\u201cThey are a store that sells vintage clothing and New Zealand-made things, but they really get people into the space,\u201d says Walker-Ahwa.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey have a social club, and they have Nana Night coming up and lots of craft things, and they really, really speak to their community so beautifully.\u201d<\/p>\n
Zoe Walker-Ahwa is a guest on the latest episode of This is a Fashion Show. Image \/ NZME<\/p>\n
It\u2019s easy for \u2018community\u2019 to feel like a buzzword in the modern fashion landscape. With brands making engagement growth part of their strategic plans, authentic connection can be hard to find. <\/p>\n
For Emily Miller-Sharma, who has spent 18 years helping grow Ruby into one of New Zealand\u2019s most influential fashion brands, genuine community flourished during the pandemic, at a time when we\u2019d never felt more isolated.<\/p>\n
\u201cBefore Covid, you had to get a proper writer to write your press releases. And we didn\u2019t have time to do that, and so I just started writing.\u201d <\/p>\n
What Miller-Sharma thought was one-way communication soon turned into something much more rewarding. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s mutually nourishing. You put something out, and then something comes back, and you put something back out again \u2026 just having that genuine conversation.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou say community, you say conversation, you say connection, and it\u2019s like these words have been AI\u2019d into meaninglessness. But actually these were true feelings that I was having, and it just kept building.\u201d<\/p>\n
Emily Miller-Sharma from Ruby features on the latest episode of This is a Fashion Show. Image \/ NZME<\/p>\n
That idea of fashion as an exchange, rather than a broadcast, also shaped Walker-Ahwa\u2019s work on Ensemble, the platform she co-founded with Rebecca Wadey in 2020. Although Walker-Ahwa had spent years in fashion media, she says she still felt like \u201ca bit of an awkward weirdo\u201d in the industry.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe wanted to make a space that welcomed, and was for, people like that, who were a little bit messy and not, you know, minimalist.\u201d<\/p>\n
As Ensemble grew, its events became a key part of its community-building. The point wasn\u2019t to make fashion feel more exclusive, but to make it easier for people to enter.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe just wanted people to come to things and feel comfortable to be themselves, whoever they were.\u201d<\/p>\n
For Miller-Sharma, the in-person side of fashion does not need to be overly polished to matter. If anything, she is suspicious of the kind of immaculate event that seems designed more for documentation than experience.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re so used to looking at polished imagery. So then community, in-person events, there\u2019s a tendency to want to make it perfect. And actually, really all that matters is the experience,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s definitely been a trend of fashion lunches, and they\u2019re perfectly art directed \u2026 I know if I was there I would probably accidentally knock something over, and then I get kind of bored and to me it\u2019s like, well, what\u2019s the purpose? Are you having a good time together? Because that, to me, is the point of an in-person event.\u201d<\/p>\n
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