Introducing the House of Boom

When I opened up anoth­er branch of Wanda Har­land, Joanna inter­viewed me all about it, so I figured with House of Boom about to launch, it was time for me to return the favour. Okay what’s going on? You’re launch­ing your own cloth­ing label? Yes! I got fed up with the lack of eth­­ic­ally-made options […]

Five questions with Wanda Harland

Full 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), […]

Saint Fabiola fabulousness

Last Fri­day we had a lovely time at the open­ing of St Fabiola on Lom­bard Street (you may have seen us tweet­ing about the pies from Pickle and Pie, because, you know, pri­or­it­ies), so this week, we caught up with the own­er Kirsten for a chat over email. What’s your back­ground before the shop? I’m an […]

the return of Cactus

Famed NZ designed-and-man­u­­fac­tured cloth­ing and out­doors equip­ment com­pany Cac­tus are open­ing a new store at 241 Thorndon Quay this week­end. It’s some­thing of a home­com­ing – the com­pany star­ted in Wel­ling­ton before relo­cat­ing south many years ago to be closer to lar­ger moun­tains and more con­veni­ent snow. But they’ve remained a favour­ite of Wel­ling­to­ni­ans and […]

The Hutt gets a new market

I know we make fun of the Hutt (except for the ‘ista mem­bers who actu­ally live there and really quite like it, of course).  We tease it and call it names, sim­il­ar to how we might treat a sib­ling, but just like our pain in the ass older broth­er, when they do cool things we […]

Political Cuts

Every second store I pass seems to be a Pop-Up Shop of one kind or anoth­er, but Polit­ic­al Cuts is some­thing brings a dif­fer­ent spin to the idea. When you pop along to 101 Wake­field Street this week (like a true Pop-Up Polit­ic­al Cuts is only around for a week) you’ll dis­cov­er a salon offer­ing […]

The city chocolate fix

Hur­ray, anoth­er guest post from Heath­er at Food­ie Gems of Wel­lie Where to go in the city for a qual­ity chocol­ate fix between usu­al excuses – chocol­ate fest­ivals, Valentines, East­er, Xmas, nation­al chocol­ate day, your birth­day, your best friend’s birth­day, White Day in Japan, Chocol­ate Dipped Fruit and Fon­due day in the US (hmmm, any […]

Old Groove, new Peel

When Real Groovy closed its doors in May, many music-lov­ing Wel­ling­to­ni­ans were rather sad. But a curi­ous thing has happened – we’ve got a Real Groovy back, sort of. Real Groovy Christ­ch­urch suffered dam­age to both its build­ing and stock in the Septem­ber 2010 earth­quake, but own­er Paul Hug­gins was determ­ined to con­tin­ue, reopen­ing a month […]

The duchess’ nice frock

“Oh, look! It’s Kate Wins­let’s wed­ding dress!” On the night of the roy­al wed­ding, while most of us were drink­ing gins and mak­ing snarky tweets about Prin­cess Beatrice’s hat (or poin­tedly not), fash­ion design­er Jane Yeh was hard at work furi­ously sketch­ing and sew­ing a rep­lica of Kate Middleton’s wed­ding dress, ready to go on […]

A great yarn – what Tash did next

Remem­ber Tash from It’s A Tree? Not con­tent to rest on her laurels – or tuis, or flowers, badoom chish – she’s kept her­self busy in the world of wool, open­ing up Hol­land Road Yarn at 281 Jack­son Street, Petone. We thought we’d have a chat to Tash and see exactly what was going on…