Duncan & Prudence

We could tell you how we first fell in love, or we could start the story at when the Twin Towers came down, because that's when the dream of starting this business back in New York started to unravel and we started making plans to return home to New Zealand.

But to cut a long story short, we'll begin it in October 25th 2003, the day Duncan placed his first order of t-shirts, and we started teaching ourselves how to screen-print… Duncan was designing for Icebreaker, and Prudence was researching as a post-doctoral Fellow at the Stout Research Centre for New Zealand Studies.

James was in kindergarten and baby Grace was going to day-care. Life was pretty full, but there was still that dream of starting our own business in the shop we owned downstairs. So we ordered a bunch of t-shirts from an Auckland manufacturer, had some silk screens made out in Petone, and after we put the kids to bed at night we'd head downstairs and print batches of stock. We had to scrub the shop floor and walls, and then we hung line up and pegged the t-shirts like laundry.

We had a countertop that the previous owner had left behind, and that's all there was to it. We could only open on Saturdays, because we kept working our day-jobs, and our kids just ran around our feet. It turned out to be a great way to meet the neighbourhood, and we struck a nerve with our newtown print - we knew the neighbourhood was cool and steeped in history, but we had no idea there'd be so much pride! - by mid-December there was a queue at Saturday opening time, and every Christmas tree in all of Newtown had at least one of our t-shirts wrapped up under it. Prudence ended her fellowship and started managing the store fulltime, and Duncan began thinking about jeans.

Then came hoodies, and shorts, and all the time our collection of prints for t-shirts kept growing and growing. Duncan creates an entire new season twice a year, but these days we expire old forgotten screens to keep our collection down to three kick-ass catalogues at all times. We've come a long way from pegging up the tees and no changing room.

We are now proud to design, manufacture and retail all our clothes from the Newtown premises. Right now, only our jeans are sewn offsite, up the road in Auckland. Everything else is made right behind the counter. Visit us on the ground for custom service - we have the sewing machines and the printing station right there, we might as well give you the special treatment!

newtown wellington

We chose to start our clothing enterprise outside Wellington’s traditional fashion districts because we believed our design aesthetic and high standard of quality would pull a more discerning customer away from that old rat race in appreciation of something unique. The ethnic diversity and great food of Newtown drew us in immediately because it reminded us of our favourite neighbourhoods in Manhattan and Brooklyn, NY.

This wonderful inner city suburb of Wellington, only twenty minutes walk from town, just keeps giving back in flavour, beauty, and good vibe up and down its streets. We love that we can send our children off on foot to school, rely on excellent ethnic and organic takeaway whenever we’re too lazy to cook, have enough vintage and art to spend time wanting to walk our own main drag on our day off, as well as find some of New Zealand’s best fair trade locally roasted coffee in all the cafes.

In support of this historic neighbourhood, Duncan & Prudence make annual donations to Canteen, the SPCA and the Life Flight Helicopter that all operate in Newtown, fundraise for Newtown Primary School, donate our off-cut fabric to all the local daycares that ask, contribute printed tees for raffles and our time to help out the Newtown Festival, held first Sunday every March. Duncan also designs a new "newtown" print for each season, which means we have about ten now to choose from. Collect them all, and wherever you are, become a proud Newtowner!

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