Long before “sustainability” became fashion’s favourite buzzword, Untouched World founder Peri Drysdale was building a global brand around it – with possum fur, pure intention and no tolerance for fluff, writes Dan Ahwa.
When it comes to translating New Zealand’s reputation as a global leader in knitwear manufacturing, Peri Drysdale
For 30 years, Untouched World has remained the kind of stoic success story that celebrates Kiwi ingenuity, enveloping New Zealanders with innovative knitwear while putting our country on the map. In 2006, Sharon Stone famously reached out to the brand to update her wardrobe, while in 2014 Barack Obama was photographed at the White House wearing an eco possum half-zip jumper.
It’s a story that goes back to 1981, when Peri began selling handcrafted knitwear in a shop in Christchurch’s Cathedral Square. This followed a career pivot from nursing to focus on raising her two children, Tim and Emily.
When we connect for this interview she is typically composed with her signature bob in place, fresh from an international conference with the brand’s international retailers who she regularly travels to meet with.
“I’m still bright-eyed and bushy-tailed,” she says laughing, speaking from her headquarters in Christchurch.
At 72, she’s still passionate about the business, which has continued to adapt to the market, with six standalone stores nationwide. Its most recent new addition is a store in Newmarket, Auckland, and its Roydvale Avenue store in Christchurch has had a stylish facelift that showcases the brand’s evolution. The retail experience is still important for the brand to forge relationships with its buyers.
“We’re trying to find a way to immerse our customers in what we’re doing. So the space that we bring them into kind of has to go into their bones. They have to be able to feel it, so there is a huge amount of detail that goes into the materiality and how we do everything.
“In our renovated Christchurch store, for example, we’ve got this great big window where you can actually see through into our workrooms. It doesn’t matter how many times you say that we actually manufacture the bulk of our product here, people still assume it’s coming in from overseas. So to be able to look through the window and actually see people sitting there making it – that it’s made a huge difference.”
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It’s another level of transparency that cuts through the chaos of ultra-fast fashion and the growing desire to educate consumers on being more responsible with how they spend their dollars.
Untouched World was a sustainable design pioneer long before it became a buzzword. In 1996 Peri launched merinomink which cleverly blended possum fur with merino wool, and has continued to be steadfast in developing textiles. In 2014, the business began using a second new textile, kapua, a mixture of cashmere, silk and possum.
But it’s not just the creation of new fabrics, it’s the problem-solving around textile waste that also fuels the brand’s ongoing mission. Today, it plays a pivotal role in textile waste solutions, diverting 99% of its textile waste from landfill and recycling more than a tonne of waste into hats, scarves and its award-winning Rubbish Socks. The B Corp-certified brand aims to have zero textile waste by the end of the year.
After all this time, does the endless possibility for textile solutions and innovation still excite her?
“Absolutely. We are always looking for the next textile that is amazing. They, of course, need to be sustainable but they also need to be comfortable, wear well and launder well. One of our designers says it’s like a disease – we can’t help but get excited by new materials. When we first started way back on this journey, there wasn’t much. It’s gone beyond organic cotton too into some really beautiful materials. We’re currently focusing on trying to develop good quality summer fabrics that are as good as our winter fabrics.”
At last year’s Mindful Fashion Circular Design Awards, where Untouched World won a newly introduced Business Innovation Award with its Rubbish Socks initiative, Peri’s very presence was also met with reverence among attendees, many of whom are fashion designers early on in their sustainable design journey.
As someone who has pioneered sustainable fashion that goes much deeper than lip service, the brand has set a high benchmark for well-made clothes in an age of shameless greenwashing.
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Advertise with NZME.“Almost all of the brands now see that they’ve got to have some sort of nod to sustainability in their mission,” says Peri. “With the fashion industry in particular, there is still a large amount of greenwashing being communicated. A lot of bigger brands will choose a sustainability lane and try to make that lane really newsworthy. But there’s also a lot of feedback coming out of Europe around the ability for brands to miscommunicate what they’re doing, and what they’re offering will gradually disappear. That type of careless communication has to stop.
“There’s an international activewear brand that recently declared it had the most sustainable underlayer, and it was a mix of synthetic and wool. That’s actually not sustainable because they can’t do anything with it once it’s got its holes in it because you can’t recycle those two fibers together. That’s what I’ve found quite frustrating. A lot of people think that if something’s recycled, then it’s good for the planet, but it’s not. A bigger issue for the planet and global warming is actually this microfibre contamination. It’s a big job to get that information through to people.”
Helping the brand better communicate those values are some of its loyal customers, including a recent call out to share some of their beloved Untouched World garments. These garments formed a vintage-inspired capsule collection, a process Peri says has been a welcome reminder of why long-lasting garments are an important part of the sustainable design conversation.
“We asked customers to share pictures of some of their oldest garments and we’ve had some amazing feedback. The other day an actual garment was sent to our offices and it was a real oldie, but in such impeccable condition. Once you’ve been in the business for 40-odd years, there’s a certain amount of it that goes around again and again, so it’s really interesting watching that transformation of what you were doing 30 years ago to what you were doing 20 years ago to what you doing 10 years ago even.
