Auckland Central has traditionally been the home, and engine, of the New Zealand fashion industry. From High Street to Ponsonby Road, Britomart to Commercial Bay, Karangahape to Jervois, it’s where many local brands, established and emerging have opened flagship boutiques, flirted with pop up stores, and where many also have workrooms or offices. Hideously rising rents are changing the landscape, but the electorate has, for better or worse, helped shape and grow our local fashion industry.
Politically, it is also an influential seat with a history of high-profile representatives and candidates: National’s Nikki Kaye, Alliance’s Sandra Lee, Labour’s Judith Tizard and Jacinda Ardern. The Greens’ Chlöe Swarbrick is Auckland Central’s current MP, having spectacularly won in 2020; this election she is up against several others, including her main competition, Labour’s Oscar Sims and National’s Mahesh Muralidhar, vying for the privilege to represent one of New Zealand’s most interesting electorates. (It’s not the fashion luvvies that make it important: it is the youngest electorate in the country and is growing six times faster than the rest of Auckland; it has Aotearoa’s highest population density and is a literal representation of the changing, diverse face of the country.)
We love Auckland. We’ve spotlighted this electorate before. In 2020 we asked the three main Auckland Central candidates to share where they liked to spend their time and money. “Policy is of course important – but the personal is political,” we wrote then, hoping to show the ‘real’ people wanting to represent AC.
This time, we’ve taken a different approach: I invited the three key candidates, Chlöe, Mahesh and Oscar, to join me at NZ Fashion Week: Kahuria.
I was interested to see what the initial response would be (they were all very open to the idea) and how they might behave at the event (all a little fish out of water, but all respectful and intrigued). But also, NZFW is and has long been a tentpole event that brings buzz and business to the city that they all want to represent.
So, the same week Parliament sat for the last time this term and days before National and Labour officially kicked off their campaigns, I took three fashion week dates to different fashion week events – to hear their vision for Auckland Central, and see what they’d turn up wearing.
• Aotearoa’s general election will be held on Saturday October 14 – check your electorate, and that you’re enrolled to vote, here
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Mahesh Muralidhar (National) attends Kathryn Wilson
Mahesh is wearing an Armani jacket, a favourite pair of Diesel jeans, a Waiheke T-shirt and a Tudor watch. He fits in here: the crowd for Kathryn Wilson’s show is dressed up for a fab night out, and when I meet up with him outside the NZFW venue, he’s talking to Paula Bennett.
The 43-year-old tech entrepreneur and venture capitalist lives in Herne Bay, having returned to NZ in 2021 after years of building his career overseas; (including a role at startup Canva, an app that the majority of NZFW attendees would probably use everyday. But the city, he says, is home: he was a student at Auckland Uni (his bio makes note of being one of the first baristas at Starbucks on Queen Street) and lived in Auckland for eight years before heading overseas. “I know Fort Street. I know Mount Street, I know Queen Street; I’ve lived in different parts. I'd like to think I'm a reflection of Auckland Central. I'm an adopted son of New Zealand.”
Mahesh – whose campaign office is on Ponsonby Road – has been involved with National for three years, and has been clear in his ambition from the start. “I told my wife 10 years ago, in Australia on our second date, that I wanted to come home and serve the country. She didn't believe me, but here we are,” he says. “I remember the first time I started hanging out with people in the National Party, I told them I was gonna run. I’m very like, ‘hey, this is what I'm gonna do’. I’m very conscious.”
We’re inside the venue having a drink – him, merlot, me, Champagne – as we wait for the doors to open to Kathryn Wilson’s show. Why National, I ask. “I actually thought about it very carefully. I went through all the philosophies and so forth. And for me, limited government is an important principle. I think power always corrupts. Being in a position where you are leaning towards giving away power, especially for New Zealand given how much money we spend on welfare and that we have a strong compassionate society. We are set up for power to coalesce.” He talks about trusting communities and individuals, “because we're very proud of who we are as Kiwis, each individual opinion”.
