Designer Opens Own Retail Store In ChCh

Leading Christchurch Designer Opens Own Retail Store In The City.

Christchurch couple Sharon Ng and Roland Logan are renovating what was the Bains Building on Madras St in the city to combine all the important things in life – visual art, fashion, food and wine.

The new Ng retail space opened in early December with an art gallery as the first component.

The second part of the revitalization of the old Bains Building is the opening of the NG Fashion Store eagerly awaited by Sharon Ng’s devoted followers. The store will open with cocktails on 21 March 2005, Monday for Sharon’s select clientele, friends, supporters and the fashion media.

Sharon has just returned from Paris Fashion Week as part of the Tranoi Montaigne Exhibitors and have brought back international labels to stock in her store such as Sharon Wauchob, Atsuro Tayama, Jens Laugesen, Clements Ribeiro and accessories by Meher Kakahlia, Megumi Ochi, Babe, Un après-midi de and Chien.

A café will be added in the next month or two 2005 and a wine bar in the building’s basement will open within the next year.

At the store opening, Sharon Ng will launch her The Living Walk range, shown at New Zealand Fashion Week. She says the collection was well received and the experience made her aware of the importance of having her own retail store.

“I have always had such great retailers I’ve never thought of it as an issue, but to rank with the top designers I need my own store.”

The unspoiled landscape of the southern most part of New Zealand weaves together with the experiences of Sharon’s Chinese immigrant family for Ng’s winter 2005 collection.

The Living Walk is the Bronte sisters, meets Chinese Cinderella. Homey knitwear in moss stitch and fairisle and the colours and textures of the windswept Catlins - a wildlife haven on the southern coast of the South Island - mix with the traditional cheongsam garments Sharon remembers the women in her family having shipped out from Hong Kong.

Sharon is known for her collaboration with New Zealand artists and when looking for inspiration for this collection, she was taken with Bill Hammond’s work and particularly his “bird people”.

“I saw one of these bird people with a cheongsam on and it was what I was thinking about – that mix of the New Zealand landscape and my family’s place here, so I plucked up the courage to phone him and see if he would work with me.”

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