Why Made in New Zealand Matters to Me as a Designer.

When I started designing functional mountain outerwear over 15 years ago in the Netherlands, efficiency was the driving force—everything was manufactured halfway across the world and for the lowest price. There was little room for craft or connection. It was about production, speed, and volume styles. We were designing apparel that would be produced in 40,000+ units, sold all around the world, and craft had very little to do with our process.

 At university, while studying textile design at Massey University, things were very different. It was lo-fi and craft-based, where we mixed paints, screen-printed, knitted, wove fabrics by hand, dyed fibres, and worked hands-on with materials. Somehow, I lost my making way in the capitalist machine as we often do.

Now, with Lof, I feel like I have found a balance between being a maker and commercial designer. Finding a way to marry craft into the mechanised process is what I like to push the boundaries of with local manufacturing. Designing locally allows me to have more control over the outcome and process and to connect incredibly closely with my materials, and then translate them into machine-produced small runs in the same city I live in. I feel like making in New Zealand has almost become a revolutionary act. It counters the dominant global, capitalist culture that prioritises fast, mass-produced goods at the lowest price so they can be sold at large volumes. For me, choosing to make as locally as possible is a gentle fist in the air for my values: good design, slowing down, consuming less, designing without exploitation, and using the best materials.

It’s time to bring the personal back into the process.