window of wanda harland showing colourful clothingFull dis­clo­sure: the Welling­ton­ista is all about nepo­tism. So we thought it was about jol­ly time we sat down (well, emailed) our Martha, who has been a very impor­tant part of the ‘ista since like 2006 at least (although she is much less of a bad influ­ence on us now than she used to be), to find out about the lat­est incar­na­tion of her won­der­ful store Wan­da Har­land.
1. Who are you, and what is Wan­da Har­land all about?

Wan­da Har­land is my store and very much an expres­sion of things I love and desire! Over the years I’ve become more inter­est­ed in cloth­ing, I won’t say “fash­ion” because that implies some­thing fleet­ing, and part of my val­ues is only buy­ing things you’ll love and wear for years to come. This does­n’t mean cloth­ing can’t be fun, but it should be excel­lent qual­i­ty and a great fit. Stock­ing eth­i­cal brands is impor­tant to me.

2. When Wan­da Har­land first opened… ten? years ago, it was very child-focused because of your print­ing label Baby­li­cious. What’s hap­pened over the years?

The shop is almost 11 years old! You’re right, when we opened I had a whole­sale busi­ness mak­ing baby clothes. This was a reflec­tion of my life at the time, which was one sur­round­ed by my own and my peer’s babies. Over the years as my kids have grown my inter­est turned more to home­wares (reflect­ing my own ren­o­va­tion projects tbh). Then we were approached by Kow­tow about stock­ing their range and a new inter­est in cloth­ing has grown ever since.

3. How’s the new loca­tion (on Wake­field Street oppo­site the Town Hall) going? Are there dif­fer­ences between it and Petone (On Jack­son St next to Knobs & Knock­ers) in terms of what you’re stock­ing or your best sell­ers are?
shop as part of the street
The new loca­tion is fan­tas­tic, it’s so live­ly in the city with a con­stant stream of peo­ple in the area. I love the peo­ple watch­ing! The offer­ing between the two stores is slight­ly dif­fer­ent, ulti­mate­ly the same “vibe” but in the city we’re cater­ing more to pro­fes­sion­al women and Petone has a slight­ly more casu­al vibe. It’s fun, we can play around with the style in each store. There are some brands we don’t car­ry in both stores too, which keeps each one unique and inter­est­ing.
4. What’s the most Welling­tony thing that you’re stock­ing right now?
bright clothing
I’m real­ly focussed on try­ing to sell as many local brands as pos­si­ble, so while noth­ing screams out “Welling­ton” with actu­al words we’re very proud to work with Welling­ton design­ers includ­ing Kow­tow, Pen­ny Fog­go, Luc, Aida Mae­by, Rachel Stich­bury jew­ellery, Twen­ty-Sev­en Names and many more.

5. Any plans to stock wider size ranges?

more clothing racks

Yes def­i­nite­ly. Over the years we’ve gone from car­ry­ing a basic few sizes and now we stock 7 sizes in some ranges and this will grow over time.