The New Zealander is influencing international footwear trends one embellishment at a time. Jessica Beresford catches up with the designer in London.
Megan Stewart might look like a typical New Zealander-living-in-east-London if it weren’t for her shoes. Sitting at a poky wooden table at The Spurstowe Arms, a pub in
Stewart is the senior footwear designer at Simone Rocha, the London-based fashion brand known for its lyrical, hyper-feminine dresses that offer a modern, slightly twisted take on Victoriana. There, she’s tasked with concocting shoes to complement Rocha’s designs, from furry ballerina shoes with perspex heels to platform brogues with pearls.
Most recently, she worked on a collaboration with Crocs, taking the humble rubber clogs and turning them into platforms and sneakers embellished with clusters of crystals. They were an instant hit; a follow up collection launches next season. “I never wore a Croc until this collaboration, but now I love them – they’re so comfortable,” Stewart says.
Originally from Auckland, Stewart studied fashion design and business at Massey University in Wellington, simultaneously interning at Lucilla Gray, Trelise Cooper and Deborah Sweeney, before winning a design apprenticeship at Kate Sylvester.
After a move to New York in 2017, Stewart landed a job at Proenza Schouler, the celebrated, minimalist fashion brand founded in 2002 by designers Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez, where she worked as the associate footwear designer. There, she helped to create thong heels with puffy blue straps, knee-high leather boots and mules with marina chain straps. “It was very much a New York fashion life, go, go, go, all work all play,” says Stewart. “I learnt so much, and I thought I would be there for the rest of my life.”
In 2020, however, in the midst of the pandemic, Stewart found herself unexpectedly back in New Zealand, and back to a much slower pace of life. She used the opportunity to start her own business, producing one-off shirts made from vintage fabric. “I sourced textiles from everywhere – opshops, online sellers, people overseas,” says Stewart.
She got hooked on looking for hard-to-come-by materials and intricate handiwork. “My favourite was a type of fabric that used this technique where they would take a single piece of linen and pull out individual threads to make patterns, which were really beautiful. Or I found this crazy material decorated with coloured swans, which formed a heart, which was so outrageous but turned out to be such a nice shirt.” Stewart also collaborated with her friend, the artist Shannon Young, making white linen shirts with drawings all over them.
Through her shirts, Stewart garnered a loyal local customer base that would snap up the shirts as soon as she made them. “Every different drop that I would do would sell out, which I still can’t believe. I don’t know how I got traction, but it was amazing, and I still get sent photos of people wearing the shirts.”
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Stewart put the shirts on hold when she moved to London in 2022, but they’re still at the back of her mind. “I found a few on a trip to Whitstable, so maybe I’ll try again,” Stewart says. “I’m thinking about it, but people don’t realise how much work and consideration goes into making a shirt.”
In the meantime, Stewart’s role at Simone Rocha sees her responsible for everything from sourcing leather to prints, working with factories on product development and designing footwear for the brand’s runway shows. “I get to work directly with Simone, so it’s very personal. She’s so creative and she’s really open to my ideas, so I feel very fortunate that I can show her anything, and we can work together to create exactly what we both want and what she sees.”
Stewart’s inspiration comes from far and wide, whether looking at vintage shoes or a picture of an old chair. “We are really pushed toward design and innovation, rather than matching a trend,” she says. “Simone sends me a brief with artistic idea – and she wants something completely different to what everyone else is doing.”
Stewart says she’s slowly but surely growing into the Simone Rocha aesthetic, which is vastly unique to her previous design work. “It’s very different from my days at Proenza, which is very minimal and directional. Whereas now it’s a lot of bows and crystals. But I love it – every design is wild and amazing, and creatively fulfilling.”
However wild her designs may be, Stewart is still focused on creating shoes that people will actually wear. “As much as I care about the design, I really care about selling. I never want to design something that doesn’t sell, because there’s no point in that,” she adds. “I’m fully aware that fashion is never going to be sustainable – it’s always creating products – so I just always want to make something that’s beautiful and used, not just sitting on a shelf.”
It’s a stirring and optimistic sentiment for a designer with literal and metaphorical bells on her toes.
Jessica Beresford is a contributing fashion editor specialising in the business of fashion and luxury, and is a contributing editor for the Financial Times’ HTSI magazine.
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