Photos taken by Jocelen Janon
On Monday I went out to visit the designers behind Dmonic Intent. They consist of sisters Maxine Wooldrige, Samara Wooldridge and Kris Leitch and her partner Joe Walker. They also mentioned their mum who is a massive supporter. The family home in Glen Innes is completely taken over by art, design inspiration and spaces for all of them to work on the label. Having numbers allows them to work on various projects, such as garments, handmade silver and copper jewellery; which has always been a huge part of the brand, and recently hats. “ Our next step would be shoes!” says Samara, “Yea, we have experienced accessorising plain boots and stuff, but making it from scratch, like creating our own heels and things would be awesome …..One day!.” Says Max
What does Dmonic Intent mean? “Dmonic Intent just means no boundaries, we are not limited by trends or what people want, we design to our aesthetics and what we like, we are trans-seasonal, we also like to draw inspiration from the dark side a bit!”
So first New Zealand Fashion Week this year, what does it mean for you? Well, we were really lucky because we had 3 ranges. Two of them we merged for the Mirimoda competition in Wellington, which we won! So we get to show it at Fashion week (for those of you who don’t know it is a competition for only Maori designers) and then we put our commercial range in another section. This didn’t place but straight after the show we received an email from PieterStewart who was one of the judges saying she would love us to show that range at Fashion Week also in the New Generation section. So it is really cool because we get to show our commercial stuff that people can buy (it is our first wholesale range) and our more playful side with garments that we wouldn’t necessarily make for production because they are expensive and impractical, one of our pieces covered in jewellery adornments weighs like 10kgs! But they show our creativity and show off the jewellery really well! Fashion Shows are really fun, it is annoying that we can’t wear half the clothes we make, like this pair of pants that we made they are literally up to my shoulders, and they were short on our model that had litre heels on!
What do see long term for Dmonic Intent? A shop! That way we can have a store that encapsulates our brand and what we are all about, and international recognition. We are actually working on a top secret venture at the moment that involves us and some other Māori designers going international!
On the side note, designers and retail stores are struggling at the moment, does this scare you? Or just make you more motivated? After being in business for four years are now working full time on the label. We decided if we are going to do it, we are going to be fully committed and put everything in to it. We have been working really hard and putting in all our time and effort. We are making a living and we haven’t even begun so it can’t really get worse, only bigger and better!
Being Māori does that make you feel more responsible to keep your fashion made in NZ and authentic? We will defiantly always maintain NZ made. We have been subconsciously inspired by Maori inspiration but sort of unaware of it; we didn’t ever do it purposely. We read reviews of our work after shows and they will say that our garments remind them of Māori patterning or the colours of the Māori flag, and we are like 'oh yea it does!' I guess it works well, we are not defined by it, but it is engraved in us. In our new collection, the yellow and black print is a Maori pattern but you wouldn’t necessarily know unless you are Māori which is nice.
Thanks so much for having me in your home and chatting to me, all the best for fashion week!!
Amber from H &F.
Photos taken by Amber Whitecliffe.
Visit Dmonic Intent's facebook page, and follow them on Instagram and twitter, they are quite entertaining!
