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…