Over the past eight years, Dunedin designer Gemma Ward has been quietly building and adapting her fashion design business Gemma Ltd. Jude Hathaway catches up with her.
Gemma Ward's workroom at her Tainui home is not just a place for the obligatory cutting table and fabrics. It also reveals much about the young Dunedin designer's approach to the fashion business she has built up steadily over the past eight years.
Work stations with an industrial sewing machine, overlocker and a cover seamer at the ready are set up around the walls. At centre stage is the large cutting table. Underneath are stored the beautiful fabrics around which her designs are created.
And beside the doorway is a rack packed with garments from the 2013 Gemma women's wear range and a selection displaying the Gem maternity wear label.
''This is my `showroom' for customers who like to purchase off-the-peg rather than through my website,'' Ms Ward said.
The clothes grab the attention; it's their effortless style, enticing fabric selection, the colour spectrum and the choice. Good-looking separates - including leggings and wide-leg pants - through to pert metallic lace cocktail dresses beg closer inspection.
''I don't follow trends, although, like any designer, I'm influenced by fashion,'' says Ms Ward (28).
''I like designing around the fabric and seeing women look good in my pieces. And if they don't look good, I try to steer them to something that they look really great in.
''I just don't like the idea of my garments suddenly appearing on websites being sold second-hand or being shoved to the back of a wardrobe by disappointed customers.''
There's also the small but significant line of Gem maternity wear.
Standouts?
The dressy tops surreptitiously slit for nursing mums who, when out abhor having to complete complicated manoeuvres in order to feed the baby. And the maternity belt, which allows favourite jeans to be worn until late in pregnancy, is a handy little accessory.
Ms Ward, ironically, had already had both her sons by the time the Gem range was launched.
''Looking back, I would have loved a couple of stylish pieces to get me through the last months,'' she said.
Sons Taylor (5) and Luka (2) have been the catalyst for the changes in her life and that of her partner Andrew, and in particular in her business model, which has seen her pull back on stocking retail outlets and instead concentrating on website and showroom sales.
That's where the childproof gate in the doorway to the workroom comes in.
''It's a way of stopping the boys using the workroom as a playroom. I'm still accessible while I'm at work but there is a line they know they don't cross. I still get the odd ball hurled my way, though!
''Yes, it's a balancing act, but Ms Ward is happy with the adjustments, managed in a typically grounded style, shunning hype and hubris.
''The one drawback about having the clothes displayed in the workroom is that I sometimes have to remind customers who come to the house that I design and sell clothes and I am not a dressmaker who makes to measure,'' she said, adding that she is able to recommend seamstresses who do.
Her design assistant and sewer is her mother, Sandy Ward.
''We get on well together. Mum is straight down the line and will tell me if she doesn't think something will work. It's good to have that honesty.''
It was Mrs Ward who encouraged her daughter to work with fabric from the time she was a little girl.
''But, at that stage, it was more a fun thing watching and creating alongside Mum while she sewed, than me having much interest in clothes.''
The turnaround came in Ms Ward's seventh-form year.
''I think I kind of grew up. I became interested in clothes and began sewing more.''
Then along came the opportunity of work experience at the Dunedin-owned and operated St Clair Design workroom and showroom.
It turned out to be the first of a series of gentle nudges Ms Ward would receive that kept her on the road towards a fashion-oriented career.
''I learnt heaps there and the experience helped me to put together my portfolio to enter the Otago Polytechnic School of Fashion, although at that stage I was not completely certain it was what I wanted to do.''
Another nudge came when the portfolio application won a $1000 scholarship towards tuition fees. And so she stepped into the challenging world of fashion design studies.
''It was only then that I began realising just how much I loved it,'' she said with a smile.
Reinforcement that she was also good at what she loved doing came when in her second year she won the casual wear section at the Hokonui Fashion Design Awards.
This was yet another little nudge of encouragement, as was winning the Waughs award for the most commercial collection at the end of her third and final year.
''Winning this award was really exciting for I'd always preferred designing wearable clothes that had commercial viability as opposed to pushing boundaries too far,'' she said.
After graduating at the end of 2005, Ms Ward had a retail job that allowed her the time to quietly establish her new label, Gemma. And what better retail shop for the ingenue's garments than the Dunedin boutique Stir (since closed) operated by Stephanie Oliver, who championed emerging design talent?
Yet another door opened six months later when she was offered 25 hours a week at Waughs as a design assistant in the first-floor workroom above the upmarket retail store.
''Waughs is the type of business I really admire. The clothes are designed and made upstairs and then brought down to the shop to be sold alongside other complementary labels. It was a priceless experience for me in seeing how the business operated.''
Store owner and designer Diann Waugh taught her a lot.
''I remember the excitement of when a fabric rep arrived with all the fabric books. Diann would watch me going through the fabrics, and if I spent time looking at a particular fabric, working out whether I liked it or not, she would tell me to move on.
''`If you do not know immediately what you'd do with it on first seeing a fabric, you probably never will,' she would say,'' Ms Ward recalled.
''It's good advice.''
The designer has an ability to keep doors open.
She continues to stay in touch with the Dunedin Fashion Incubator as an Outreach student. Her ties with Waughs have also remained strong and she continues to help on a casual basis.
''There's this amazing feeling of community about the Dunedin fashion design industry that I feel is quite special to the city. It's good to be part of it.''
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• Learn more by visiting www.gemmaltd.co.nz
