The midnight hues of Zambesi-land

Zambesi's Neville Findlay, Elizabeth Findlay and Dayne Johnston. Photo / Getty Images

A car pulls into the Zambesi drive, its doors click open and a long-haired, long-legged waif steps into the wind and sways up the factory-lined road to nowhere.

As in the darkest of fairytales, the space where magic happens is always invisible at first.

And so Zambesi's black box of a workroom stands blank-eyed and unsignposted on Wellesley St West, undetectable to the eye and even its models - who I wave inside the doors once I, too, have managed to find the place.

With one sleep to go until Fashion Week veteran Zambesi strides yet again down the runway, the entire team is locked into this building of activity.

Inside, the workroom is an endless hall of sewing machines, stacked-up patterns, and glimmering racks of darkened garments.

Johnny Cash heralds my meeting with Zambesi matriarch Elisabeth Findlay through tinny speakers.

"Because you're mine, I walk the line," croons the Man in Black.

Coincidentally, for Findlay, black is her "absolutely most favourite colour".

"I hardly ever wear anything else. I always feel good in black," she says, wrapped in a sweater of pitch, woven in rope-like coils around her oddly-calm presence.

Kiwis are known for their tendency to don the colour of mourning, and for Zambesi black is the signature of their entire enterprise.

"There's a lot of depth in black," says Findlay.

"There's texture and I think it's very easy on the eye - you never get tired of looking at black. I don't, anyway. We probably do more black than probably anyone. I love it, what can I say?

"Why do you think we do so much black, Dayne?" Findlay calls across the room to Zambesi menswear designer Dayne Johnston.

"I just think it's part of the emotion of the brand," says Johnston, who opened the first Zambesi Man store in Newmarket last month.

Findlay's other love, of course, is fabric.

"When people think about Zambesi they often will say, 'I love your fabrics.' Often we have already got the fabrics that we're working with before we start thinking about what we're designing. So in a way the fabric kind of controls or inspires what you're going to do with it."

The Zambesi love of (preferably black) fabrics is epitomised by the endless rolls of midnight hues stacked throughout the workroom, all of which are stockpiled over the year.

Findlay talks to me in the midst of fittings for Zambesi's part in the Retrospective Show, which will celebrate ten years of New Zealand Fashion Week. Last year it was a celebration of Zambesi's thirty-year reign, which ended with a standing ovation.

Also going on are fittings for the Westpac Red Collection show, held for the bank's clients, which will showcase the best of this year's in-season summer collections.

Each outfit is meticulously styled by Findlay and her team, from pant-length and trouser-tightness to shoe-colour and boot-height. Coupled, of course, with accessories, hair and makeup.

Having been involved in Fashion Week since its inception ten years ago, Zambesi are cool enough about the process now to enjoy it each time.

"I think if you try to maintain a great sense of quality, and also stay true to your vision and what you do, I think that isn't so hard," says Findlay.

"It's just exciting - it's fun, and everybody gets something out of it."

But the journey to the runway is never hassle-free.

"Things go wrong. Fabrics don't perform sometimes or people don't perform - people make mistakes. You've got to be of that personality that it's not going to cut you off at the knees, that you can find a solution.

"So you're still learning, you're always learning."

While growing up in Dunedin, Findlay would scrounge for fabrics and make clothes with her sisters (one of whom is Nom*D designer Margarita Robertson) under the wing of their mother, a talented dressmaker and sample machinist for local designers.

Findlay and her husband, Neville, set up Zambesi in 1979, when daughter Marissa was just 18-months-old. Neville gave up his job as a design engineer to manage the business.

"We wouldn't really be here without him," says Findlay.

Zambesi shows have always been a family affair, with daughters Marissa and Sophie involved in NZFW from the start. While freelance photographer Marissa produces the show, music director Sophie is involved in the audio side of things.

"They're brilliant," says Findlay, who adds that the two stepped into the industry on their own feet.

"We always encouraged the girls to do whatever they wanted to do, to explore different ideas in the creative field."

It's perhaps testament to Zambesi's extensive contributions to Fashion Week over the years that two more shows are being produced beneath it.

In an office more clothes- than people-dominated, Marissa Findlay conducts fittings and meetings for the multiple shows she organises as a freelance producer for NZFW. While she has photographed Zambesi campaigns since school, when Pieter Stewart set up Fashion Week ten years ago Marissa was quick to get involved.

"I guess because my mum has always done shows, when NZFW started I just wanted to get involved. So I offered my services for free to Pieter when I was quite young."

In addition to producing the Zambesi show each year, Marissa holds the reins to the Designer Selection Show - a showcase for the public of the best summer fashion, with a sprinkling of the latest winter collections to close. This year Marissa is also assisting New Zealand Weddings editor Melissa Gardi in producing the Bridal Collection show.

Her busyness, she says, is a by-product of her drive for activity.

"I like being busy, and I like working with different people in a team."

Often, team members comprise of family members, with Sophie in charge of the music for both the Zambesi and Bridal shows.

While Marissa admits "it can be trying at times" working with family, she never forgets the up-sides.

"I like that after work I can go over to my sister's and we can still have fun... We all do our own thing really, but it's nice to be able to all work together."

There's a loyalty to the Zambesi clan that exists not only between family members, but extends to the entire team. Senior pattern maker Beverly Marks has been with the company for 22 years, while head sample machinist Pam Thornton has stuck around for 24.

Dayne Johnston, who has guided Zambesi Man onto an international platform since its debut at NZFW in 2003 (he was in Paris showing the collection last season), notes how the closeness of this team means they all engage in a kind of subconscious design process leading up to a show.

"It is quite close and connected," says Johnston.

"The way we work here is not to any particular rules or anything, it just evolves. We don't work thematically, we work more intuitively with the fabrics."

Findlay says working in such a way means the end product always has an element of surprise - enriching their garments with that depth of emotion, intellect and daring which has always ripped straight through NZFW.

"It's funny because we don't start off with a theme or a concept at all," she says.

"But you find that one idea triggers another, and before you know it you're creating a little bit of an idea or a concept without meaning to. It all starts to just work together and you ... start talking about it in terms of what it's representing as a feeling.

"It's a very kind of emotional journey."

Johnston notes how setting this emotion on the runway can put one in a pretty fragile place.

"You're so involved in the whole process, and you're putting yourself out there to be judged by people - I think that's pretty gruelling sometimes."

But, ultimately, Fashion Week for Zambesi means the pay-off - it's the culmination of design, creation, and styling at play onstage that Zambesi does so well.

"With every collection we work on we strive to [be able to say], 'this is the best collection that we've done'," says Johnston. "We want to be better each time."

"It's a reward for your work," Findlay adds, before shortening another trouser-leg on another mermaid-haired model.

"Otherwise it would be all work and no play."

* Zambesi Show: Tuesday, 8.30pm
* Retrospective Show: Friday, 5pm
* Westpac Red Collection: Thursday, 8.30pm
* IBM Designer Selection Show (open to the public): Thursday, 12pm, 7pm; Friday, 6.30pm, 8pm; Saturday, 1.30pm, 3.30pm.