Wairarapa style takes wing

Those who have treated their backsides to arguably the world's most comfortable underwear will have heard the name Thunderpants.
But emerging from their brightly coloured folds are flirty skirts and feminine shirts fit for coffee dates and shopping sprees with the girls.
Intended for the classy New Zealand woman who wants to look good every day but can't stretch their budget to Kate Sylvester or Trelise Cooper, Martinborough fashion label Thrive has something for everyone in sizes eight to 24 in the shop on Kitchener St.
Designed in Martinborough and made in Carterton, Thrive's new winter collection, Come Fly With Me, created by owner Josie Bidwill and Addie Miller, is made up of aeronautical designs gleaned from vintage flying uniforms and glamorous air hostesses.
Although the new range screams years of practice and lifelong talent, fashion wasn't always it for Josie.
Designing for Josie, who won an award for screen printing two years in a row as a student at Woodford House School, was one of the few things that kept her at school.
"Someone should have said something when I was at school. No one suggested I go to polytech, because back then it wasn't really the done thing, but I would have been absolutely thrilled to have gotten some hands-on training."
Lacking career advice, Josie attempted university in Canterbury, but decided it wasn't for her and went overseas where she spent three and a half years honing her cooking skills.
On her return to New Zealand, she worked in Wellington restaurants, including The Sugar Club owned by world acclaimed Kiwi chef Peter Gordon, who she then flatted with and took off back overseas on an "insane" trip to New York.
But after working all night, partying after work, sleeping for a few hours during the day, then doing it all over again, Josie moved to Australia for a change of pace and worked as a chef feeding miners in Western Australia, eventually ending up in Port Douglas where she stayed for five years.
"That's when I decided I'd had enough of cooking and started screen printing again.
"I've always sewn and mucked around with designing, but I decided I really needed to retrain to get some extra skills so I could do it properly."
Her change of direction brought Josie back to New Zealand in her mid-thirties, this time to Nelson, where she studied fashion and textiles at Nelson Polytechnic.
It was there that Thunderpants and Thrive were born, and she registered Thunderpants as a company in 1996.
Despite her vow never to open a shop, she returned to her roots in the Wairarapa and did exactly that in Martinborough in 1998 with the help of her sister Sophie, who has been by her side ever since.
"We needed an outlet for Thunderpants, so the shop started with them and some hilarious Thrive garments, and we also had the Trelise Cooper sample range to sell.
"Sophie, who has a visual arts degree, has been here all along. We opened the shop on December 17, 1998 and closed on Christmas Day and Boxing Day and I had her repainting the floor on Boxing Day."
With Trelise Cooper clothes flying off the hangers, Josie knew she was onto a good thing, and got in touch with other top New Zealand designers, offering to sell their sale stock in her shop.
With the shop humming along, Josie then prepared to take Thrive to the next level by seeking a talented designer, sample machinist and administration staff to get Thrive's own designs into the store.
Pattern drafter and production manager Sharon Craig and designer Addie Miller joined Josie and Sophie, and they named the shop Thrive about four years ago when they began putting out two fashion ranges a year.
"We can have all the ideas in the world and all the pretty fabric in the world, but if you don't have the technical people behind you, it just doesn't work," Addie said.
To keep up with the latest trends, Josie said that although they, as most other fashion labels, work a year ahead, the industry relies on trend forecasters to keep things current.
"There are people out there in the world who have decided what you are going to be wearing in four years time.
"There are people whose entire job is to forecast fabric colours, glasses frames, lipstick colours, interior paint, shapes of vases. It's incredible."
Addie adds that while these people are effectively forecasting the trends, it could be said that they are really dictating them.
"They are deciding what's going to be available. I know people have their own styles and everything, and you can be individual, but within certain limits."
Josie said trend forecasting is a "really strange, subliminal thing that goes on" in the fashion industry.
"It's like when the colour mauve is on trend and you see it in the shops and think, I'd never be caught dead wearing mauve, but by the end of the season you're dressed head to toe in bloody mauve."
For Thrive, the inspiration for each range begins with the fabric, and this year Josie and Addie felt romance and aircraft, which lead them to research the style of New Zealand's daughter of the skies, Jean Batten.
"Often we have ideas in our heads and then we see the fabric and the ideas really start flowing from there," Addie said. "With Come Fly with Me, we started with vintage flying uniforms like those of Jean Batten and then moved towards the glam air hostess."
The Thrive team is now working on a summer range for 2012, and with the days of "hilarious" bits of clothing hidden amongst top New Zealand fashion well behind them, they are flying high on the wings of success into next season with bold colours and polka dots on summer's horizon.