A handful of local brands help decipher the real value behind where your money goes when shopping for locally designed threads.
How much is that dress in the window?
It’s easy to come up with a random number at face value. But then again consumers can often be non-plussed about
When shopping for clothes, price is often the dominant deciding factor when it comes to the choices we make.
Sometimes it’s the colour. Other times it’s the fabric. Because the difference between one black work dress and another is much more nuanced than cost. It’s the sum of several parts, and hands, along each garment’s supply chain journey.
Costing requires tact. For most designers, it’s about understanding the market. One key consideration is a designer’s expertise and training, not unlike the money spent on a good architect or engineer — there’s value in pricing expert design knowledge, whether you’re building a house from the ground up or constructing a tailored coat from scratch.
It is the cost of materials, shipping, fabrics, trims, and pattern-making. There are the production costs and the people in that chain who need to be paid a fair wage. There are costs attached to packaging, cutting, sewing, pressing, quality control, couriers, and marketing. The list is an endless roll call.
For most mass retailers like Zara or H&M, low overheads and cheap materials and labour allow these organisations to churn out a glut of poorly-made clothes destined for landfills. These are clothes produced separately to their front-facing limited edition designer capsule and sustainability collections. It’s a reality most local brands unfortunately have to compete with.
While it’s easy to turn a blind eye to the reality of the lifespan of a garment, a handful of designers stand by their pricing.
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Advertise with NZME.The ‘Senna’ dress by Knuefermann $450
“When costing the garments there is a lot of give and take to offer a collection of pieces that work together,” explains fashion designer Turet Knuefermann whose label Knuefermann launched in 2005 and is synonymous with louche dresses and resort wear, supplementing her designs with a range of exclusive imports from as far as South America and Germany. “It’s a never-ending learning curve and I try to improve all the time and offer my customers garments they will actually wear.
“The cost of bringing a design to market depends on how many are produced and how long the development of the design took,” says Knuefermann. “Design can involve a lot of thinking, research, listening and drawing on years of experience about what will work and what won’t. Then, there is an average of two weeks of sourcing materials, sampling and pattern-making until it’s right.
“There’s the cost of a production manager to factor in, material costs — fabric, thread, buttons, labels, packaging. I get my designs cut at Brooks Cutting in Avondale and sewn at Avenue Clothing in Morningside. We also take into account indirect costs — if you don’t get to see it you won’t know where to buy it. There’s marketing, art direction, styling, model, photographer and our graphic designers who bring everything together for an easy shopping experience online.”
The opportunity for a dress to be sold also relies on the people charged with making it work for customers in store, their time and expertise along with merchandising and steaming garments.
“All of these costs need to be split into the garments we bring to the store to make it all happen and be allowed to continue”, says Knuefermann, who has managed to stick to a small run of garments over the years to better serve her discerning customers. “I don’t produce many of each style and aim to create items that you can hold on to and restyle as the years go by, which is why you see very few Knuefermann garments at op shops or on sale.”
One of Knuefermann’s signature dresses, the ‘Senna’ dress, is a prime example of the brand’s affinity for languid glamour designed by Knuefermann as a freehand pattern during her pregnancy in 2016. The dress quickly became an easy wardrobe solution for clients looking for a versatile piece they could wear to multiple occasions, from black tie events to weddings.
“The straight neckline with a glimpse of shoulders has the advantage of highlighting a part of the body that doesn’t change much as women age, and I focused on accentuating this by creating a series of tops and dresses in all different lengths and widths — both cocoon-shaped and fitted — to wear solo and over white linen trousers. The neckline and sleeve has remained untweaked to this day, but I vary the body shape according to the seasons.”
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Advertise with NZME.The current black version of the dress retails for $450 and is made of a convenient crease-free polyester and spandex knit blend.
“Because of its versatility and easy-to-wash properties, this is a style that can be styled so many ways and suits so many occasions. The choice of fabric allows a flexible fit should your weight fluctuate and suits a wearer of any age. It can be worn as easily to a ball or to a sophisticated wedding, as a bridesmaid, a red carpet event, a black tie or cocktail function or a 21st.”
Knuefermann says those years of creating a signature garment through design and feedback from customers helps justify the cost.
“This style stemmed from years of experience listening to and watching women in my store and understanding what makes them feel good,” says Turet. “They are buying the time I spent pinning and draping and sewing the sample with every woman in mind as I tried it on and thought about how it felt.”
The ‘Solstice’ dress by Twenty-seven names $980
Another dress on the market that comes with a price tag worth dissecting is from Wellington-based brand Twenty-seven Names, synonymous with creating collections of dresses that work for all body types and occasions. Its new ‘Solstice’ dress, a patchwork medley of vibrant printed silk, retails for $980.
Also made in New Zealand, the dress is a limited-edition piece with long sleeves and a trapeze silhouette with multiple gathered panels, a style that works for a variety of bodies. Cut from panels of precious archival silk Yoru yarn remnants, the material is dyed before it is woven, yielding rich colours and a soft, subtle texture.
