Balclutha may seem like an unlikely spot for a budding fashion business, but, as Hamish MacLean discovered, it suits Gina Gardner down to the ground.
The name for Gina Gardner's first line, Ember NZ, came from friends, sitting around a fire at Purakaunui Bay after surfing.
Her beach-friendly woollen jackets were at first made for them - warm for when they emerged from the southern corner of the South Pacific Ocean - but a studio in the Catlins town of Owaka exposed the Clutha-based designer to touring outdoorsy types, especially German and Australian visitors taken by the one-of-a-kind, distinctly New Zealand casualwear she was producing.
Afternoon sun streams into her boutique operation in John St, above the post office in Balclutha.
The vintage woollen blankets Gardner began using for jackets six years ago still poke out of the corner under a workbench, and still flash across the shoulders of new pieces.
Gardner, now 27, grew up on a sheep farm in Puerua Valley, but she has refined her tastes over the years and has matured as a designer.
She started producing work for her second line, Beth's Legacy, last month.
Beth was her ''nan'', her grandmother, who taught Gina to sew when she was five years old.
''Everyone loved her,'' Gardner says.
The traits she passed on, she says, of being ''patient and nice'' still resonate in her work and the passion of a New Zealand quiltmaker is still a part of the promise she makes for her new line,''Forever made in New Zealand''.
Her work is not only individual, it's wearable.
She makes ''shapes for women who feel funny about their bodies''.
Gina stands only 1.64m tall and it took her a while to create options for taller bodies, she says, but her stock material has caught up to her custom wear and she makes clothing that accents the belief that everyone is different.
Beth's Legacy appeals to teenagers as well as 85-year-olds.
''It doesn't matter what age you are, ever, for anything,'' Gardner says.
Her new line is exclusively womenswear, and she says,''It's just good quality stuff.''
It focuses on New Zealand wool and her new work belies the sun-kissed nostalgia of her past in its elegance.
There was a time when she sourced her material in whatever way she could.
A friend found her some blankets at his family's Tautuku Peninsula crib.
He put them in his truck and drove off.
It didn't go down well with the family, Gardner says.
''I've never done that again - they're quite special, those blankets.
''I learned,'' she says.
''I don't want to go to jail for stealing blankets.
''You find them in hotel cupboards and I'm always tempted to steal them. I always think about it.
'' `I could just put that in the bottom of my bag'. It more than crosses my mind, I've got an urge to steal them.
''But I don't, because I think I'm a good person.''
Her work honours the heirloom nature of the blankets.
Customers have brought her blankets that are nothing short of treasured: a woman whose son died brought in her son's baby blanket.
Gardner's work often becomes personal.
She carries stock in her Balclutha studio and in Dunedin and Palmerston Design Withdrawals outlets.
She says using social media and having an online presence have allowed her to continue her work from a town many see as an unlikely spot for a woman entrepreneur.
She's happy to be based in Balclutha.
''Why not? Who cares?
''There's heaps of good people around.
''You can work from wherever - and it's on its way up.''
