In Conversation With
Emilia Wickstead

It was a pleasure to host renowned fashion designer Emilia Wickstead at our Showroom for an intimate In Conversation event, interviewed by beauty entrepreneur Emma Lewisham.

New Zealand-born and London-based, Emilia is known for her modern yet timeless femininity and meticulous craftsmanship. She launched her eponymous label in 2008, now spanning ready-to-wear, bridal, and bespoke services.

Visiting New Zealand for the launch of her Air New Zealand uniform collaboration, alongside the release of her SS'25 collection now at Simon James, we are pleased to share this special and personal conversation with Emilia. 

Discover the new collection online here and at Simon James Herne Bay, 230 Jervois Road.


Emma Lewisham: We are delighted to have you here Emilia, it’s such a rare opportunity to have you back in New Zealand and get to hear first-hand about your story, what inspires you and your vision for the future.

I would love to start from the beginning and start with a quote from Steve Jobs, who said “you can't connect the dots looking forward, you can only connect them looking backwards”. If you were to reflect, and think about the dots that connected for you, to lead to Emilia Wickstead the brand, what would they be? 

Emilia Wickstead: There are so many dots, especially coming home and being back in New Zealand now, it feels full circle. I'm back in New Zealand this time predominantly for the Air New Zealand launch, and I've had a lot of thoughts about that, because I do believe all roads lead to home. When you grow up somewhere and that is your foundation, and then leave that country to create big dreams and opportunities internationally, it's wonderful to be able to bring that home - to be able to be represented in your own country, it feels very special. 

It did all start here, I was born here and grew up here. My mother had a fashion business, and all I can remember ever since I was a little girl was her having her business, whether that was in our garage when she first started out, to when she opened her first stores, and I would go there after school and help her fill her pin cushions. It becomes ingrained in you from a very early age and as a young girl I was taking everything in like osmosis.

EL: You have such a distinct design and point of view which is rare in fashion. Where did this come from, and do you have a consistent through line and values that are always part of your designs?

EW: I'm sure this is from my mother. I also had a very elegant Italian grandmother, and I don't remember my father very well because he passed away when I was young, but apparently he was very fashionable; he had immaculate taste and took a very long time to get dressed to go out. So I'm sure these all played a part. But interestingly, when I lived in New Zealand I was actually quite experimental - I had hair cut short like a boy, and I sometimes dressed as a skater girl, or only in second hand clothing. I would dress in all sorts of things that I'm sure my mother rolled her eyes at many a time. Growing up in New Zealand felt very freeing and liberal; you could be whoever you wanted to be - it allowed me to try lots of different things out and create my sense of style.


EL: Starting and growing a luxury fashion brand is no easy feat. What were some of the pivotal moments in the beginning that helped you break through?

EW: A big part of it is growing up here in New Zealand. We have this kind of work ethic and attitude of rolling up your sleeves, and not taking no for an answer. When I started my business I didn't know what I was doing. I was 23, and all I knew was that I wanted to be famous! I was absolutely set on this idea of having my own fashion brand, and I just faked everything until I made it. I worked really hard - I built our business model, ran my own production, I got on the tube and went to the factories, fitted each and every client. I did everything in the business, which was the best education. I made lots of mistakes along the way - but I didn't give up, I didn't know how to give up. I was raised to never take no for an answer, and opportunities did come from that. One of the opportunities that I talk about was when I first started the business with my now husband, but boyfriend at the time. He was in his first year of finance and he said to me okay, we have 6000 pounds to do this. We started it from our living room, and I remember going through the contents page of British Vogue and picking up the phone. I called three different landline numbers and no one picked up, and then the fourth number was to a woman called Sarah Harris, who is now the Editor-at-Large of British Vogue. She picked up the phone, and I said, 'Hi, my name is Layla, I’m the assistant of Emilia Wickstead and I would love for you to view her collection'. We had built our own website and I had a friend model the collection, and she saw it and gave us half a page in British Vogue as an upcoming new designer. It all starts from this sense of, I mean I didn’t think I had resilience then, but now when I look back it was resilience, and I think that all comes from growing up here, that New Zealand way of rolling up your sleeves.

EL: It’s also an industry that is incredibly challenging to have longevity. So you got the breakthrough, but what would you attribute your longevity to?

EW: The biggest lesson I've learned, and it took me a very long time to get here, is to just put your head down - to focus on what you’re doing and to do it really well. I was always so caught up in wondering if my designs were relevant enough, and being very worried about what people thought. But actually the biggest success of all is when you walk into a room and you see people wearing your clothing, or when you go to a coat check and there are five Emilia Wickstead coats in there. That is success to me - women wearing your product. The minute I put my head down to focus on this, I was building my business in a very different way, and that feels really good. 

EL: It's not looking left or right, just really focusing on who you are and owning that.

EW: Yes, I think you can get very much caught up in it, fashion is a very fast-paced industry, and it is relentless. But if you've got a great product and you know women love wearing it, then that’s your biggest success story.


EL: What are the values of Emilia Wickstead that are the most important to you?

EW: We have quite a few, but the one I always talk about is female empowerment. It’s easy to disregard the importance of fashion - saying it’s frivolous or we don’t need something new, but actually we forget about the power of clothing, and I think that we can lose sight of this. 

Pieces that can make us feel really special, pieces that let us walk into a room and feel like 'I’ve got this'. That’s our focus as a brand, dressing women to make them feel their best.

EL: Absolutely, and an incredible motivator in what you are doing, to have that effect on people and their lives. Can you share a couple of moments in your career that you’re really proud of?