The key issues for Auckland Central, he says, are not those he thought he’d be addressing “but they are issues that have to be addressed. Unfortunately, it’s crime. I think they're still not acknowledging how bad it is”. Businesses and residents feel scared, he says, and he has never heard language like that in NZ before. “Initially when you hear it you think there’s some hyperbole or hubris, but there's not. People are genuinely scared.”
Mahesh’s other key issues are Auckland Transport and, specific to Auckland Central, social housing (“I have worked with individuals where social housing is not working, and also broader society is struggling with it.”).
“I’m very comfortable saying, if Auckland Central is not winning, New Zealand’s not winning. I think I can say that about this electorate more than most. You have to fix crime in Auckland Central,” he says. He wants an extra police station downtown. He feels that Wellington has not been “seeing Auckland Central properly”, and name drops his National predecessor in the seat, Nikki Kaye, as making sure that it was seen and heard in the capital.
“We're losing our people, in droves,” he says when I ask him about the challenges facing Auckland Central retail, specific to the local fashion industry. “New Zealand needs to fight and make an argument for top people to come back home.”
This concept of ambition is a party line for National too. As we wait for the doors to open, Mahesh speaks about the “larger than New Zealand mindset” of a startup – “our fashion brands should be global from day one” – and fashion week aspiring to be a global fashion event. “There's this thing on Common Room where I talk about how we need to be more ambitious. I don't think Kiwis are being ambitious and brave enough,” he says. “Like when I speak to tangata whenua, the Māori economy, let’s go global. Let's go! There's a world to play in and we're so lucky for what we have.”
“What do you think about that?” asks Mahesh.
As if by divine intervention, designer Juliette Hogan, who has grown her brand with a hyper local focus, appears.
“Are you expecting relationships or sales out of this?” he asks her, seeming genuinely curious. Yes, she responds; also explaining what it means to show at NZFW as a young designer versus an established brand that has been in business for almost 20 years.
“We were just talking about how New Zealand brands could go even bigger. What could the government do to help?” asks Mahesh. Juliette is blunt in her response – it has not been hugely supportive in terms of investing in fashion as an industry, despite its cultural contribution – but is soon interrupted by someone in a bright blue dress. Paula Bennett is back, this time with a friend in a caramel-hued blouse.
“We're a little bit of a fan. So we saw him and thought we'd come and say hi,” says Paula, of Mahesh. He introduces me and chats to both as I farewell Juliette, then asks me to take a photo of the trio; I realise later, after he posts it, that the friend is actually Amanda Luxon, wife of Chris.
As they head off, I ask Mahesh what he brings to the race that the other candidates don't. “Well, I'm 43. I've been a senior executive, I've lived overseas. I'm deeply local with global experience. I've helped build one of the great startup technology stories of the last decade. And my focus and priority is Auckland Central; my suspicion is that's not the case for all the other candidates. I just need Auckland Central winning,” he says. “And Zoe, I'm done. I don't have anything to prove. I don't need any extra things done you know, this is my last chapter I just want to solve. So, I think there's clarity and there's a level of senior executive experience.”
I introduce him to NZFW owner Feroz Ali (who also owns Whitecliffe, situated on Symonds Street in the heart of Auckland Central) as we head in to take our seats; they shake hands enthusiastically and Mahesh passes on his business card.
During the show he turns and questions, quite astutely, if the shoes on the runway are made here (they’re not, I say, it’s near impossible to manufacture footwear locally at scale). Earlier he wondered where I thought the local fashion industry fell politically; it’s probably an even split between left and right, I replied diplomatically (I actually have no idea). “What about yourself?” Mahesh asks at one point. “What would you like for Auckland Central?”
