Gimme shelter Fashion industry aficionado Vicki Taylor talks three decades in the trade, finding inspiration from the Otago Rail Trail, and her stunning new store in Dunedin. WORDS JOSIE STEENHART
Feature | <strong>Magazine</strong> 39 “Dunedin has a fabulous creativity and as a city it celebrates individualism – it seeps through every aspect of the city.” think we managed to remove the last of the paint “I pots at 4:30pm on the day we opened for our launch party, so it certainly was a race to the finish line,” laughs renowned fashion maven Vicki Taylor as she recalls the final throes before throwing open the uber cool and stylish doors of her newest enterprise, The Shelter by taylor, on Dunedin’s Filleul Street. Vicki, who has worked in the New Zealand fashion industry for more than three decades, started her eponymously named label taylor in a 35m 2 space on Jervois Road in Auckland’s Ponsonby, “making my pieces out the back of the store and living upstairs”. “We had three employees by the end of my first year there, and now 24 years later I have three brands, five stores and almost 30 employees. “Taylor was founded in 1999 in that small retail space. I paced myself opening stores in between becoming a mother. In 2014 I started The Shelter – a designer concept store to showcase a curated selection of international artisanal brands alongside some of New Zealand’s best established and emerging labels.” After being asked “many times” while buying internationally for The Shelter why she wasn’t selling the taylor range in Europe, Vicki launched a northern hemisphere-specific brand, Symetria Concept. “Symetria sits in some of my favourite stores worldwide and I am humbled to say it has been in Selfridges in London in Designer Gallery 1 since 2019,” she says. “Here our New Zealand-designed and manufactured brand sits amongst the leading international designers who I’ve idolised my whole design career – Yohji Yamamoto, Dries Van Noten, Rick Owens – and we sit right beside Comme des Garçons and Junya Watanabe.” But back to the South Island, and the immensity of the final days before opening was further exacerbated by Vicki having committed to being a judge at the celebrated Hokonui Fashion Design Awards (won by young Dunedin designer Molly Marsh), which saw her spending the week prior in Gore – but the passionate fashionista clearly has no regrets about her extra busy schedule. “The Hokonuis were a special time for me. It provided a quick escape from the construction and realities of opening the new store – I got to put the paint scraper away, dress up for a black tie event and celebrate people’s incredible talents. “The awards were amazing, and becoming part of the Hokonui team who run it, who are all volunteers, was what made the event so much fun. The designers in the show certainly displayed amazing talents and I was really blown away by the level of talent and construction. “I’m really passionate about supporting emerging designers – I’m such an advocate for supporting the younger generation as they start their own labels. Seeing the level of design, especially coming through at high school level, really inspired me. I certainly could not have achieved that when I was at high school!” Like many of Dunedin’s central city retailers, Vicki has set up shop in an historic building – a former garment factory no less – which comes with equal parts character and challenges. She says initially it was the wraparound windows and “beautiful natural light that flowed in” to the space that really captured her – “those who have been to The Shelter in Auckland will understand my attraction to natural daylight”. But it wasn’t all sunshine and lollipops. “The Dunedin space had just gone through earthquake strengthening, so we had many facilities that were still not connected, such as electricity, hot water, heat, flooring etc.” Undeterred, Vicki set about transforming things according to her enviable aesthetic vision. “The rawness of this space meant I could just apply my design brain to a blank canvas,” she explains. “My Dunedin manager Sarah laughs, as after the first time we went through the very raw space I had a rough sketch of the bones of the store and how we wanted it to feel and work within half an hour.
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