All posts tagged: New Zealand

Tunnel beach, Dunedin thedreamstress.com

Travels in New Zealand: Tunnel Beach, Dunedin

I spent last week in Dunedin, which was quite lovely, as I’ve never really had the opportunity to be a tourist in New Zealand. I had lots of fun adventures, and I’ll be blogging a few of them. This one started the minute I got off the plane. Airport corridors in New Zealand are plastered with panoramic views of local scenic spots, and little stories about them. De-planeing in Dunedin, I caught a few sentences of one story “the tunnel was hand-carved through meters of solid rock” “workers were forbidden from using the beach” “his daughter bathed in privacy” “local mermaid sightings increased.” (sadly I didn’t get photos because of all the impatient people de-planeing with me, so if you happen to be in the Dunedin International Airport (aka the tiny building in the cow pasture) and can photograph or transcribe the actual story for me, you’d be my hero!) Intrigued, I asked my hosts about the story. “Oh, that’s Tunnel Beach! We’re going to take you there!” This is the story I compiled from …

An Anne of Green Gables in New Plymouth photoshoot

Published by The Dreamstress

Last Monday was Labour Day in New Zealand, so it was a long weekend. A couple of friends and I took advantage of the day off to have a girls weekend in Taranaki, staying in the cottages on Rachel’s farm. How do you know when you have awesome friends? When, as soon as you have agreed on a weekend away one of them says “we get to get dressed up and wear corsets and take pictures, right?” Yes! We decided on a 1900s Anne of Green Gables theme, as a good look to go rambling around a park for a couple of hours in. Also, it fit in well with the outfits I just finished for the Katherine Mansfield photoshoot, and my make for the Silver Screen challenge (gee, I wonder what my inspiration is…) Still, Miss Stella & I were up till 11 the night before we headed off, taking up tucks in a skirt for the petite Miss Priscilla, sewing her blouse in under three hours, re-shaping hats, and doing hems and …

A textile tour of New Zealand: five fabulous places to visit

Published by The Dreamstress

Jules asked about things that the textile and fashion enthusiast should see in NZ. Sadly, there aren’t actually many exclusively textile and fashion focused places to visit in New Zealand – there is the NZ Fashion Museum, but it doesn’t have a building, so just does travelling exhibitions (and so far they have been more eye-candy than sink-your-teeth-into-them-and-learn exhibitions), and there are small scattered fashion and textile history displays at other museums. Many of these are fabulous – just not all in one place. With that said, here are my five top picks of textile-y things to see and do in New Zealand. I’ve picked things that are open all year round, rather than special one-off events like Art Deco Weekend, World of Wearable Arts, or Victorian Days, so that a visitor to NZ could feasibly see all of them in one trip. I’ve put them in North to South order. 1) Auckland War Memorial Museum, Auckland Much as I love Wellington, I have to admit that the best spread of historic dress on display …