Features

Rachel Easting is one half of Wellington label Twenty-Seven Names, for which she designs with childhood friend Anjali Stewart. Twenty-Seven Names have gained a cult-like following worldwide, drawing praise for their airy carefree aesthetic. Their most recent collection “Fearsome Five”, which showed at iD Dunedin fashion show, draws on school uniforms and Nineties grunge for inspiration, and features velvet, blazers, and buttoned up shirts. Recently, Grace Averis interviewed Easting about her collection and her design process.
First of all, how’s preparation for iD going?
Good, really good. I just spent the morning steaming everything, It gets all crushed in the suitcases. But we’re pretty much ready for round one.
Could you tell me a little bit about the collection you are showing at iD this year? It’s called “The Fearsome Five” and it’s the collection we showed at New Zealand Fashion Week in October. It’s really nice for us to be able to pull it out again and have another good look at it. We’ve just put it all into stores in the last two months or so and it’s really exciting to be able to show stuff that people can actually then go and purchase. This collection is a bit of a playful mix. We looked at school uniforms and what it was like to be a teenager in the Nineties so there’s a mixture of plaids and prints and spots. We kind of just enjoyed making a bit of an ugly mix of things, putting lots of different elements together so they looked awesome. 
 
How did you come up with the name “The Fearsome Five”? “The Fearsome Five” was actually a nickname given to a group of five girls at the beginning of high school, me and Anj (Anjali Stewart) being two of them. It was a funny sort of reference back to that time and a nice way of grounding the collection in something. We worked through about five different key ideas while designing so all those different personalities came out in the range too.
What’s it like collaborating with someone that you know so well and have known for so long? We have both always been very creative people and we really enjoy working together. This (Twenty-Seven Names) is something that has been a really nice combination of our skills. We’ve been really close friends since we were 12 years old so we are quite used to each other and we can easily say “No I don’t like that idea’ and know that its not a personal attack.
What do you find the most difficult about what you do? I think just the fact that’s there’s not any downtime. You have to be thinking and working all the time so we can get quite tired. For example, in the last little while we’ve sent out all of our winter stuff, sampled up all next summer’s collection, gone to Sydney, shot the look book, we’ve come back, and then pretty much come straight here so there’s not really any kind of break. But honestly, if you’re really loving it and really enjoying it then it’s worth it.
Do you have a muse? Who do you have in mind when you are designing? We kind of just think about ourselves most of the time. What we would like to be wearing and the context - summer or winter. If we don’t really love stuff and we don’t want to wear it then there’s something wrong with it. Occasionally something comes through in the range and I think that I wouldn’t wear that so much. Those are the pieces that you want to be getting rid of at the design stage.
Both yourself and Anjali studied in Dunedin and have degrees in Fine Arts and Fashion respectively. As an arts graduate, did you find it difficult making the transition to fashion design? No not really. I’d helped Anj all the way through her degree anyway so I knew the ropes and understood what I was taking on . But essentially not really. It’s still a really creative process, very three dimensional.
What are some of your favorite pieces from this collection? I love the varsity jackets, they’re awesome. I love the school blazers as well. I’ve worn the striped one so much already. And the black piped one. But that's just me, I'm a massive jacket person.
Where can your clothes be found for sale locally? Slick Willy’s in Dunedin. Also through Good as Gold (Wellington) and Superette (Auckland) who have online boutiques.