Whether you’re a nu-rave kid or a glo­ri­fied dandy, being well-dressed is part­ly a mat­ter of taste. Nev­er­the­less, if you’re keen to spend some time on your per­son­al appear­ance, you’d do well to start out with these Welling­ton stores for clothes and/or acces­sories.

Does my bum look big in this? Who cares if it’s big – it looks awe­some!

Get dressed after the jump

A. Dandylion

Dandylion is tucked away in the Left Back near that anar­chist hotbed Oblong. Lorene Har­ris’s shop is big on the kind of indi­vid­u­al­i­ty that will help you fit in on Cuba St. To get your indie on, or to dress appro­pri­ate­ly for a big trip to Dunedin float on down to Dandylion. A lot of the clothes and acces­sories are made from recy­cled mate­ri­als, there are sec­ond-hand shoes, hand-select­ed op-shop fin­ery for hire and a good­ly range of zines. Lorene’s own zine is easy to spot; pink and adorned with cher­ries, filled with poet­ry and sketch­es, hand­made on beau­ti­ful paper with the pages sewn togeth­er. Nice, very nice.

But we digress, this cat­e­go­ry is about being best dressed after all. Every­thing you need to be well put togeth­er is here — bags, belts, shoes, badges and the old craft fair favourite; hand-knit­ted fin­ger­less gloves. If you want to keep in real in the down to earth NZ social­ly respon­si­ble style with­out tip­ping over into fer­al ter­ri­to­ry I rec­om­mend that you let Loren’s sewing machine do the sewing, leav­ing you more time for activism and gar­den­ing, both of which are wor­thy pur­suits.

B. Good as Gold


Good as Gold cer­tain­ly has a rep­u­ta­tion around town; own­er Reuben (of David Hart­nel­l’s best-dressed fame) has cre­at­ed some kind of a fol­low­ing with styl­ists, sneak­er freaks, and young neon set. If you can pull off a cropped dis­tressed den­im waist­coat, bold fluro prints or/and that over­sized thing that the Japan­ese kids do so well, all pow­er to you and you may well have found your spir­i­tu­al home. A hood­ie pur­chased at Good as Gold can be spot­ted by a trained eye among the week­end crowds in Welling­ton, so if you are in need of this wardrobe sta­ple you best check them out. A recent vis­it on a rainy day saw a styl­ist pop­ping in for a chat, a girl shop­ping for skater gears for her boyfriend and an extreme­ly styl­ish dog just kick­ing it with the staff. Some­thing about dog plus crates plus streetwear plus toys plus mags feels very Japan influ­enced. Bring on the Asian Inva­sion we say, we guess these urban yoof cul­ture shops have a sim­i­lar flavour all around the world influ­enced by inter­na­tion­al design mag­a­zines and urban envi­ron­ments. The cof­fee machine is sad­ly now gone but on the plus side there is now a whole lot of room to dis­play sneak­ers — pri­or­i­ties eh? If you are already a fan show some love and vote Good as Gold.

C. House of Hank + Wellington Hatters


How did we live with­out a Greek fish­er­man’s cap? What would we do with­out a tweed tril­by to match a hack­ing jack­et? The irre­press­ibly ener­getic Hank Cubitt will help you stand out from the base­ball-capped mass­es, and his shop is a god­send for the well-dressed chap or chapette about town. Hmm, we think that a Fez would be just the thing for sum­mer…

WINNER!!!
D. Madame Fancy Pants


If you tru­ly aspire to be best dressed it takes more than just brand clothes picked from the pages of glossy mag­a­zines. The clothes alone at MFP are exquis­ite, you would well attired for high tea or a jaunt around Soho or Omote­san­do out­fit­ted in their unique and well-made gar­ments but what real­ly sets them apart is the dizzy­ing array of accou­trements.

