In a functional, dark grey block building in the back streets of Grey Lynn, fashion designer Karen Walker sits in her office drinking ginger tea and talks about starting out.

It was 1988, she'd begun with $100 and made a shirt. The punchline of this story is that the last time she told it, to a university student, they promptly asked if she then sold the shirt online.

In those distant pre-online days, the shirt was for a friend who was in a band. Other people liked it, they asked Walker to make some for them, and so began one of New Zealand's most enduring fashion labels.

Walker's affair with fashion began long before that shirt. "My grandmother taught me how to make a circular skirt for my Barbie when I was about six and that was one of the places where my love of fashion was triggered," she says. "But it also gave me that sense of 'oh, I can make this' so for me it started as actually making the product.

... Read more »