EW: I really do think it’s seeing women in our clothing. I feel extremely proud of this, these moments for me are actually the most important. From some of you here tonight in Emilia Wickstead, to when we dress someone on the red carpet that I really admire, or someone that I think represents something really important in the world. When we dressed Malala for the Oscars party, that was huge. One of our most recent moments three weeks ago, was dressing Emma Stone. She is a celebrity that only wears Louis Vuitton, but she had seen our dress on a rail with her stylist and wanted to wear it, so we made her a bespoke garment. It makes me so proud knowing she could wear anything in the world and she's chosen to wear us.

I think also just seeing our business and our team grow. Our team is now 50, and I feel really proud of the fact that we have this amazing, what feels enormous to me, team. I feel really lucky that I can also come home for three weeks and not have to worry about everything back in London.

EL: What does success look like to you now, compared to when you started?

EW: I think success means being comfortable and confident in myself and what I’m doing, and feeling good in my skin doing it.

EL: What ambitions do you still have for the brand and what drives you? 

EW: Interestingly, our fastest growing market is the US, and so I'd love to follow in the footsteps of another Kiwi who’s in London - Jessica McCormack. She’s about to open her new store on Madison Avenue in NYC - this is something I'd love to do as a great next step for us.

Alongside our ready-to-wear we also have a growing bridal side of the business, which we visit America around five times a year for. I think just being seen more around the world is what drives me, there are so many people who still haven't heard of Emilia Wickstead so we have a long way to go.


EL: This brings me to your incredible collaboration with Air New Zealand. I would love to hear more about this - what it means to you, and if you can give us any insights to the process.

EW: This has been a real passion project for me, I have wanted to do this for a very long time. I even applied for this many times and emailed them many years ago, but they never replied to me. 

I think again it's about all roads leading home. There’s something really beautiful about bringing this home, and to do something for your country that can be seen on a global platform. It's a very heart felt project for me, I think because it touches on lots of things from the past - nostalgia and heritage, upbringing and family; my godmother actually worked for Air New Zealand for many years. All of these things came towards me when designing the uniform because I wanted all of these dots to connect.

One of the most important things for me was that people felt very comfortable wearing it, I didn't want it to feel foreign from what they’d worn before. They have to feel great and empowered, in charge and responsible, but also playful - which is very much part of Air New Zealand’s branding. But what I do keep saying is that everything in this uniform collection I would wear myself, and I would have in a normal Emilia Wickstead collection. There are a lot of beautiful and hidden meanings in the uniform, and I hope that everyone feels truly proud to wear it.


EL: You’ve just shown your AW25 collection at London Fashion Week, which will be arriving at Simon James I believe in July?

EW: Yes, and Spring Summer has just arrived.

EL: Where do you start when designing a collection? What inspires you and how do you come up with your direction?

EW: So many things, but I always look for a muse, and I often become obsessed with my chosen artist, photographer or film. I love anything that’s old world - I feel like I’m a little bit of an old soul, and that's often where I take inspiration from.

For Spring Summer, my muse was photographer Gisèle Freund. Gisèle was quite handsome, and a very strong, independent woman who shot many influential writers. If you look at her photographs now, you’d think that they were shot today, she was very much before her time. There were a lot of women with ties, lots of geometric patterns, and quite pastel colour palettes with a pop of maybe bright cobalt blue or red, and so I played on the colour palettes of her photography, the characters and the people that were her muses, and I think that when you look at the collection you see that very much come to play. You see a little bit of surrealism through the prints and the fabrics, as well as the handsome silhouettes and finer details.

EL: And what about your upcoming Autumn Winter collection?

EW: This was inspired by the Hitchcock film The Birds - which is actually quite romantic but also very haunting. This collection was very much playing on the costume designer, the lead actress, and the writer of the film; I was thinking about all these different women and the juxtaposition in what they represented, and this comes through in all of the different shapes and silhouettes. It felt a bit more fierce I guess, compared to Spring Summer, which was a little bit more softer. 


EL: Once you come up with the concept, what is the process from there to runway? 

EW: We hand over the entire collection to development and production. A lot of time and work goes into this - sending it to wearer trials, developing sketch packs, rounds of sampling and pre-production samples, grading it into different sizes to trial in fittings, testing the fabric quality and how it wears.

EL: And you can absolutely tell that. What is the most challenging part? 

EW: I put a lot of pressure on myself, but I think the minute that I no longer put pressure on myself then maybe I shouldn't be in this job.

EL: To finish Emilia, do you have any final pieces of advice for aspiring designers or entrepreneurs?

EW: I'm still learning all the time, and I am still taking a lot of advice from many entrepreneurs myself - it’s something that I continuously do and I think that's one of my biggest pieces of advice. No matter how small or big your brand is, you can never stop learning. You'll always find out more just from having conversations, and you can be helpful to others, but you can also take in a lot of information yourself. I’ve done that recently thinking about our expansion into the US, I've completely changed our business plan based on three conversations that I had with different founders.

The other piece of advice that I would give is to fake it until you make it. It’s easy to think that everyone around us is extremely confident and doing really well, and to question if what we’re doing is good enough. We need to remember that we're not alone in this, and so faking it until you make it is something  that I still do every day - whether it’s picking up the phone or putting on a face in a meeting that I’m feeling nervous about. It doesn’t mean it’s not genuine, it’s just addressing the reality that we don't wake up every day feeling confident and in control of life.

View the Emilia Wickstead collection online here and at Simon James Herne Bay, 230 Jervois Road.

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