It is incredibly easy to spend time with Jyoti Morningstar. The founder of yoga-meets-fashion brand We’ar, spends her days in an incredibly creative job, divides her time between the island paradises of Bali and Waiheke and is an all-round calming influence on all those who surround her.
One of the key stories that emerged from what turned out to be quite extensive research was, “we love you but we want to take you to more places” says Morningstar with a smile. “People had been wearing our clothes on the weekend and loving the comfortable, casualness but wanted to take us to a party as well, and even to work on a Monday rather than leaving them behind.” She says that they have carefully answered that brief, and from here on in are most definitely going to “keep that woman in mind, what are her daily needs and how can we serve that whilst keeping the essence of We’ar”.
My favourite pieces from the collection, like the Summer Marching Pants, Blaze Midi Skirt and Playa Dres, are most definitely suited to both daytime and after hours, and the fact that they are made using natural, sustainable fabrics is a given. In the words of Jyoti written on the We’ar website: “Every breath taken and every purchase made is a stone dropped in the shared waters of our universe. The ripples of your decisions affect everything.”
She says that everything is wear-tested for comfort and durability, in Bali first and foremost as the company’s sample studio is based there. “It is usually me or one of our staff there that gives it a good wear test,” explains the label founder, “if it’s yoga or activewear we take it out and dance and do yoga in it, or if it’s streetwear we pop it on and take it out somewhere nice.” She says that the international, style-centric social scene is such in Bali that people are out every night, “and most nights if you wear something new, you will get a response, hopefully complimentary!”
The brand has stores in Bali in the tourism hotspots of Seminyak and Ubud, with another opening recently in the Canggu area. They have also entered into a collaborative venture with a Danish jewellery designer named Helena in another retail space near the island’s famous Monkey Forest, “which is so much more high traffic and tourist-y than our other Ubud location,” says Jyoti. “It is a really different kind of vibe for us there but it’s working, and it’s nice to open ourselves up to a new market again.”
The label’s Ponsonby store celebrates its third anniversary on the strip this month, and its figurehead tells me that the location was a very calculated one. “We opened a store in Bali first,” she tells me, “then our first New Zealand store was in Cross Street, just off Karangahape Road. It functioned as our headquarters and warehouse for our web store as well, until the business partnership we were in ended and we opened another store on Waiheke.” It goes without saying that the Waiheke Island space went gangbusters over the Auckland summer, “and it was just so much busier than anything else we’d ever done. We had a lot of international visitors come through but a lot from Auckland too, and from that group a lot of the people were from Ponsonby.”
She says that if there is a neighbourhood in New Zealand that embodies the We’ar lifetsyle it is undoubtedly Ponsonby, “where people are just so educated in areas like a healthy lifestyle and sustainability. People there love fashion and beautiful things but want them to come with more of a story, and have an authentic connection with what is going in with our planet.” Jyoti laughs when she likens the average Ponsonby customer to the group that is perhaps their French counterpart: the “bobo”, which is short for bourgeois-bohème (bourgeois-bohemian). “I love the passion for authenticity that a lot of people in the area still have - they believe in making good choices for their own health as well as the health of the next generation, and they also love local.”
“People who live in Ponsonby shop in Ponsonby, and we love being a part of that.” (HELENE RAVLICH)