Fashioning a new empire
Trelise Cooper to open Wellington store
One of New Zealand’s most influential fashion designers, Dame Trelise Cooper, has pulled out of the United States market.
Following the global financial crisis in 2008, most US retailers who were buying and selling her clothes went bust.
Cooper said she lost money from that, but quickly recovered thanks to her strong customer base in New Zealand.
However, she admits she has no plans to venture back into the US.
‘‘It’s just too hard with the hemisphere differences ... and I’m more time-poor now, more than ever. The US was terrible [after the GFC]; it was so fickle and volatile and it was so hard to get money,’’ she said.
‘‘They stopped selling, stopped spending money, retailers went bust. There is no point now.’’
To recover, Cooper designed new labels to bring in revenue, which saw a lift in sales, she said.
Now, she has announced she is opening a new store in Wellington.
The store, in the former Dick Smiths building on Featherston St, will open on Saturday after Penny Barnett – a Wellington licensee of the Trelise Cooper brand – decided to become a multi-brand store.
‘‘It left, for me, a space – a hole – in Wellington and I really want our fans to have a Trelise Cooper flagship,’’ Cooper said.
Cooper had her own store in the capital in the 1980s, but closed it after about four years and took a step back from the business to focus on being a mum.
‘‘It was Penny who pulled me back into the rag trade … It was a fantastic move. I’ve been better the second time round.’’
The thing Cooper loves most about fashion is change and one of the biggest changes for her was online shopping, she said.
‘‘You can go home at night and come in in the morning and have six orders waiting for you, and you haven’t had to do anything.
‘‘In many ways, it’s great and it’s not going back – we all have to adopt it and change.’’
However, change had not been without challenges, she said.
‘‘As a wholesaler, I would sell to a retailer and the only competition was someone down the road selling different brands, but now, with shopping at home, there is much more competition in that way.
‘‘But online is now my largest retail store, and I never would have thought so.’’
In addressing recent comments about plus sizing, Cooper said most of her designs go up to size 18, with one label going up to a size 22.
‘‘We have always taken the approach that you don’t have to be thin to be fashionable.’’