Our first intro­duc­tion to Madame Fan­cy Pants was wan­der­ing up Cuba (like you do) and see­ing some­one apply­ing fab­u­lous gold birds to the walls of the yet to be realised shop. We lat­er found out that these gold birds were actu­al­ly silk-screened wall­pa­per from New York. Not long after, a chan­de­lier appeared, then all man­ner of good­ies made them­selves at home on the shelves and hooks. Since then we have been a win­dow licker/tire kick­er par excel­lence, cross­ing the road fre­quent­ly to stare long­ing­ly at the beau­ti­ful vagi­nal­ly inspired Anato­my of F jew­ellery made by Japan­ese jew­el­er Kyo Hashimo­to. Man­nequins attired in beau­ti­ful crisp cot­ton blous­es and silk skirts with wood­en but­tons inspire us to a high­er tax brack­et or some dam­age on the cred­it card.
This shop reminds more of a zak­ka-yathan just a straight up clothes shop. Jew­ellery, check. Shoes, check. Fab­u­lous baby wear, check. Whim­si­cal sta­tion­ary and badges check.

Welling­ton is well served by shops with a tight focus on Aotearoa-designed and made goods. The Vault and Beck­on on Willis St spring to mind, we also have shops like Iko Iko and Pop­Up that bring the Asian and pop-art inspired good­ness. What Madame Fan­cy Pants does well is bring that inter­na­tion­al feel with a fan­tas­tic shop design, beau­ti­ful clothes from Aus­tralian and NZ design­ers and accou­trements from all over. Our wish list grows expo­nen­tial­ly with each vis­it due to the warm invit­ing atti­tude of the staff and the steady stream of new stock. Top of our lust­ed after list at the moment are a pair of these shoes and as good for­tune would have it, the shop con­ve­nient­ly has lit­tle want cards per­fect for drop­ping around as lit­tle birth­day hints…

Ask the staff for the sto­ry behind the Lola and Bai­ley range of neck­laces (but we have dibs on fourth kiss so don’t you dare!) Soooooooo roman­tic. While the prices of goods such as this deli­cious Dead­ly Ponies hand­bag are a bit ‘aspi­ra­tional’ for some Cuba St denizens, we think this shop deserves to be a des­ti­na­tion for those seek­ing some­thing well made. May they suc­ceed and pros­per.

E. Mandatory

What could be bet­ter than styl­ish yet com­fort­able local­ly-designed menswear? Buy­ing it in a shop with charm­ing and expert staff who are always hap­py to find you the one pair of trousers that max­imis­es your gluteal pul­chri­tude, that’s what. To top it off, Clare and Fiona are tire­less pro­mot­ers of the Welling­ton fash­ion and cre­ative scenes, and their pieces some­how man­age to be both direc­tion­al and time­less at the same time.

F. Ziggurat

Kate Bryant, cur­rent own­er of Cuba St vin­tage retail­er Zig­gu­rat, sure­ly counts as a Welling­ton fash­ion insti­tu­tion. Not only does Kate dress her­self jaw-drop­ping­ly well — two con­sec­u­tive week­ends at the Mighty Mighty have seen her appear in a dar­ing jumpsuit/racing car dri­ver on acid one-piece, fol­lowed by a lati­no frock split up to here and acces­sorised in spec­tac­u­lar style — but she has also been dress­ing and influ­enc­ing Welling­to­ni­ans for years with her dis­tinc­tive sense of style. Co-founder of Ripe cloth­ing back in the bright­ly coloured ’90s, Kate left Welling­ton after going it alone with a Ripe store, also on Cuba , but her trav­els around the world styling and dress­mak­ing even­tu­al­ly brought her back home, where she bought up and dras­ti­cal­ly revived the old Zig­gu­rat bou­tique.

Once a Kel­burn-Karori navy-and-stripes maven haven, Zig­gu­rat now boasts the most mouth-water­ing col­lec­tion of vin­tage and retro frocks, acces­sories and every­day wear (that is, if your every­day dress­ing rou­tine involves look­ing sharp as a snake, cute as a but­ton and per­fect­ly pressed — I know mine does). Close­ly relat­ed to the man behind anoth­er of the nom­i­nees in this cat­e­go­ry, one has to won­der what the Bryant famil­ia were putting in Kate and Ruben’s (and artist broth­er Jarad’s) cere­al in their for­ma­tive years — and can we have some please?