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?