One of the biggest dilemmas I face is what print to do next. Quite frankly, it’s the hardest part of the job.  For many people the idea of creating new designs, playing with colours and images, is heaven on earth and they would happily spend hours (days, even!) on the task. Perversely, for someone in the clothing and fashion industry, I’ve never been able to adroitly and effortlessly manipulate shapes and shades to create another whole entity of an image. My mind works better with structure and order that demonstrates a result; a reason for its placement. There’s some low-level

Early days of production involved cutting out on the breakfast bar and sewing up on the trusty old Elna and an ancient second-hand industrial overlocker. Fortunately, my first job out of school had been in a large clothing factory where we churned out garment after garment on the production line. Payment was based on a bonus system, so the more you made, the more you got paid. This helped me to develop skills that enabled fast, quality production of the underwear. After a while the poor old Elna couldn’t keep up and I realised I needed a more specialised machine;

The Fanny Adams name: There I was making undies for my family and I for a time and quite pleased with myself. It was my sister-in-law, Helen, who at the time, was making hats for Ballantynes in Christchurch, who suggested I take them to Ballantynes Department Store and see if they were interested in our brand new NZ made undies. They were! Okay, stop, breathe. Next, we needed a brand name. There was some brain storming and word play while we tried to get clever and quirky, but it was my sister, Sherril, who came up with the clincher, Fanny