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Looking Flash: Clothing in Aotearoa New Zealand
Offering a fresh look at the role of clothes in New Zealand history, this reference examines what New Zealanders wear and what they have worn—from the shrinking bathing suit to the black singlet—over the past three centuries, proving that clothing reveals as much as it conceals. The authors show that, despite a reputation for being wary of “looking flashy,” New Zealand has not always been a dowdy country. Essays span the clothing of pre-colonial Maori society, marching girls and castaways, and include 18th century heirloom dresses, hand-me-downs, wartime garb, and kilts. There are also extraordinary stories about the fate of a Maori cloak and an Otago farmer’s remarkable collection of 1970s high-fashion garments.
288 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2008
6 people want to read
About the author
Bronwyn Labrum
7 books1 followerBronwyn Labrum is widely published in the social and cultural history of New Zealand and the history of clothing and fashion, museums, collecting and exhibitions, and designed objects and artefacts. She has lengthy experience in research management and the practice of public history. Bronwyn is the author of Real Modern: Everyday New Zealand in the 1950s and 1960s (Te Papa Press), shortlisted for the Ockham New Zealand Books Awards in 2016.
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January 1, 2026
While it is a fair critique of history-the-discipline that there is an over-emphasis on elites, on the wealthy and powerful, even as they are the people about whom we are most likely to have records, there are some aspects of the field where that critique has most power – and clothing history is one of those, simply because clothes wear out, and it’s the elites who are most likely to minimise that problem. Clothing archives, therefore, are full of fashion, not clothing, not the ordinary items of daily wear, but the exceptional items of occasional wear. One of the things this valuable collection of essays does well is find ways round parts of that problem. Aside from a couple of essays, most deal with the exceptional, but only a few deal with the elite.
The editors have done well to assemble a diverse set of contributors, academic historians and curators (who we might consider professional historians), to explore aspects of Aotearoa New Zealand’s clothing history. (In the interests of transparency here also I should note that Bronwyn Labrum is an old friend of decades standing, and former flat mate; I note also that I have always been impressed by her scholarship, and especially her work in material culture.) Alongside the presence of the ordinary, or at least ordinary people’s clothing, a welcome aspect of the collection is the attention to Māori garments, notably two essays looking at cloaks, kahu – albeit items of the elite.
Some of the essays draw on and make impressive use of very limited sources – Roseanna Livingstone & Valerie Carson’s piece on ‘heirloom’ dresses disassembled for the voyage to colonial New Zealand draws on very subtle and informed reading of the handful that survive. Similarly, Patricia Te Arapo Wallace presents sophisticated readings of the uses of colour in eighteenth-century cloaks, while Jennifer Quérée’s explorations of the sealskin clothing made by a group of castaways from the 1890s in New Zealand sub-Antarctic Auckland Islands complements the patchy written records to consider garments well beyond most considerations of clothing history.
Other essays deal with highly performative aspects of garments – Katie Pickles on the kilt as a marker of identity, Deborah Montgomerie’s discussion of glamour in wartime, and Charlotte Macdonald on the uniforms worn by competitive marching teams for instance. Others consider much more mundane questions including Labrum’s on hand-me –downs, Caroline Daley’s discussion of beach wear, the quintessentially New Zealand question of the black singlet, an item of working manhood, is unpicked impressively by Stephanie Gibson while Fiona McKergow delves into clothes shopping in the provincial centre that is Palmerston North. As well as these there are important considerations of clothing collection – David Butts on public collections in museums and Jane Malthus on a vital private collection of high fashion from the 1950s through the 1980s. This question of collections is also an aspect of perhaps the most intriguing essay, Awhina Tamarapa’s discussion of a contemporary (as in twentieth-century) cloak – a kahu waero, or dog skin cloak, where Tamarapa in effect builds it genealogy and ownership within one family before being the kahu was deposited for ‘safety’ in a museum collection.
These essays barely scratch the surface, and in doing so show the rich potential for clothing history to tell us vital things well beyond the technical questions of the garments. Part of that value comes from the juxtaposition of university- and museum-based scholars, and part from the rich evidence readings that are made possible by combining technical questions of textile and garment production with social history’ concerns with meaning.
The editors have done well to assemble a diverse set of contributors, academic historians and curators (who we might consider professional historians), to explore aspects of Aotearoa New Zealand’s clothing history. (In the interests of transparency here also I should note that Bronwyn Labrum is an old friend of decades standing, and former flat mate; I note also that I have always been impressed by her scholarship, and especially her work in material culture.) Alongside the presence of the ordinary, or at least ordinary people’s clothing, a welcome aspect of the collection is the attention to Māori garments, notably two essays looking at cloaks, kahu – albeit items of the elite.
Some of the essays draw on and make impressive use of very limited sources – Roseanna Livingstone & Valerie Carson’s piece on ‘heirloom’ dresses disassembled for the voyage to colonial New Zealand draws on very subtle and informed reading of the handful that survive. Similarly, Patricia Te Arapo Wallace presents sophisticated readings of the uses of colour in eighteenth-century cloaks, while Jennifer Quérée’s explorations of the sealskin clothing made by a group of castaways from the 1890s in New Zealand sub-Antarctic Auckland Islands complements the patchy written records to consider garments well beyond most considerations of clothing history.
Other essays deal with highly performative aspects of garments – Katie Pickles on the kilt as a marker of identity, Deborah Montgomerie’s discussion of glamour in wartime, and Charlotte Macdonald on the uniforms worn by competitive marching teams for instance. Others consider much more mundane questions including Labrum’s on hand-me –downs, Caroline Daley’s discussion of beach wear, the quintessentially New Zealand question of the black singlet, an item of working manhood, is unpicked impressively by Stephanie Gibson while Fiona McKergow delves into clothes shopping in the provincial centre that is Palmerston North. As well as these there are important considerations of clothing collection – David Butts on public collections in museums and Jane Malthus on a vital private collection of high fashion from the 1950s through the 1980s. This question of collections is also an aspect of perhaps the most intriguing essay, Awhina Tamarapa’s discussion of a contemporary (as in twentieth-century) cloak – a kahu waero, or dog skin cloak, where Tamarapa in effect builds it genealogy and ownership within one family before being the kahu was deposited for ‘safety’ in a museum collection.
These essays barely scratch the surface, and in doing so show the rich potential for clothing history to tell us vital things well beyond the technical questions of the garments. Part of that value comes from the juxtaposition of university- and museum-based scholars, and part from the rich evidence readings that are made possible by combining technical questions of textile and garment production with social history’ concerns with meaning.
Displaying 1 of 1 review