Iconic NZ shoe brand Kathryn Wilson Footwear got its start in 2003, with AMP Scholarship-winner Kathryn Wilson at the helm. To celebrate an amazing ten years of fabulous Kathryn Wilson footwear, the Saatchi and Saatchi Gallery in Parnell is hosting a retrospective exhibition recounting the lead-up to this wonderful milestone.
We went along to the opening night, browsing beautiful shoes, the KW footwear history, and looking through the installations over a few glasses of Veuve Clicquot. The ten installations embody the KW Footwear brand – they were fun, colourful, creative and of course all shoe-themed!
My favourite was by far the hanging shoes, and I’m of the firm belief that this Christmas we should all install hanging Kathryn Wilson shoes in our homes instead of trees – with more Kathryn Wilson shoes under it of course.
Another installation I admired was the nearby wall of design sketches, showing the creative process and thought that goes into designing beautiful shoes. The neat rows of annotated sketches with colour swatches and shoe names – all names of her supporters – were a good welcome to the shoes that adorned the rest of the gallery as well, as they show where a shoe conceptually starts to the finished product.
Our champagne glasses also had wee tags with quotes about Kathryn Wilson from the aforementioned supporters, really highlighting how homegrown this brand is and the true passion that goes into every single shoe.
Of note are definitely the portraits on the walls of the entire gallery featuring style muses – in fact, everything in that gallery is worth seeing. It’s such an achievement for a NZ brand to reach such great success locally and internationally, and celebrating their journey with them is also remarkable.
You can watch the KW Footwear story on the gallery’s Samsung television, or interact on the Samsung tablets to get an interactive understanding of their success story as well.
The exhibition is open 9am-5pm until the 5th of December, at The Saatchi and Saatchi Gallery, 123-125 The Strand, Parnell. Admission is free, and is definitely something you want to pop along to within the next month!
Congratulations on reaching a decade of business, KW Footwear, and best of luck for the next ten!
– Anny Ma