The post-Covid, social media-fuelled home sewing revival
Like thousands of Kiwis during the 2020 Covid-19 lockdown, Sarah Gulley spent a lot of her time online.
Then a fourth-year law student, Gulley lived with six friends in a small, four-bedroom central Wellington apartment. The limited living space was crowded with desks as the flatmates studied and worked from home. Looking back, Gulley wonders how they ever made it work.
When Victoria University extended its mid-semester break to cope with the shift to lockdown, Gulley had to find ways to combat boredom. She spent hours each day on TikTok, gravitating towards crafting videos on the app. This led her to graphic design TikTok, candle-making TikTok and finally sewing TikTok. “The TikTok algorithm is amazing,” she says. “It was my gateway.”
As soon as the lockdown lifted, Gulley returned home to Pukerua Bay and used her mother’s sewing machine to make her first garment – a tiered, sleeved dress in an intricate black and white pattern.
“It was the Wilder Gown by the Friday Pattern Company, which I made with a cotton drill. I don’t wear the original garment any more because I didn’t quite choose the right fabric – I cut it up and turned it into wide-brim bucket hats.”
Undeterred, Gulley bought her own sewing machine – a Brother Innov-is A16 – and joined the growing number of young Kiwis turning to the craft.
A stitch in time
New Zealand’s once-strong textile industry suffered under the rise of imported ready-to-wear fashion.
Today, an astounding variety of affordable clothing is a tap of an app away, and chain stores offering cut-price clothing are in every mall. But as more attention is paid to fast fashion’s unsustainable practices, and given limited sizes offered by a large portion of the industry, at-home sewing appears to be enjoying a resurgence among Kiwis.
Trevor Hookway, 70, has witnessed the fluctuations in New Zealand’s textile industry first-hand. He started sweeping the floors of a fabric warehouse in 1969 as a young university student in need of cash. Six years and a completed degree in accounting and business management later, Hookway returned to that same company to work in range development.
More than five decades on, he is enjoying his 38th year as owner and managing director of Auckland’s Hawes & Freer, which wholesales and retails fabrics and sewing components.