It’s a unique keepsake dress that designers Rachel Easting and Anjali Burnett say was an exercise in how to breathe new life into their own supply of surplus fabrics. Choosing three silk prints from the last several years and incorporating them into one limited edition dress is another way designers have helped temper more basic pieces with something slightly more unique.
Understandably like any collectible item, whether it’s a piece of furniture or an artwork, there’s a price to pay for exclusivity.
“I spent hours planning the cuts and how we were going to put the garment together to utilise all the prints and create something beautiful,” explains Easting.
“We only ended up having enough fabric left to cut eight dresses in this combination so they are a really limited run. One was for our wonderful stockist Brydon in Wanaka at 47 Frocks, and the other seven went to our own stores, where a number of them were being patiently waited for by customers on a waiting list.”
Long-time advocates of supporting the local manufacturing industry, the designers say it’s a choice they have made that resonates deeply with their customers. Breaking down the cost of the garment, Easting says it takes a village to ensure someone is paying top dollar for something unique that actually helps give back to the industry.
“Firstly, there is our wonderful pattern maker Sue who lives and works in Morrisville and employs two team members to run her business, who makes up the patterns from our designs,” says Easting.
“I then personally cut the sample, and send it off to Avenue Clothing in Auckland to the wonderful sample sewers Linda and Jenny. We use the sample to fit-test and photograph for our e-commerce and lookbook. The pattern is then graded by Sue and her team to our full size range, though in the case of the dress we made a limited size run due to only eight being made.”
“A marker is then made, which is a layout of all the pieces of the garments for one of our Auckland-based cutters to lay the fabric out in layered stacks according to size and cut around. In the case of this dress it was Mark at Power Cutting who did this time-consuming job! The pieces are then bundled and sent off to Avenue Clothing again to make the bulk. They take the bundles along with the trims i.e. labels, zips, buttons, binding etc. which are all sourced from New Zealand-based businesses, and deliver them to their talented sewers who work from their own homes.
“Once the garments have been sewn they are picked up and taken to a presser in Auckland, back to Avenue to swing tag and quality control (QC) and then sent down to us in Wellington where we process and dispatch to our stockists and retail stores.
“When you think of the number of New Zealand businesses that each garment passes through or supplies us with components for the finished product, and that they are each being paid a New Zealand wage for their time and work, these all add up. The sale of these dresses then goes towards paying for not just the materials and the manufacturing processes, but also the cost of running both our workroom and our three stores, and the wages of the team we employ to manage and run our business with us. I feel really proud that after 18 years in business Anj and I get to not only support ourselves in doing something that we love, but to also financially support our team and the New Zealand Fashion industry, without which we simply couldn’t do what we do. It’s a team effort, and we are all working really hard to bring each garment together.”
The ‘Rae Shirt Dress’ by Penny Sage, $620
For Auckland-based designer Kate Megaw of Penny Sage, a dress undergoes several stages of refinement before it becomes available for people to purchase, an integral component to determining the final price of a dress.
“We have always tried to have styles that have more accessible pricing but it is proving more and more challenging with the cost of everything increasing,” says Megaw.
“Our designs require incredibly skilled makers, we use quality materials and we produce on a small scale which all comes at a higher cost. We spend a lot of time in the sampling stage refining fit, testing fabrics and trialing the best way to produce a garment, we put a lot of time into every design. We make everything locally which of course comes at a higher cost but by supporting us, our customers are also supporting our local economy, they’re not just supporting one small business but a whole web of local small businesses. By understanding the care, skill and consideration that goes into each garment I hope customers can appreciate the true cost of one of our garments.”
Megaw’s ‘Rae shirt dress’ is a quintessential Penny Sage design —deceptively simple but made with quality materials in New Zealand.
“I started thinking about this dress last winter when we first saw the fabric sample, we always make things that we want in our own wardrobe, I love shirt dresses, they’re perfect for layering, they’re not restricting and you can style it in lots of different ways, I sometimes wear it as a light coat, perfect for this very warm winter.”
“Our rep from our local fabric supplier knew we would love it being 100% wool and bought it straight to us to look at, she was right! It’s so soft and lovely to wear, we ended up putting it across four styles.
At $620 for a wool dress, it’s another limited style with costs that aren’t even taken into account with the final pricing.
“This dress is a new style that we designed for this collection, we made the pattern, sampled it, refined it and kept doing this until we were happy with it” says Megaw.
“Many of the sampling costs are often not even factored into the actual garment cost, it gets counted as an overhead because we do most of it in house and like a typical owner operator I often overlook my own time. This particular style requires an incredibly skilled maker as it has a lot of details including flat fell seams; this can be done in one step on a machine for heavy-duty fabrics but a fine wool like this requires it to be done in two careful steps with a lot of handwork. The shirt dress has a lot of pieces and details and we produced a very limited quantity so the cost to cut and make is high. “
“After it’s sewn it is finished with button holes and shell buttons, we always use shell or corozo nut buttons which come at a higher cost than plastic buttons but they are essential because we think they are so much nicer! In total this particular garment passed through five different small businesses to complete it in production, that’s just to make it and doesn’t include the other businesses we are supporting to purchase the materials from.”