Chlöe Swarbrick (the Greens) attends Moving the Dial on Diversity panel discussion, presented by the Ministry of Social Development
Chlöe has been here before. She famously ran for Auckland Central in 2020 with a community and youth driven campaign that saw her win, by a slim margin, a ‘surprise’ that she hopes to repeat come October 14. She’s also literally been here, at fashion week, at this venue, before: the Twenty-seven Names show in 2015, the one on the wharf when it rained. Today we’re sitting not far from that spot, outside the NZFW venue on the concrete Tidal Steps in Karanga Plaza looking out on the cityscape.
The night before NZ’s fashion media sat right here watching the Zambesi show at dusk but this morning it’s just Chlöe and I, with a couple of other early birds taking in the crisp early morning sun. At one point chef Peter Gordon walks down the steps behind her; he’s wearing Red Bands and walking his two dogs. It feels like a sign of how sophisticated, in its own unique way, our city is (or can be).
“I've lived here my whole adult life,” she says, talking about the vibrancy of a grown up city and her happiness at seeing the space being used. “I genuinely and very earnestly love the city with my whole heart.”
Chlöe has always been adjacent to NZ fashion: she had her own fashion brand, The Lucid Collective, from 2012-2015 (it even showed during but not officially part of NZFW in 2014). She ran an online magazine called What’s Good for a few years (that’s why she was at NZFW in 2015).
And she genuinely buys and wears pieces from small local brands, preferably NZ-made. Today she’s wearing a long oversized grey coat by Gloria, over a grey secondhand cardigan from Crushes with a corduroy I Love Ugly cap.
The day before the Green MP spoke at the opening of the Auckland Climate Festival, and the day before that she was in parliament; the last sitting day of the parliamentary term. After attending this NZFW panel talk with me, she’ll dash off to a family celebration. She’s busy, and there was a bit of back and forth to lock in this meeting (“I mean, I can't believe they compute for school holidays, but not for New Zealand Fashion Week,” she says of the parliamentary calendar; wry humour that I absolutely approve of).
That busyness is a criticism that has been levelled at Chlöe by other Auckland Central candidates as a perceived lack of focus on local issues. It really reflects her high-profile position within her party, and Aotearoa politics and culture at large – even in her incognito corduroy cap with her hair pulled up into it, she receives a few double takes as we make our way into the venue to take our seats for the panel.
“Hopefully, at this point, I'm a pretty proven quantity,” Chlöe says of what she offers as Auckland Central’s MP. “I get the work done.” She references her ongoing work and success to save the St James Theatre (a genuine city treasure that has been the venue for some of NZFW’s most iconic moments) as an example of tangible development for the city, plus an ability to work with national and local government while “rallying and bringing together so many members of the business community, the education community or just the community community”. She does not mention her public pushback against proposed council cuts, and clear communication and visibility during the Auckland floods.
Give her a topic as a runway and Chlöe can really talk, so it feels fitting that we’re attending one of NZFW’s discussion panels. This one is being hosted by content creator Jess Molina and presented by the Ministry of Social Development to highlight diversity and enhancing inclusivity in the workplace; Chlöe nods in agreement to many of the points made by the panellists.
Earlier, I raised fashion and retail spaces within the Auckland Central electorate, specifically in the CBD, and she knows exactly what I’m getting at.
“I think that when we're talking about retail – and about hospitality and vibrancy – we're talking about the ability of small business, and particularly young local creatives, to get a foot in the door. Commercial spaces, I think, are a really important part of that.”
It’s a conversation she says she has had “ad nauseam, many, many, many, many, many times” with Eke Panuku, who now hold the keys to implementing the City Centre Master Plan, with Auckland Council, with both our past and new mayor, with business associations like Heart of the City, Ponsonby Business Association and Karangahape Road Business Association. She also once put questions to David Parker (Labour’s former revenue minister) – and I will quote her in full here because it hurts my brain to paraphrase and I think you deserve it in full Chlöe cadence – around the “changes that were made to stop the speculation on residential property around tax deductibility, proposing that it should also be applied to commercial property. Because when you see the vacancies that you do along, for example, Waihorotiu Queen Street, that to me is actually the privatisation of profit and the socialisation of cost – that dents our opportunity for vibrancy and produces so many other issues”.
