As you’d expect from our homestyle art director, Juliette and her partner Robin have created a home that embraces playful design. Homestyle art director Juliette Wanty lives in Parnell, Auckland with her fiancé Robin Schmid, a facade specialist at an engineering firm. She says they’ve lived in this home for so long it represents a chapter of their lives and she knows they’ll look back on it as one of the best. So, Juliette, how did you and Robin come to be living here? We actually met in this house — he was living with a friend of mine at

There’s nothing in Tessuti director Ali McIntosh’s Auckland apartment that doesn’t feel like her. For more than a decade, store owner Ali McIntosh has been seeking, spotting, sourcing and selling homeware treats and treasures for Tessuti, the Ponsonby institution that’s a longtime go-to of those in the know. She lives in an apartment not far from her store. Ali, how do you like small-space living? Did you have to sacrifice much from your previous home when you moved in? I moved here from a slightly larger apartment, so the transition has been gradual. I did have to sacrifice a

We talk rainforests and robin-egg blue with the winner of Bolt of Cloth’s annual textile design competition, Lisa Baudry. Having grown up an arty kid, Lisa Baudry saw her first ‘real’ painting (with brushstrokes, not a reproduction) when she was 17, on a class trip to an art school. It made a big impression and there was no going back – she was hooked. Lisa, how did you come to be working as an illustrator? After studying graphic design, I got jobs painting ceramics and working as a designer for Auckland’s Lopdell House Gallery – now Te Uru Waitakere

Friends and colleagues Toni Brandso and Olivia Patience have recently put their ideas into practice at their own places. Award-winning interior design studio Material Creative is led by passionate businesswomen and great mates Toni Brandso and Olivia Patience. The pair met at Victoria University, bonded during late nights completing projects for their Bachelor of Design in interior architecture, and after graduating both migrated to Auckland to develop their careers in architecture practices. In 2008, they found themselves at a ski resort in the French Alps, working and living with mutual friends. The topic of starting a business popped up

With spontaneity and movement at the centre of her practice, multitalented maker Carmel Van Der Hoeven is learning as she goes. Self-taught multi-disciplinary artist and all-round creative whirlwind Carmel Van Der Hoeven produces her restrained figure drawings, abstract expressionist paintings and ceramic works under the moniker George Sand Studio. The name is an homage to Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin, a 19th- century French writer who flouted the conventions of her time in love and life, and published her novels as George Sand. “It’s a broad pseudonym that not many of my generation are familiar with,” explains Carmel. “My mother

Sara Munro could run her internationally acclaimed fashion brand Company of Strangers from anywhere. So she runs it from her hometown, Dunedin. As a third-generation Dunedinite intent on running her fashion business from her hometown, it made sense for Sara Munro of Company of Strangers to set up in an historic building in the original business district. “There’s a lot of history and historic buildings around here,” says Sara, standing in front of the majestic sash windows on the third floor of Victoria Chambers, which face out onto a sea of similarly elegant turn-of-the-century facades and rooftops. “My grandfather