Bouncing Back

Ask fabulous Auckland fashion designer Laurinda Sutcliffe why she named her new brand, ‘Loobie’s Story’, and her eyes light up and she begins to tell the most inspiring tale of reinvention.

Model wearing Cafe Jacket & May 24th Dress


Australian born, mid 40s, petite, dynamic and driven, Laurinda is the very epitome of the successful fashion businesswoman. She knows the streets and fashion boutiques of London, New York and Paris like the back of her hand. She has her own effortless fashion style, mixing her own creations with the great brand names of the world; yet somehow also managing to be a wife and mother in a cohesive family unit.

Laurinda came to New Zealand from her hometown of Sydney 20 years ago, headhunted by Auckland fashion house, High Society. A big change for her – to go against the flow across the Tasman, but the package was good. So began a 20-year fulfilling career launching some of New Zealand’s leading fashion brands. And it was here that she began a life partnership with husband Brent, also a fashion trader.

Perfect! But this idyllic image was suddenly rocked in 2009 when Laurinda was made redundant because the company she’d been with for nearly her entire fashion career made cutbacks.

And if this wasn’t enough of a shock, the redundancy coincided with the completion of the sale of her husband Brent’s business. Suddenly, both were unemployed.

“I was stunned to find that I was so disposable! It was hugely damaging to my confidence,” says Laurinda. After years of such a high energy, all-encompassing work life, suddenly I didn’t have to get up and go to work. For a while I really didn’t know what to do. The day after I finished work, I swept the kitchen floor about 10 times before midday, I was so lost,.”
The cruel irony is that after years of Laurinda and Brent balancing extreme workloads, international travel and sales meetings, they’d finally come to the decision that for the sake of their son Alexander, one of them needed to step off the treadmill and take the job of managing the family. It was Brent who put up his hand for that role and had made the decision to sell his business.

“He’d signed the final papers only a week before I was told I was redundant,” says Laurinda. “It was too late to turn back the clock and the sale went through. The timing couldn’t have been worse.”

Now, from a helter-skelter daily schedule, and sometimes only meeting in transit to and from the fashion capitals, the couple had way too much time on their hands and although there was money in the bank, they were both a long way from planning retirement.

And so they spent some time denying the obvious, both considering jobs and other career options before finally succumbing to the inevitable –  their new business and fashion label ‘Loobie’s Story’ was born.

“I really wasn’t going to do my own label and, in fact, redundancy came as such a jolt to my confidence,” says Laurinda. “But suddenly there was this amazing convergence of brilliant minds, circumstances and encouragement that was at the same time both humbling and energising ... we needed fate to take over and it did,” she said.

The first of a series of heart warming coincidences was when she went for a walk with a friend, a brand strategist from their neighbourhood of Westmere and Laurinda discussed her plans to create a new label. Her friend immediately signed up for the cause, offering to help in any way she could.

Laurinda was then introduced to another Westmere resident – a brilliant rag trader who had been based in Hong Kong for 15 years sourcing garment production for leading European department stores, but was now living two minutes down the road. This contact was simply a ‘Godsend’ who offered to open up supply channels in China for the proposed label.

In turn, Laurinda was put in touch with a Kiwi graphic designer living in Berlin. They clicked immediately and spent an amazing 36 hours in Paris together, planning the vision and details of the new brand.

The final piece of the puzzle fell into place when an Australian distributor they’d worked with in the past dropped everything to take the new brand – actually resigning some other labels to clear the decks – and giving Laurinda and Brent the best possible access to the all-important Australian marketplace.

Miraculously, their network was complete.

“It really was the most amazingly gratifying thing to find that so many people were prepared to give their time and energy to help,” says Laurinda.

“My life had been so busy with my previous job that all my networks were through my work. When I lost my job, it seemed all those networks were lost, but then I found all kinds of help and support coming from this other network, my local community, that I’d never paid much attention to before.”

Of course, the first major question that Laurinda and Brent had to answer was what to call the brand. They decided on ‘Loobie’s Story’.

The label’s meaning is simple enough; Loobie is Brent’s nickname for Laurinda and they wanted the label to reflect their own journey through fashion, their lives, loves and passions and in particular the amazing story of how the brand came about.

Laurinda says there is a lot of feel-good factor in the collection. “I wanted the label to reflect my style as much as my lifestyle and that of my friends,” says Laurinda.

The resulting inaugural Loobie’s Story Spring/Summer collection is full of colour and exciting detail. “I’ve tried to bring the vibrancy and energy of my own personality to the collection, which is manifested through colour, print and a lot of attention to detail.”

“Many of us have such busy lives maybe with primary school age children, a career or maybe re-entering the work-force so we need a wardrobe that can multi task as we do. And that means pieces can be effortlessly dressed up or down; outfits that you can wear from the time you get up until the time you go to bed and still look good. Loobie’s Story is all about just that; taking garments and reinventing them to suit what’s on for you that day.

“It’s also about flattering and easy shapes, fabrics and colours that will make you look and feel gorgeous but not self conscious. It’s about clothes that are easy to care for with the minimum of fuss, in natural fibres that are beautiful and special but functional too.”

Laurinda and Brent ran a focus group drawn from Laurinda’s network within Westmere, inviting 15 women from the local school community. Each was asked to bring three garments from their wardrobe that they loved. “We had wine and cheese and got all the girls to stand up and say ‘why I like this’, ‘why I like that’ and ‘what’s special about it’, and it gave us an incredible insight into what women actually want and what they find difficult about finding clothing.”

Despite their growing confidence, both Laurinda and Brent kept as low a profile as possible until now.

“I have to confess that we kept the whole project under wraps until we’d shown it to our customers and we had achieved that first success,” says Laurinda. “After such a shock of redundancy, I felt I had something to prove – to myself and to the industry – to do it myself, on my terms.

And Laurinda is also grateful to have such a loyal partner in Brent. “I couldn’t have done it without Brent’s absolute belief in me and the reassurance of his successful small business experience to guide me,” Laurinda says.

“Our slogan is Loobie’s Story: ‘A Life Well Lived’,” she says. “It is for women having great lives and who’ve had their kids, lived and gained experience and are devoting more time to themselves.

“It is about coming to terms with who you are and who you want to be.”

Paul Blomfield
www.paulblomfield.com