She references Christchurch’s Gap Filler, which began as a social enterprise in the midst of the response to the earthquake, as a model of success that Auckland Council should adopt – taking on the risk of quick vetting tenants, and providing short term peppercorn leases to those who would do innovative and creative things – and trying to get the council to unlock some of the real estate it owns on Queen Street, “but they're so risk averse because they perceive that they are going to generate a potential health and safety hazard”.
Then, she really takes off and I sit there introvertly listening to her talk about the current angst about bureaucracy and consultants and how that relates to privatisation since the 80s and the creation of layers of management and a fear of decision making and risk and how no one person being responsible for anything going wrong also means that no one can be responsible for anything going right.
“I get really frustrated when I hear politicians simultaneously talking about how they want to devolve power down to people and resources down to people and how they want to shrink the size of the bureaucracy, but they don't seem to wrap their head around what that actually means to do in practice – which is to have a greater tolerance and appetite for risk and things going wrong.”
We talk briefly about the thrill of just trying shit out – which is how a lot of our biggest fashion brands began. It’s also part of Chlöe’s creation story: youthful years of organising and community building across the city, and a frustration at seeing her creative friends try to do things and come against barriers before deciding to move overseas “so that they could earn more money, have a lower cost of living and operate in a city with functional public transport and decent arts and culture and nightlife”.
That is something she has been advocating to change ever since, whether it be by running for mayor, standing for the Greens or as Auckland Central MP. “This is home. I genuinely believe so much in the people in the city and the cool stuff that does happen, but I just hate that right now it has to happen against the grain and my job is to try and change that grain.”
Chlöe was voted in as the Auckland Central candidate at the end of 2020. The city was already in the midst of a number of rollouts of Government pandemic responses – like emergency transitional housing, support for businesses and the start of the experience of house price inflation “as a result of unconventional monetary policy”. Three years on, she says the ramifications of that are being seen, with wealth inequality and some of the antisocial behaviour that can manifest from those challenges.
“People are understandably very concerned on the day to day and not necessarily on those larger challenges, like for example, climate change, despite having felt the immediate impacts of them at the beginning of this year,” she says. “The real challenge that I have, and I'm obviously taking it on because I'm in, is to try and help us all lift our gaze to understand that the enemy is not each other, but it is the system which produces these outcomes.”
We’re sitting outside of NZ Fashion Week, of course the wheels falling off of late-stage capitalism comes up (I did ask about how people should respond or deal with the fearful tone of the current election campaign, versus the hope of the last; her answer is a very on brand “community building, which also has a benefit of feeling fucking awesome because you get to work with people and achieve stuff on a grassroots level”. She’s talking about small-scale stuff like community gardens, tree planting, street clean ups; actual physical connective work).
But back to the campaign, and her bid to keep her electoral seat... She is not one to throw stones, she says pragmatically of what she offers over the other candidates, but she hopes that people know that they will never be guessing what she thinks or feels, or about the things she values and will fight for. “That’s meant that I’ve taken a stand on stuff that other political candidates, particularly during the 2020 election in Auckland Central, weren't necessarily willing to – around wealth inequality, around Protect Pūtiki for example, and other crucial local issues.”
“That's one of the really important things that we need to expect from our local politicians: to get involved in the stuff that is challenging, that is gritty. That we will resolve those problems by bringing people together, or at the very least, by being explicit about where we stand and then approaching that in the least antagonistic way possible,” she says.
“This has always been my point about Auckland: we've got the building blocks to be everything that we want to be. We just have all of these systems that disable that creativity from becoming the norm. So that's why I do what I do,” she says. “I live here, I work here, I love it here. This is my place. I have a very vested interest in that.”