“The whole thing for us is to make the garments look good and last well for a long time.”
And like any fashion business, Peri is also realistic about using that nostalgia to educate and usher in a new generation of customers, another facet of Peri’s business acumen that continues to help shape it as a well-rounded business – including its significant charitable work via The Untouched World Foundation, instigated in 2000 to help develop sustainable leadership in young people. A newly introduced strand of the foundation – the Fashion Reimagined programme – aims to provide leadership for sustainable future programmes for fashion students and graduates run in partnership with Otago Polytech.
“I think if they look at what we’ve done, they can think, ‘yeah, it’s doable’. But I think when you go into fashion school the thought of trying to be sustainable as well is a bit overwhelming. So it’s a case of breaking it down for them so they realise that you can do it. The challenge is that a lot of really cheap fabrics are synthetics, so for the students to have access to quality fabrics that they can play with we need to be able to provide them with good fabrics.”
Like any business looking to be sustainable in the long term, the brand has also made significant effort to promote design talent from within the company, including launching its first full collection by designer Moira Te Whata in September. Moira, who started with Untouched World in 2009 as a machinist, recently managed the Untouched World Knitwear design, but this recent move sees her lead the design for the entire Untouched World collection, including apparel, with the support of its creative director Lucinda Le Heron.
“One of the key things in this organisation is that we tend to grow people from within. So Moira obviously started when she’d finished designed at design school and she’s worked right through the organisation. Sometimes it’s a case of choosing the right person based on what they’re wearing!” she says laughing. “Lucinda and Moira are just completely Untouched World from start to finish. If you get a designer who can’t feel with the brand, it’s just soul-destroying for them because you’re constantly saying this doesn’t work for that reason that doesn’t work for this reason. We are a very simple brand.
“I remember having a coffee with Trelise Cooper one day and she got off the phone from a staff member and she said to me ‘you always put more in don’t you?’ She said ‘if you’re putting a frill on the bottom of the skirt you put more in’. I said to her ‘well our equivalent of that is to take more out’. And she got that completely.”
Despite the evolution, Peri remains optimistic for the future and that the business has gotten to a point where there are several strands to keep it relevant and moving forward. In 2021 Peri was honoured as the only female of nine Laureates to be inducted into the New Zealand Business Hall of Fame alongside eight other New Zealanders including Tracy Thomas Gough, Brendan Lindsay, Paul Te Poa Karoro Morgan, Sir Robert Anderson, James Henry Whittaker, Sir Ken Stevens, John Ryder and Kevin Hickman for their outstanding contribution to the community and the New Zealand economy.
As a business leader, Peri’s counsel and advice has played a vital part in mentoring the next generation of sustainable business leaders along the way.
“It was very tough at the beginning trying to persuade anyone that sustainability was important,” she says reflectively, “but I felt that if we didn’t address it, who would?” An early recollection of trying to secure funding to help the business grow saw the brand reach out to an early potential investor who put one of their organisation’s CEO’s on the Untouched World board. “At the first meeting, this guy said ‘well can we leave the sustainability stuff until we’re growing the business and then we can pick up later’. That was quite tricky,” recalls Peri, “because we had already had their money on board. Then the Christchurch earthquakes rattled through and we got a substantial amount of business interruption insurance. So we were able to pay them out and part ways with him. That was a very difficult space to navigate.”
But she’s managed to figure things out in a pragmatic way. The business has a healthy turnover in the millions, a far cry from its $200 start back in 1981. As someone who grew up with humble beginnings on a sheep farm near the Rakaia Gorge in the high country, a connection to nature has always been embedded into Peri’s business ethos.
“Growing up on that farm, New Zealand had free access to Britain with our primary products and that’s all we were exporting- raw wool, whole carcasses of meat, butter and milk powder. We used to have this big kitchen table in our house and we’d sit around that table and all the people that were engaged on the property would dwell after the evening meal and chat about things. This thing about what’s going to happen to New Zealand if we don’t have access to the UK anymore for our primary produce, that was something my father was really worried about. Funnily enough, I thought back to that when I was thinking, what can I do? I thought I’ll grab some wool, add some value to New Zealand’s primary product and I’ll make it into cute things and we’ll export it.
“I remember driving down an Autobahn in Germany and there was just a grey smog. I couldn’t tell whether I was going through a built up area or a residential area. In my mind, I used to think, well, imagine if I could create a collection of clothing that these people that are working in these places could go home after work and they could slip out of their suits into something that felt beautiful and imagine this beautiful place. It could have the power to change their energy.”
Knitwear as a holistic method for wellbeing is a concept that has guided Peri’s motivations over the years.
“There’s a sense that someone had to start. I wasn’t thinking that I was going to be able to do it all by myself – I’ve been fortunate to engage with many influential leaders over the years; but at the other end, I thought if I get these young people and their leadership activated, then together, maybe we can make a difference.
“But all I can think about now is what is yet to be achieved.”
