A style of her own
For Ceara Lile, a beautiful, hand-crafted garment cannot be rushed. Ceara is the creative force and skilled pair of hands behind Perpetua Studio on Featherston’s Fitzherbert Street - where she sells her own range of eco-friendly women’s fashions, accessories and homewares. By Erin Kavanagh-Hall. Photos by Esther Bunning.
Each piece is made on site at the studio: using ethically-sourced silks and upcycled cottons, dyed using plant material, and constructed on using Ceara’s hand-drawn patterns.
A typical work day for Ceara will start with a stroll through Featherston, after which she’ll return to Perpetua Studio with armloads of bark, flowers and leaves. Oak and cherry leaves, eucalypts, lavender, manuka and geranium are some of her favourites, though she’s happy to work with what’s in season.
“Usually, I’ll find everything in my garden, or friends’ gardens – or in the railway station carpark,” she laughs.
“But, if I’m foraging in town, I always try not to take too much.”
At the back of the studio, she prepares her dyes, using commercial cooking pots she found on TradeMe, soaking the foraged foliage in boiling water to release their natural pigments.
She then wraps swathes of fabric in branches or pieces of dowel, and leaves to them to steep in the pots for several hours.
Once the fabric dries and the patterns are pinned down, it’s time to sew – using a range of “little domestic machines”, one of which she bought with the money from her A Bursary.
Clothes are in simple, classic designs. Photo: Esther Bunning.
It’s a slow, gentle, deliberate process – and, for Ceara, the perfect antidote to modern-day “fast fashion”. “I love it – it’s tactile, it’s grounding, it helps me de-stress, settle down, and be more mindful of my surroundings,” she says.
“For me, it taps into that nostalgia for my childhood: when everything we consumed was made in New Zealand, and clothes were well-made, good quality, and lasted for ages.
“It feels great to bring back local, sustainable fashion manufacturing back to New Zealand communities – and to make clothing which is not only environmentally friendly but cosy, comfortable and luxurious.”
Founding Perpetua Studio is something of a full circle moment for Ceara. As a child, she loved to sew – and has clear memories of stitching buttons to handkerchiefs just to keep her hands busy.
“As soon as I was playing with dolls, I was making clothes for them. I think I was about eight when I started making my own clothes – except I was too scared to use an electric machine, so I started with Mum’s old hand crank.”
Dreaming of a career in clothing design, Ceara did a degree in Fashion Technology at AUT.
Around the same time, however, clothing manufacturing was shipped offshore, cheaply-produced nylon and polyester garments were flooding the market, and a 1999 news team found New Zealand fashion houses were creating their own “sweatshops” by severely underpaying their workers.
Feeling uncomfortable with the environmental and social impacts of fast fashion, Ceara left her job as a pattern cutter, and embarked on her OE.
She spent the next decade working in a range of fields, including eco-tourism, teaching English in Thailand and Eastern Europe, advertising sales, and running The Gallery Custom Tattoo in Wellington alongside partner Mario, a skilled tattooist.
Last year, Ceara and Mario decided it was time to set up their own businesses in their adopted community of Featherston: a fine art tattoo studio for him, and an eco-fashion boutique store for her.
And so, Konstantin Studio and Perpetua Studio, named for Mario’s maternal grandparents, were born.
“I hadn’t thought about going back to fashion for a while,” Ceara says.
“We were talking about setting up Konstantin and Perpetua while we were on a motorcycle trip around the North Island. I was sitting on the back of the bike, thinking, ‘yeah, I could have my own studio’.
“The more we talked about, the more it seemed like a reasonable idea! I did an eco-printing course in Otaki, and we went from there.”
At Perpetua Studio, Ceara uses all-natural fibres – including Chinese and Indian silks sourced from Fair Trade producers, and recycled cotton bedsheets discontinued by luxury hotel chains for minor faults. As well as creating her own dyes, she uses the eco-printing process to create patterns: laying leaves onto the fabric, wrapping and soaking it, and allowing the plant to imprint its pigment into the fibres.
Her clothing designs are simple but stylish, have fewer seems to prevent breakage, and designed to complement a range of body types. “I’m very minimalist in my approach – I like creating clothing you can just throw on over your head. And, of course, all my dresses have pockets!”
Ceara says she is thrilled with the support she and Mario have received from Featherston locals. “We’ve had so many lovely comments – and we’ve been really busy! Featherston is such a creative community, and it’s been awesome to watch it grow.”
