SOUTH Fashion…
The company you keep
As iD Dunedin Fashion nears, Sara Munro from Company of Strangers talks about the label and what it’s like creating in the southern city.
By Gavin Bertram
Of the multiple facets of running a fashion label and corresponding retail outlet, there are two that Sara Munro particularly loves.
The first is with the physical creation of a piece after its design, and the recognition that it’s going to work. It’s a feeling anyone creative can relate to – the act of bringing to life something that’s previously existed only in the conceptual realm.
The second thing the Company of Strangers founder loves comes much later, validating all those decisions that helped shape the final garment.
“At the other end is seeing someone walking along the street wearing it,” Munro says. “I was in Sydney once, and was walking behind this woman and realised she was wearing one of our dresses and had one of our bags as well. I said to my husband, ‘I don’t even know her!’ She’d actually invested her hard earned money in that.”
On a quiet Friday before students return to the city, the Dunedin designer is at her Company Store on George Street’s Edinburgh Row.
Bathed in the morning sun, the upstairs space has a relaxed, inviting aura. They’ve only inhabited it a few months, having previously been in a smaller, darker, street level shop opposite for a decade.
She wanted to slow down the retail experience, so customers could relax without distraction and actually enjoy the shopping experience.
In the store are Company of Strangers’ own timeless, sophisticated garments and jewellery, alongside other carefully selected brands.
The shift has meant that while the Company Store no longer has a street presence, it feels like something of an oasis away from the noise of traffic and pedestrians.
“We used to stand in our old store and look up at the light in here,” Munro says. “There were many reasons for wanting to move. Mostly, we’ve been making clothes for 14 years, and we take a lot of time and really consider each design. We wanted our retail space to reflect the time investment in the products, and the quality.”
The emphasis on quality has been a Company of Strangers hallmark since Munro launched the label in 2008. Although in retrospect it was inevitable that she would strike out on her own, the route to that decision was slightly circuitous.
Interested in fashion and other creative endeavors when she was young, Munro completed the Otago Polytechnic fashion design degree after leaving school during the mid-1990s.
Later she left Dunedin and gained industry experience in Sydney and Wellington, before returning to her hometown to work for Margi Robertson at Nom*D.
It was her dream job, but after seven years she decided to pursue another dream.
“The idea had been ticking away, so I went to art school,” Munro recalls. “I lasted for two weeks. I thought, ‘what are you doing? You have a child, you need to earn money’. And I started making bags and selling those, and jewellery. It gave me enough to live on. I can’t sit still for very long so it quickly snowballed into more.”
Along with being creative when she was young, Munro harboured an interest in commerce.
An anecdote reveals something about both herself and fellow Dunedin designer Charmaine Reveley.
“I set up a market in the Octagon when I was kid and sold painted pots,” she says. “And funnily enough, Charmaine did exactly the same thing! We obviously had this love of making something, and selling it so someone else can take it home and enjoy it.”
There was no revelatory moment that sparked her interest in fashion, but Munro remembers seeing Madonna on a music show and trying to replicate something she wore.
Rather than wanting to mimic the star, the exercise was more about trying to figure out how to make something.
That problem solving impulse remains central to the Company of Strangers’ ethos.
“You’re constantly problem solving,” Munro says. “In the fashion industry, you’re constantly recreating and reinventing every time you make something.”
The three years studying fashion at Otago Polytechnic offered a good grounding in how to navigate the unpredictable rigors of the creative process.
While her friends at university seemed to have a lot of time to mess around, she was working almost 9-5 at the old fashion school on Dunedin’s Tennyson Street. It was fun, but it was also hard.
“It was live and breathe the course,” Munro says. “They really push you. It was hard but I loved it, and we had a lot of great lecturers.”
Further important education came when she gained real industry experience, and learnt a lot quickly.
Although Munro had a great foundation in the fashion business when Company of Strangers was born, there were still challenges.
Early frustrations included being patronised during meetings with the bank, but those encounters were treated as challenges to be overcome rather than insurmountable obstacles.
“If you want to make something happen, you’ll make it happen,” Munro reflects. “If you need money you’ll figure out how to get it. The fashion business is a hustle, and it’s no different to any other hustle.”
That attitude served her well when she began making and selling the first bags, which were forged from vintage leather jackets.
The business soon grew from accessories and jewellery into a highly respected clothing label. Initially, the range emerged because Munro needed clothes herself.
That motivation is often still the seed for Company of Strangers’ designs. The ideas are open ended though, and may be held onto for several years, or elaborated on in later collections.
“We’re not looking at what trends are, we’re making things that you can wear forever,” Munro says. “We’re designing things for next winter or possibly the winter after that, or the summer after that. If great ideas come up, we think ‘that was a good one, let’s hold onto that for later’.”
In the studio, she has worked closely with Amelia Hope for 10 years, gradually developing a unique design vocabulary.
Munro says that she is the big ideas person, while Hope focuses on the details. Their creative process relies on a lot of back-and-forth discussion as ideas are fine-tuned.
“Sometimes when we’re prototyping one design, it might get made eight times before it’s correct,” she explains.
iD Dunedin Fashion wasn’t around when Munro was studying design, but the annual event has been part of the Company of Strangers’ journey since the label’s genesis.
As well as regularly showing her new collections on the runway, she’s been on the judging panel for the iD Dunedin Fashion Emerging Designer Awards.
With the last few years of the event being Covid affected, and a return to its traditional venue at the Dunedin Railway Station, Munro believes this year’s iD will be huge.
“In Dunedin there’s not a lot of events of that scale that aren’t sports,” she says. “It’s always well attended because it’s something different, and celebrates the beginning of design with the Emerging Designers, and also the established designers. It’s a nice opportunity for everyone to come together and celebrate design.”
iD Dunedin Fashion: Dunedin Railway Station, Friday, March 31/ Saturday, April 1.
