Carlson's Cool Tactics
Living in a cold climate at the bottom of the Earth, in a community of 112,000 fairly brooding, insular types, seems to spark powerful creative forces, judging by the number of top New Zealand fashion designers who hail from Dunedin. It’s the breeding ground of two of New Zealand’s best-known and most influential designers, Margie Robertson (Nom D) and Elisabeth Findlay (Zambesi), and now an up-and-comer is poised to have her garments twirled on the international catwalk.
Tanya Carlson’s label - Carlson - was born in 1997 and is now having a real impact on the Australasian market. And while she’s concentrating on her retail stores in New Zealand, she hopes to gain an opening into the lucrative US market very soon.
Her spirit is typically Kiwi. At the age of 17, she flew the coop - as most young New Zealanders do to embark on their big OE (Overseas Experience) - but her escape had a specific aim. She headed to Australia on a pre-determined mission to become a fashion designer. After two years doing a fine arts degree at the highly regarded East Sydney Technical College, followed by four years studying fashion design, she did what most Kiwis ultimately end up doing - she came home.
‘But I cried!’ she laughs. ‘I rang Sydney every week to find out what was going on there.’
Carlson then threw herself into her work, doing private tailoring and making one-off pieces for clients. That work became the backbone of her business and her name spread through word of mouth. Her business has now grown to see her stocked in nine Australian stores, with her own two retail stores in New Zealand, and other stores stocking her label. In May 2001, she appeared at the Mercedes Australian Fashion Week with her Summer 2001-2 show entitled ‘Rise of the Coloured Empires’, a name taken from a book referenced in a volume of Emily Bronte poetry.
The irony of the name is not lost on the eternally-befitted-in-black Carlson, happiest in a polo-neck sweater and pants.
‘I’m a huge colourist,’ she says. ‘I absolutely love colour and I’m always inspiring everyone else to wear colour, but typically I wear black head to foot.’
Intriguingly, it's not just her use of colour that contrasts with her persona. Her down-to-earth, tomboyish, laidback nature utterly juxtaposes her fashion creations, which are flowing, feminine, often intricate and romantic.
‘I’m not in the slightest bit feminine,’ she guffaws. ‘When people meet me they go ‘oh, but you do such gorgeous girlie clothes!’ It’s just that element of dressing up I love, and the whole history and female idea of pageantry.
‘It’s the same kind of joy you get opening up an old box of your grandmother’s clothes and going ‘oooh ahh’. It’s that element of discovery. Everyone loves that!’
Her theatrical style isn’t confined to fashion. Carlson has designed the costumes for a number of major dance projects with a leading contemporary dancer, Dunedin-based Daniel Belton, and it’s a sideline opportunity she enjoys. Her sense of theatre and occasion is apparent in the way her garments are constructed, with handcrafted bodices and layering used to good effect. But Carlson also has practical reasons to employ the layered look.
‘It comes from having such inclement weather!’ she says of the southern climes. ‘We’re stuck inside and we wear layers of clothes. When you come inside and someone has a fire going, you peel them all off. It’s just the way we dress here.’
Carlson said when a representative of Vogue was in New Zealand, she commented: ‘God, I understand the New Zealand layering aspect now.’
Carlson says New Zealanders, particularly in the cooler south, aren’t particularly body-conscious because they cover up. ‘That’s the great difference between us and Australia.’
Right now her garments are being compared to European labels, particularly a Belgian influence. It’s a look that’s certainly appreciated by the local clientele.
‘People here have a real appreciation of the intellectual construction that goes into the label. New Zealanders are quite sophisticated in their taste,’ she says. ‘I think it’s because they’ve been brought up being exposed to people like [Martin] Margiela and Jean Paul Gaultier, whereas if you went to any mid-sized American town you’d never see labels like that.’
The Dunedin store Plume, for example, stocks top international designers, including Demeulemeester and Comme des Garcons, as well as its flagship New Zealand label Nom D and other local labels.
‘It’s the most amazing shop,’ says Carlson. ‘It’s here, and it’s selling out of Costume National shoes! It’s really quite odd.’
Carlson says on a recent trip to America, several people asked her where her shoes came from and she was astounded that they hadn’t heard of the Costume National fashion label (by Italian designer Ennio Capasa).
‘Americans have just started understanding Costume National,’ she says.
Another reason for New Zealanders’ appreciation of fashion style is that anyone remotely interested in fashion makes a conscious effort to keep up with international trends - perhaps to compensate for residing in an isolated part of the world. That isolation, however, is what Carlson credits with giving her the impetus to follow her dream.
‘For me the creative part of it comes from the isolation and the weather. We have brooding sensibilities down here in Dunedin, especially in winter. It’s cold, dark and gothic, and also quite insular.
‘Because of that, you have this opportunity to get a lot of work done, it’s a case of ‘head down bum up’. You’re not looking over your shoulder all the time at your peers.’
That said, her family choose to do quite the opposite in response to the environment. Carlson’s father is best described as a surfer, making the most of the Otago coast; her mother is a nurse who spends all her spare time ‘trekking and hiking everywhere’; her brother works for international environmental group Greenpeace. Little wonder then that Carlson’s mother describes her eldest daughter as a ‘hothouse flower’. Carlson’s younger sister is into multi-sport - including duathlon - but is also working for Carlson in her fashion business. Little sis can be spied riding side-saddle on Carlson’s exquisitely designed website in the Winter 2001 ‘dressage’ collection.
The garments in that collection would not be out of place in a British period-piece drama. The Victoriana meets gymkhana theme incorporated pinstripes, schooling shirts and obedience jackets. The catwalk collection’s oversized, colourful silk rosettes are reminiscent of those proudly worn by many young Kiwi girls in pony club competitions around the country.
Indeed many of Carlson’s designs reflect the essence of what it is to be a little girl in small-town New Zealand. Of imagination, outdoor experiences and dreams of being world famous.
‘I grew up on the Otago Peninsula - right out in the wilderness,’ explains Carlson. ‘There’s an element of romanticism to the way I grew up. I grew up without a television, so I did lots of reading and I’m sure that fuelled my imagination.
‘The Otago Peninsula is quite Scottish or English in its feel - lots of cliffs and old stone walls. It’s a very romantic setting with Wuthering Heights sensibilities. I think that’s pretty much where my thing comes from - all these ideas about the moors and riding your horse!’
The Otago peninsula, best known for its albatross colony and yellow-eyed penguin sanctuary, has attracted New Zealand artists from other media too. Painter Ralph Hotere and New Zealand’s greatest modern artist Colin McCahon have portrayed the landscapes in the area in which Carlson grew up. Carlson herself is a talented artist, and her painting skills have been redeployed in her design. At New Zealand’s popular fashion website FashionNZ she says: ‘All those hours spent life drawing has given me a sense of form and a real understanding of women’s bodies.’
Further information
Tanya Carlson
Phone +64 3 477 5899
140 George Street
Dunedin
Email Carlson@tanyacarlson.com
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