Britomart Scenezine Magazine | Copywriting & Editing

Scenezine is a bi-annual magazine produced by the Britomart Group Marketing Team, featuring the best new fashion, beauty, food, music, culture and news from around Auckland’s buzzing Britomart precinct. I edited editions 12, 13 and 14 of Scenezine, commissioning all stories, writing features, conducting interviews, penning headlines and standfirsts and sub-editing the magazine. Read a few sample stories below.

PRETTY IN PRINT 

Britomart-based textiles designer Emma Hayes offers us a glimpse inside her exquisitely painterly world.

Delicate and softly spoken with one of her marbled silk scarves draped nonchalantly around her neck, when Scenezine meets artist and designer Emma Hayes at her blank canvas Britomart studio, her affection for print is palpable.

“I’ve just always loved fabric. Always made cushions and clothes and printed pieces for myself. It’s always been a passion!” Emma enthuses from her lofty whitewashed workspace on the top floor of the Altrans Building.

Emma has been based at Britomart since 2012, having been introduced to her studio by fellow designers-in-residence, Milk. An Aucklander born and bred, Emma studied at Unitec and worked at design agencies in London and Auckland – and at local fashion label Cybèle – before establishing her eponymous line in 2010.

“I wanted a change of lifestyle and the freedom to design pieces outside of solely fashion,” Emma says of the decision to go it alone. “It was quite a full on industry and it was good to step back and work on some more diverse projects. I’d been thinking about designing homewares for a while and the time felt right to do this.”

Emma now designs her specialty textiles and homewares collection alongside her studio practice, where she creates custom pieces for interior spaces along with other graphic projects. Her designs are sold not only online but at Auckland boutiques Simon James Concept Store and Corporate Culture, and even as far afield as Hong Kong.

The designer’s beautiful prints – which blend softly organic forms with digital and hand printing techniques – emblazon everything from wallpapers and pillowcases to blankets and scarves. Emma confesses a soft spot for artists Dale Frank and Kirstin Carlin, who both demonstrate an honesty with paint and an expressiveness with their materials.

Up next is a range of “rough and tumble” hard-wearing linen throws in a refreshed summer palette. Not to mention a project a little closer to home: Emma’s new/old Onehunga home is in need of a little TLC and something tells us its “burgundy chintz curtains” won’t hang around for long.

This story originally appeared in Britomart Scenezine Magazine, Edition 13, Spring/Summer 2014. Read Scenezine online here.

STREETS AHEAD

A coffee table tome dedicated to the photographs of four-pronged fashion bloggers FOUREYES has just been published, celebrating New Zealand’s unique street style.

From blog to book in less than three years, the swift ascent of Auckland street style bloggers FOUREYES – who Karen Walker has labelled as ‘inspirational, audacious and always polite’ – shows no signs of abating.

It all began as a fashion passion project for four friends – Alex Blanco, Chin Tay, Danny Simmons and Mino Kim – a graphic designer, a dentist, a marketer and a retail manager with a mutual love of people, style and photography.

Published by Beatnik, FOUREYES – the book – is a collection of some of the best photographs from FOUREYES – the blog – featuring the boys’ best street style snaps from New Zealand and abroad, captured over the last two and a half years.

The beautiful book aims to inspire readers ‘to think creatively and dress fearlessly,’ showcasing New Zealand’s unique sartorial character in a diverse collection of street portraits capturing the most creative looks on the streets.

“We had no idea two and a half years ago that what started as a casual pastime would come to form such a huge part of our lives”, say the boys. And if their relentless rise-and-rise is anything to go by, this is just the beginning.

FOUREYES: New Zealand Street Style is available from www.beatnikpublishing.com and all good bookstores, RRP $84.99.

This story originally appeared in Britomart Scenezine Magazine, Edition 13, Spring/Summer 2014. Read Scenezine online here.

BEHIND THE VINES

The talented team behind New Zealand’s most popular music festival are based right here at Britomart. And to celebrate the summer festival season we went behind the vines to meet them.

Every summer some 30,000 people flock to a verdant Gisborne vineyard for Rhythm and Vines, New Zealand’s biggest music festival. It’s hard to believe that it all began as a plan hatched at the pub in the depths of winter 2003 by Hamish Pinkham and Tom Gibson, a couple of unassuming mates from Otago University.

Fast-forward a decade or so and we’re sitting in Rhythm Group’s offices at Britomart, where the festival aesthetic runs charmingly amok. Cavernous and brightly coloured with a ping pong table and carnivalesque festival props leaning against heavily graffitied walls, if the walls at Rhythm and Vines HQ could talk, they would probably sing.

“They just had this idea to put on a festival and it went from there,” explains Julie Warmington, Rhythm Group’s Marketing Director, of the festival’s laid-back beginnings. The music and entertainment group now runs tours by the likes of The Black Angels, Disclosure and Matt Corby and organises not just Rhythm and Vines but its burgeoning South Island sister festival Rhythm and Alps and Feast Gisborne.

For its third outing, Rhythm and Alps will migrate from Terrace Downs to the Cardrona Valley, 15 minutes from Wanaka. It will be Rhythm and Alps’ first outing as a New Year’s festival, and fresh from a trip to its stunning new location, Julie enthuses that “people are really excited about Rhythm and Alps and tickets are selling really well. I think it’s just going to grow!”

Rhythm Group moved to Britomart earlier this year and Julie admits that she “loves being able to look out the window and see the sea. And I love how Britomart has been done up. There are some fantastic restaurants here now – Ortolana is really special and then there’s Mexico. This area is just amazing now!”

Tim Richards, who programmes Rhythm Group’s festivals, agrees. “I love being based at Britomart. I absolutely love it. There are so many things going on and so many like-minded businesses, like the guys from Stolen Rum. On my days off I’ll jump on my bike and come down here.” Not that you get the impression that Tim and the team have time to spare.

Asked how Rhythm Group gets the lineup for its festivals is so consistently spot on, with past acts including N*E*R*D, Mark Ronson, Franz Ferdinand and Calvin Harris, Tim explains that it’s a mixture of “research and a lot of gut instinct!” This year Tim’s instinct is telling him that “Rudimental – who are doing a DJ set – will resonate with a New Zealand crowd” and Shapeshifter, “always a Kiwi favourite” will go off as well. Not to mention hip hop star Wiz Khalifa who is playing his first ever New Zealand show at Rhythm and Vines.

“Sometimes you just get it right” explains Tim, who may be familiar to Britomart bar-goers as a DJ at 1885 Basement. “Last year we picked up Flume and now he’s one of the biggest artists in the world. It’s just a matter of doing your research and picking what you think will do well.”

When asked to name his top act for this year’s festivals, music buff Tim tellingly goes blank. “It’s too hard to choose just one!” he shrieks, while Julie, with all of the quiet confidence of Hamish and Tom all those years ago simply predicts that this year’s festivals are going to be “awesome. They’re going to be really, really great.”

This story originally appeared in Britomart Scenezine Magazine, Edition 13, Spring/Summer 2014. Read Scenezine online here.