DOMESTIC TRAVEL
THE STYLE FILES
WORDS: CLAIRE MCCALL • IMAGERY: MARCEL TROMP
A walking tour takes in central Auckland’s fashionable past
The owner of the Man Yuan Restaurant on central Auckland’s Victoria Street West, where faded photographs of hand-rolled soup noodles and dumplings draw in only the most enlightened locals, doesn’t know whether to look bemused or confused as a small group of women, bright Blunt umbrellas set against the rain, peer intently at the shopfront from the kerbside. Where now the ambience is unremarkable and the tiled floors and pink walls utilitarian, there was once a fashion store that caused much ado with its on-trend clothing and novel approach to retailing. Hullabaloo had a very dark, calm interior, spot-lit with Tiffany lamps and decorated with black French wallpaper festooned with birds and magnolias. It was the ‘Swinging Sixties’ and owner Isabel Harris had emulated a moody style that had blown her away in Sydney. Hullabaloo was a raging success. “It was so cool, it was ultra. I ate Marmite on toast for months to save up for one of their dresses,” remembers Helen Cunliffe Garner, one of the hardy souls who braved the weather to participate in a walk around Auckland’s inner city, stopping at properties that played a key role in our fashionable past. ‘Walk the Walk: A history of fashion in the city’ guided tours are hosted by fashion historian Doris de Pont ONZM, former designer and founder of the New Zealand Fashion Museum. She has put together a collection of 33 stops on an hour-long walking route that travels through the once-bustling couturier and manufacturing area centring on Queen and Elliott Streets as well as the High Street district – and from a post-war era right up to the 1980s.
42 Winter 2018
Heritage New Zealand