Oscar Sims (Labour) attends Juliette Hogan
Oscar’s slogan T-shirt is simple and on brand: it bears a cityscape of Auckland and the logo for The Coalition for More Homes, the organisation that Oscar has been a spokesperson for. It is also a key part of his message as Labour’s pick for Auckland Central candidate, following in the footsteps of Helen White and Jacinda Ardern.
Oscar is passionate about making the city attractive and liveable. Described as a high-density and housing activist, he’s an apartment advocate who lives in the CBD’s 40-storey Metropolis building. Like campaigning, he has been doing this work – like acting as treasurer for the Auckland City Centre Residents’ Group – alongside his day job as a software developer (which he was still working full time when we met, though he’s since finished up).
“Personally it is housing and renting, and making that an option that doesn't break the bank account,” he says of the electorate’s key issues that he’s advocating for. “We've had this transition in New Zealand where a lot more people are renters now because of the way that the housing market has been for so long. This Labour government has done a lot of work to make that more pleasant: things like the healthy home standards.” But there’s more work to do, he says: housing affordability, building better housing and urban design, walkable and bikeable cities.
Outside of the Viaduct Events Centre where we meet, I introduce Oscar to Emily Miller Sharma, general manager of Ruby and co-founder of Mindful Fashion NZ. She asks him about his campaign office, but he explains, slightly awkwardly, that he doesn’t have one; he’s focusing his energy, and campaign funds, on other areas. The reality of paying exorbitant rent for a space feels like a very Gen Z challenge, which of course, Oscar is – something that he and Labour are banking on.
“I think there was a recognition in the party that we wanted someone young, someone new,” says the 25-year-old of his standing in what is the youngest seat in the country. He is one of the youngest candidates standing in this election.
“There is, I think, an increasing recognition in New Zealand that we need a stronger youth voice in our parliament. It's called the House of Representatives for a reason. It's to represent people. It's not just about picking the best 65-year-old senior managers from the commanding heights of business. It's actually about representing ordinary people,” he says. “When we look at the future of the New Zealand economy, I think having more people who understand artificial intelligence, for example, in our parliament, will be quite a good thing.”
That’s a global concern – or opportunity, depending on how you look at it – but Oscar hopes to bring what he describes as a hyper local focus to his campaign to win Auckland Central. “It's a really interesting seat, really diverse and has lots of different local issues,” he says. “That's what a local MP does: focus on those local issues.”
As well as his beloved housing, Oscar says safety is a big issue for the electorate, particularly in the city centre; he wants to advocate for the return of an inner city police station. Making sure people feel safe, he says, is partly what will reinvigorate retail in the city too. “I think we've done a reasonably good job. Over Covid there was pretty good support. It wasn't perfect, but we've maintained a lot of that vibrancy and I think that the city centre has come back to life considerably since,” he says. “I lived here during the lockdowns and it was terrible; there was no one here. It was a ghost town. But I think the life is returning and that's really good to see.”
He also talks about the issues facing Waiheke in particular, including ferries and protection of the Hauraki Gulf, and the big projects, like the City Centre Masterplan and City Rail Link, that have and will be transformative in shaping the electorate for years to come.
“That's been a big problem historically in Auckland: people come into the city centre but parking is difficult. We want to get people out of that mindset and have a public transport system that works – like any other serious major city does.”
As we take our seats for Juliette Hogan’s show, Oscar spots content creator Jess Molina sitting opposite us across the very wide runway; they have mutual friends and he knows her via friends and parties at the Metropolis apartment block he calls home. He says that he would not describe himself as a fashionista, but is more excited by the event bringing colour and vibrancy to the city. He also loves the variety of what the role entails: attending an event like NZFW one night, and an art festival or business lunch the next.
“My pitch to people has been a laser focus on local issues,” he says. “Chlöe Swarbrick, she's well known, she's a big name. She's kind of the de facto leader of the Green Party. She isn't the leader, but basically, and she is a spokesperson on a lot of different issues for them; she goes on national media and talks about that. That's fine – but I think the role of a local MP is to be that voice for those local issues. I'm a representative of the electorate with my age.”
