Fashion writer and stylist Karlya Smith, who wrote a weekly column about shoes for more than a decade, visits Lower Hutt’s Dowse Art Museum to see its new exhibition Well-Heeled: Shoes With Personality.
So far, 2025 has been a year of fashion in museums and galleries in Aotearoa, with the
The exhibition examines the footwear collections of three extraordinary New Zealanders: renowned artist Lisa Reihana, leading Māori art curator and artist Nigel Borell, and cultural advocate and Wellington City Council chief Māori officer Karepa Wall.
Considering two of the three shoe collections are men’s shoes, it’s a surprisingly expressive jewel box of footwear on show at Well-Heeled. But don’t let the glistening fish skin leather or vertiginous wedges dazzle you into seeing these as frivolous objects. This footwear is a repository for treasured memories – a set of visual and tactile links to memories that walk with their wearer.
Lisa Reihana (Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Hine, Ngāi Tūteauru, Ngāi Tūpoto) says her high-heeled sheepskin ankle boots, for instance, stand out to her because she was with her mum when she bought them in the 1970s.
“She almost never wore them because they were so uncomfortable,” Lisa recalls. It was a formative footwear experience for the celebrated artist, “sealing my appreciation of alternative design, and love of shoes from that moment onwards”.
In fact, when deciding between art school and drama school, Lisa considered dropping both to be a cobbler.
“I heard of the opportunity to be trained by a European cobbler in Dominion Rd,” she says. “Art won out, but somehow I think I have been able to include all my loves through my video work.”
Lisa’s Christian Louboutin Degratissimo Alta heels are an affirmation of the path she chose.
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Advertise with NZME.“Christian saw my work in Pursuit of Venus [infected] at the Venice Biennale and approached me about making a biographical film project with him,” reads the label.
She chose the towering rainbow-striped heels at his Paris atelier as a gift from the God of shoes himself. Lisa bought the matching bag to wear to the opening of Christian Louboutin: L’Exhibition[niste] at the Palace of the Golden Gate in Paris in 2020. Clips of that breathtaking exhibition are available online and well worth watching.
Karepa Wall (Te Āti Awa, Manukorihi, Taranaki, Ngāti Tūwharetoa, Ngāti Ruanui) regards his shoe collection as “a living pepeha, a tapestry of my whakapapa, creativity, and unapologetic self-expression”.
As with all collectors, it pains him to play favourites but he nominates his red Maher wedding shoes, purchased in 2011, as “the true MVP. They’ve got just enough flair to hold their own with my red tailored suit, but they knew their place: never outshining my beautiful wife”.
“Those shoes are more than just leather and laces; they’re woven into the story of my life. They hold so much mana in my heart that I had to get two pairs: one that’s walked with me on our big day and every anniversary since, and a pristine twin that sits proudly on display.
“That way, I can show others exactly what my awesome shoes looked like when I took the biggest step of my life.”
It seems marriage wasn’t the only commitment Karepa made that year. There are 15 pairs of Dunedin-based Glen Maher’s design – 14 of them Karepa’s own.
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Advertise with NZME.The 15th pair belong to Karepa’s son, who has since outgrown them. He picked them out as a child, when waiting in the Maher store in Wellington with his dad.
Karepa points out his MaherX Nightvision shoes, which feature kōwhaiwhai, are taonga to him.
“For night-time events, I always reach for the shoes that carry my whakapapa front and centre. They ooze my identity, so when I walk into a room, everyone knows straight away: I’m proud to be Māori, and I’m proud to be a walking indigenous billboard. They’re not just shoes; they’re a declaration, a mihi to my tūpuna, and a celebration of everything I stand for.”
It was these same shoes that helped bring Well-Heeled to fruition. Karepa was wearing them with a powder blue suit the first time he visited Dowse director and Well-Heeled curator Karl Chitham at work.
“I’d never seen any shoes like that,” says Karl. “The next day, he had a burgundy suit on, with a completely different pair of amazing shoes. I went up to him afterwards and said, ‘Your shoes are amazing, do you have many of those?’ because we were thinking about doing this show. He said, ‘Yeah, I’ve got 250 pairs’. I thought he was joking. But I now know, actually, he has more than 250 pairs.”
In contrast to Karepa’s dress shoes are the sneakers of Nigel Borell (Pirirākau, Ngāi Te Rangi, Ngāti Ranginui, Te Whakatōhea), all of which are hi-tops.
At first glance, they signal a dedication to comfort, but the exhibition labels tell a different story. Many of these pairs were purchased during deeply uncomfortable times for Nigel, around high-stress delivery of important exhibitions he’d curated – such as Toi Tū Toi Ora: Contemporary Māori Art – and in one case, he says, as a “big finger” to the “very conservative and a slightly racist” city he claims he was living and working in at the time.
The brightest pair of sneakers from Nigel, his Nike Dunk High Pro Invert Celtics, exude joy in bubblegum pink suede and Kelly green, but their story could trigger Aucklanders.
“I bought them from a pop-up shop in St Kevins Arcade in Auckland,” Nigel says. “It was on the day we went into the longest Covid-19 lockdown. I didn’t get to wear them for another year and a half.”
As Christian Louboutin himself has said, a shoe “has so much more to say than just walking”.
Karlya Smith is a Whanganui-based stylist, fashion columnist, costume and set designer.
Well-Heeled: Shoes With Personality is on at the Dowse Art Museum in Lower Hutt until October 6 and is free to visit.
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