UNDONE at iD

Against a backdrop of Dunedin’s St Clair beach, Thread attended the iD Fashion Breakfast for label UNDONE by young designer duo Elise Barnes and Rachel Webb…

Hotel St Clair – on the "Gold Coast of Dunedin" as my taxi driver informed me – played host to the Fashionable Breakfast Series as part of iD Dunedin 2013. Thread attended the iD Fashion Breakfast for young designer label, UNDONE on Day 3 and the Day 4 Fashionable Breakfast featuring fashion photographer Emily Hlavac Green.

UNDONE is a team of two young designers, Elise Barnes and Rachel Webb. They met doing their Bachelor of Design degrees at Otago Polytechnic, and have since set about creating their label together.

Elise grew up on a farm outside Invercargill and entered and won young designer at Hokonui, and went on to NZFW. She loved this experience, and approached Rachel, another small-town girl hailing from Tapanui in Otago, to join forces and produce a collction together.

The next stage was finding a studio – the smallest space in a Dunedin historic building. "Really a cupboard" laughs Rachel, and they started building the first collection in May 2011.

UNDONE is the combination of Elise’s romantic feminine style with Rachel’s edgy style – they have a focus on merging soft and hard; romantic and bad ass. UNDONE produce a commercial line and a bespoke line, using leathers.

The AW 2012 collection was inspired by poetry and art. Ideas of contradictions and complements are strong in UNDONE; they combine the dark and moody with the romantic and feminine.

Elise and Rachel showed their graduate collections in 2011 at ID, then at iD in 2012 showed their colaborative collection for the first time. From a background as dressing backstage it was exciting to see it on the stage, Elise said.

Jimi Hendrix, Bob Dylan – lovers and rockers, and their music- inspired SS13. They worked with artist John Tom to create works of art for the launch.

The future plan is to steadily build stockists up – they curently have five in New Zealand – and building on their image. They gave us a sneak peek of the Mustang Running collection inspired by the Wild West. Their muse "always falls in love with a ‘bad boy’, and this time, he’s a cowboy!"

Megan Robinson 14 March 2013