also imported speciality items.

After completing her course in 1980, Helen returned to Auckland to be near her family and closer to the fashion industry job market. By door-knocking local clothing businesses she secured her first job with dressmaker Anne Barlow, whose premises were across the road from Street Life. Barlow specialised in made-to-order silk crepe de chine dresses "for Remuera ladies" and, as Helen explains: "It was my job to cut them out and alter the Butterick or Vogue patterns as needed. So I learnt how to cut silk very well." Though Helen did not meet Chris at that time, she remembers that she and a Barlow colleague would have their lunch on a little balcony overlooking the street and would often spy Chris, "who spent a lot of time standing outside the shop, smoking cigarettes and looking very cool".

Helen was keen to do more creative pattern-making and, in 1980, successfully applied for an assistant pattern-maker position at Hamilton-based Elle Boutique, where Sainty had started her career in the 60s. "I had been happily working there for two or three months when they told me that they were in liquidation. So I packed up, went back to Auckland and got a job working for a company called Fidgits."

Helen then contacted Sainty to seek advice on where to go next, while secretly hoping she might need a pattern-maker. Sainty had no work to offer but knew of a position coming up at Zambesi. "So I contacted Liz Findlay and had an interview with her. She offered me the job. It was my dream job."

From the beginning of her time at Zambesi in August 1981, Helen enjoyed a rapport with Findlay. "I liked her straight away." At the time, Findlay and her husband Neville were working from their Grafton home in a room off the kitchen. It housed their machines and a cutting table.

"I'd come in every morning at breakfast time. Liz's father was living there and the kids would be getting ready for kindergarten and school. It was a real family environment and I enjoyed all of that intimacy."

After a couple of years with Zambesi, Helen was promoted to work closely with Findlay, and a new pattern-maker was employed. "I started doing all sorts of general things: assisting Liz with design, travelling with her to Japan, working in the stores, selling wholesale for them and looking after the business when they went away during school holidays."

In 1982 the Swanson St Street Life closed and Chris and Robinson opened a new store at 5 High St. They built on the retailing practices they had successfully implemented in Swanson St, stocking both local and imported merchandise. "So it wasn't just about the manufactured product. Both of our stores became these little meccas where people could come and buy things that were available in London at the time. This was a new idea in the early 80s."

The move to High St was significant - Street Life became one of the foundation stores in what is now one of our leading fashion precincts.

One of the ways Chris set Street Life apart from its rivals was through his use of fabrics printed with original designs that were commissioned or bought from the artists. He remembers one print that incorporated a tuatara and weta, designed by Ngila Dickson, which was used on T-shirts, leggings and shirts. Street Life was one of the first labels to use Kiwi icons in its designs, a practice Chris continues.

He founded the Workshop label with fellow designer Christine Moon in 1982. Although conceived as a womenswear label, two things caused a reorientation of the brand: Chris found "skinny young guys would come in and try to squeeze themselves into the jumpsuits, the army pants, the overalls and the shirts that we were making for girls"; and he was asked by his friend Nigel Richards to design menswear for his traditional menswear store, Just Men (later relaunched as Parachute). Noting an obvious demand for different, more relaxed, interesting menswear, Chris decided to cater to the requests at Workshop.

Despite the growing success of Street Life and Workshop, Chris and Robinson's partnership ended in 1984. Robinson went on to form her own childrenswear business, Big Fun.

After meeting through work, Helen and Chris became romantically involved. In 1986, Helen left Zambesi after realising her relationship with Chris had "become a little bit of a conflict of interest". For Helen, leaving Zambesi was "quite an emotional time because I'd been there from the beginning, watched the kids grow up and all that kind of stuff". In the first few months after resigning, Helen did freelance pattern-making, including some work for Trelise Cooper, before joining Chris at Street Life.

"Chris was struggling a little bit with the womenswear, so obviously it made sense for me to help him." Chris remembers: "At that point I was doing everything on my own - all the menswear and all the womenswear."

The switch from Zambesi's work practices and aesthetic to those of Street Life was not an easy one for Helen to negotiate. Now responsible for designing Street Life's womenswear, Helen was "very mindful of the fact that Street Life was an existing brand, and it was Chris'." The areas of responsibility became more clearly defined: Helen oversaw the Street Life label and Chris focused on Workshop.

While Street Life collections continued to include garments made from locally designed and screenprinted fabric, Chris began to work even more intensively with artists on aspects of his Workshop designs. In 1991, John Reynolds produced the "Doily" design for Workshop T-shirts and in 1995 he produced the "Ta ra ra boom decay" design, which protested against the nuclear bomb test in the Mururoa Atoll on September 6 that year.

Reynolds continues to collaborate with Workshop. For Spring/Summer 1995 - 96, Chris commissioned Auckland artist Luise Fong, who was managing the High St store at the time, to create prints for dresses made of the packaging fabric Tyvek; and in 1996, the Niue-born Auckland artist John Pule was asked to develop Polynesian-style border prints for Workshop's linen shirts.

Other artists and designers who have collaborated with Workshop include Dennis Blair, Te Rangitu Netana, Darryn George, Martin Poppelwell, Enuake Sirikage and Stephen Green.

Workshop Denim, a men's and women's denimwear sub-brand, was launched by Chris and Helen at the 1993 Corbans Fashion Collections, an annual showing of mainly Auckland fashion labels. The Cherrys had been asked to participate in the previous Corbans but had always declined because "it just didn't feel like us". In 1993 they agreed, on the proviso that they could select their own models and style the show themselves.

The style of this show perfectly aligned with Workshop Denim's focus on "real life" and "substance". "We used real people - customers, friends and friends of friends," Chris remembers. "We had dancers from Limbs, some fledgling models and a couple of established models. We had music made for the show. It was a remix of a Lou Reed song by Auckland-based rap group, Three the Hard Way. The whole thing just went off!"

The Street Life store closed and the Helen Cherry label launched in tandem with the September 1997 opening of a new Workshop store on the corner of High St and Vulcan Lane in central Auckland. The ground floor of the new store was designed to showcase the Helen Cherry collection.

Helen Cherry clothes are, in the designer's words, "about the quality of the fabric and the cut and fit. My silhouette is often tailored and clean; I'm not one for a lot of fuss and, while detail is important, it's subtle. As I've gotten older, sex appeal has become more important. I'm not talking about low-cut, plunging garments or tight-fitting clothes - it's a very subtle thing.

"It's about designing styles that make a woman feel confident, beautiful and ageless - it doesn't matter if she's 25 or 55."

Fabrics are "the most important thing and the starting point" for Helen's collections. The Cherrys regularly travel to Premiere Vision in Paris, one of the world's most prestigious fashion textile fairs.

Helen has a passion for silks, particularly georgettes and chiffons, which she uses extensively in her collections. "Colour is important," she notes, "but my colour palette is always quite subdued and subtle. I prefer subtler hues of a particular colour rather than primary brights and I tend to work on a colour palette of quite smoky colours."

The Cherrys continue to create clothes of diversity and design strength. Their evolution as designers has been influential in New Zealand fashion; they turned utilitarian designs into neat, urbane wardrobe staples and played a pioneering role in the use of New Zealand and Pacific icons and imagery in street and high-casual clothing. Workshop Denim's smart, dressy workwear, made from functional fabrics but with the attention to finish of formal wear, skilfully combines two often separate fashion modes; and the sexy, urbane silhouettes of Helen Cherry clothe their wearers in confidence.

* This is an edited extract from the new book New Zealand Fashion Design by Angela Lassig (Te Papa Press: $150). On sale April.