This time last year Wynn Hamlyn Crawshaw was in a coal mine in rural Australia, working as a land surveyor.
“The whole time I was there I was just in complete angst because I wanted to be doing this,” says the 25-year-old, who, today, officially launches a new womenswear label, Wynn Hamlyn.
For the past year he has been working on his debut collection. The majority of the range is 100 per cent merino and it is the only local clothing label on the shelves at Fabric, alongside international brands like Comme des Garcons, Isabel Marant Etoile and 3.1 Phillip Lim.
His first collection focuses on high-quality New Zealand-made merino knitwear, including vests, dresses, slips and cropped sweaters. Machine knitted locally, they feature hand-finished elements such as tassels and needle-felted sections. Each hand-felted strip takes approximately 2.5 hours to be completed by hand.
To complement the knitwear, Hamlyn Crawshaw — who studied fashion design alongside a land surveying degree — has also introduced delicate velvet slip dresses and tops with burnout designs. "I don't want to be in the box of a knitwear designer, I want to be a womenswear designer; those pieces add a certain aspect of femininity."
• (Left) Wynn Hamlyn needle-felted merino sweater $255, and merino knit skirt $265, (right) T-shirt short sleeve $160, and merino knit skirt $265. Available exclusively at Fabric, ph (09) 366 4528.
