Ziggurat: Something Old, Something Fabulous

By Maya Field

When I walked into Ziggurat for the first time, I knew it was different from the thrift stores I had been to. The racks filled with dresses that Hitchcock would put Grace Kelly in; shelves of bags and shoes in such good condition, you’d think they were new; a wall of hats; vintage furs and hand-made knits. This is the cornerstone of second-hand clothing stores in Pōneke.

I’m standing by the counter, still the same original art-deco glass counter from when the store first opened, and talking to Kate Bryant, the owner. She tells me how it first opened in 1979 as an Art Deco furniture store, on Cuba Street, where Naumi Hotel is now, and then moved to Ghuznee Street, where the Puffin Wine Shop is now. “It was first owned by Linda Boyd, and I think another person, but I can’t remember their name. I bought it in 2006, after working here for two years when I came back from England. Linda was wanting to sell it, and the timing worked.” She pauses to ask if a customer is okay just browsing. “I know I own it, but I don’t feel like it’s my store. I feel like the custodian of a piece of Wellington’s history.”

Before working at Ziggurat, Kate had studied Textile Design, and had her own label with a friend, Ripe Clothing. “We would sell at the Wakefield Market. Lazulé and Iko Iko also sold there. It was a really cool place. I think that’s what Wellington is missing now, a space like that for artists and creatives.” She moved to Auckland and worked as a freelance stylist, and then moved to London in 1999. “I worked at Frockbrokers at Spitalfields Market, selling second hand designer clothes, doing styling on the side. It was in 1999, when the East End was really happening. Then I moved back to Wellington in 2004 and worked here, and then bought it in 2006.”

I ask what caused the change from a furniture store to the fashion emporium it is now? “Trends changed. People wanted to buy Art Deco furniture back then, and people want to buy second-hand clothes now. People also care more about sustainability in their clothing now, but it wasn’t always the case. Buying second-hand clothes used to mean that you couldn’t afford new clothes. Then celebrities, like Kate Moss, I think, started wearing ‘vintage,’ and suddenly ‘vintage’ didn’t mean second-hand, it meant something else. It meant fabulous and unique.”

That ‘something else’ strikes a chord. I think of all the signs of coolness now, with the increased popularity of thrifting, the abundance of 2000s styles, and all the jokes I’ve heard over recent years about people buying fast-fashion. It’s good, of course, that signs of coolness are rooted in things that, at the very least, suggest sustainability. But you can get those things from other stores. This place is different. The clothes were made before 2000. Last week, someone bought a dress from the Edwardian Era. Kate loves that ‘you can find something that fits you perfectly, that once was fitted to someone else, an odd seventy years ago.’ The store has layers of history in chiffon and brocade. 

Ziggurat works as a second-hand store in two parts, with one side of the store being designer clothes, and the other side being vintage. They’re bridged by a shelf filled with shoes and purses. I ask if Kate has a preferred side of the store. “Of course both, I love both, but I do a lot on the preservation side of things. I like bringing dead clothes back to life. If I can fix it, then that’s more memories, more photos, more life. That makes me happy. I love bringing things back to life so they can be worn again.”

Preservation seems to be the ethos of the store — not just to maintain these pieces of art in fabric form, but also for the prospective wearer of the clothes. It’s not enough to just sell an old dress, the dress needs to be in “the best quality, the best condition that I can give to a customer.” And the clothes are. You don’t buy a dress here with an additional plan on how to fix a hole or a button, or how to get a stain out. It’s already been done. Kate laughs, “I didn’t think I’d be spending my life doing other people’s laundry. But I want people to be able to buy something and walk out wearing it.”

The store has something for everyone. The range of customers go from small children who want to hold a vintage brooch, or try on something from the kids section, to older folks who bought clothes from Ziggurat in its early years. Although I care more about the dresses, there is a fair amount of menswear, with jackets, pants, knit jumpers and shirts. 

Another thing that sets Ziggurat apart from the rest is the care and energy Kate and her team have for the customers. Throughout our conversation, Kate darts back and forth between answering my questions and helping her customers. She talks to me about bringing dead clothes back to life, and then helps someone with a pair of dark red boots. I ask her about who her dream person to style would be, dead or alive, and while she thinks of her answer, she checks in on someone else picking out a red sweater. “Katherine Hepburn, but she would be hard to dress, because she knew what she liked.” Then, a few minutes later, after talking to another person looking at the jewellery cabinets, “actually, not to style, but just to meet, and I think she’d find something here, Isabella Blow would’ve been amazing. She discovered Alexander McQueen. She lived in a big castle. She was pretty fabulous.”

Shopping at Ziggurat is like shopping in a museum that you can touch, and the team is there to help you find that perfect artefact. When I bought my art-deco-esque, pear-green beaded gown, it wasn’t just bought from the rack after I tried it on. I hadn’t even fished it out from a rack. The girl working had found it for me, after she had helped me find the right size, and had brought out even more dresses for me to try on, just in case I had missed them. It was a quieter day, so I went out of the changing room in each dress, to see them in the full light, trying to decide which one I loved the most. Trying clothes on in Ziggurat is like trying on clothes with your close friends, except it’s a group of friends with a deep understanding and appreciation for fit, fabric, and style. Kate says that “people think I do this because I love clothes, but it’s the people finding their special thing that I enjoy the most. It’s nice when people let you help.”

A part of that care for the customer is also in the care for the clothes. The clothes need to go to the right home, to the person who will wear it and love it, who will hold it onto it, even when it doesn’t fit them anymore.  

Kate understands “the empowerment clothes can give you.” I tell her about the orange and white dress from the 1970s that I bought from Ziggurat two years ago, and that when I wear it, I just feel better about everything. She knows what I mean — “it’s all about finding something fabulous.”