The ‘Mission’ dress by Moochi $430
But what about a dress designed in New Zealand but manufactured offshore?
While some local brands have remained loyal to producing and manufacturing as much as possible in New Zealand, others have made considerable investments into offshore manufacturing with reputable factories that prioritise quality control.
Local stalwart Moochi is one example of a brand trying to navigate cost-effective fashion for a wide range of New Zealand women, particularly popular for its basics and causal separates. The brand’s ‘Mission’ dress is one versatile piece that needs to work hard to justify a $430 price tag, particularly with all of its designs now combining both local and offshore manufacturing in China, depending on the best maker for a particular pattern.
The ‘Mission’ dress was manufactured in China.
Like Knuefermann and Twenty-seven Names, Moochi’s designs also involved a collective of industry specialists. Founded by husband and wife team Chris and Kellie Taylor in Mount Maunganui 25 years ago, the brand now counts 15 bricks-and-mortar stores across the country.
“First our designer will put together a range plan based on what our customers like, and how this can be pushed and innovated to reflect the season ahead,” explains the brand’s pattern maker Vicki Foggo.
“Fabrics will be chosen and tested for suitability. Fabric testing is an important step as Moochi wants to make garments that are easy to wear, easy to wash and have great longevity. We consider cost-per-wear and sustainable practices in our fabric selection.
“This will be refined into designs passed onto a pattern maker or garment tech. From here the pattern maker will assess all the details, the fabric, the components, the yield and how this will be made. We want to use an expert producer who has experience working with fabric and style to ensure we get a great outcome every time.
“Next, we will create a pattern and form instructions on how to put the garment together. We will make a marker and send it to the cutter, and a sample machinist will make up a first sample. Once received back the pattern maker and designer will fit the garment on a fit model and assess any changes needed to be made to improve the fit or refine any details. We will go through the same process to get a second sample, made to ensure this is all looking and fitting as required. This is an important step as we see the way the dress hangs and moves on the body of a real person. Once approved the pattern maker will grade that pattern to a full-size set and create a marker for the cutters. It is now ready to go out to production.”
“Here the cutters will lay out all the fabric, laying the marker on top and cutting with specialised equipment. The cutwork is then sent to the machinists to make up the garments, paying special attention to the finish and overall quality though every stage of the make. Any required finishings e.g. buttons or trim, and whether they will be applied with specialized machines or by hand.
“We then send the final dresses to specialized industry pressers who get the garment looking store-ready. It is then returned to our head office to be closely quality checked by the pattern maker and dispatch team.
“So, when you are buying the Mission Dress you are buying the expertise of a whole bunch of amazing people, as well as a carefully considered design.”
While there are many moving parts connected to the creation of locally designed fashion, sourcing good fabrics remains one of the industry’s biggest challenges and can impact the cost of a garment.
“There have been several advancements in technology with a wider variety of fabrics available than ever before,” explains Moochi’s product supply manager Juliet Christison, “and our customer understands the value of quality and durability of fabrics before investing.
“There has been an increase in the availability of sustainably sourced and environmentally conscious fabric production, reflecting a growing industry-wide commitment to environmental responsibility. We prioritise fabrics with strong sustainability credentials, for example our 100% organic cottons and linens. We consider certifications and sustainability ratings, such as GOTS (Global Organic Textile Standard) and OEKO-TEX, which often influence the cost due to the rigorous standards these fabrics must meet.”
It’s an ongoing education for consumers on the price of NZ garments
Easting agrees that creating garments designed to last comes with an ongoing responsibility to educate consumers on why garments cost as much as they do.
“When we go through the process of pattern-making, sampling and into production we are making quality decisions at every step of the way,” she says.
“We use the best quality fabrics and trims we can find, and we are always thinking of their environmental impact too. We use predominantly natural fibres — silk, cotton, viscose, wool, linen etc, and where we use anything synthetic, that fabric is always surplus stock. This means we are purchasing and using fabric that has been left over from a bigger international production run.
“We see the environmental benefit from making use of fabric which the earth’s resources have already produced, negating the waste which would otherwise occur. Over the years we’ve seen a shift in what our customers expect, what we expect of ourselves, and what we have available to us. We’ve sought out better products, organic cottons, Lenzing Eco-Vero viscose, OEKO-Tex certified fabrics, and we now work with international suppliers such as the French mill which produces our signature prints.
“As a result our collections have evolved and become more environmentally friendly, and these decisions affect the price.
“Premium materials come at a cost.”
Dan Ahwa is Viva’s fashion and creative director and a senior premium lifestyle journalist for the New Zealand Herald, specialising in fashion, luxury, arts and culture. He is also an award-winning stylist with more than 17 years of experience, and is a co-author and co-curator of The New Zealand Fashion Museum’s Moana Currents: Dressing Aotearoa Now.
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