The township of Westport Kawatiri, north of Māwhera (Greymouth), lies at the mouth of the Buller River and it is home to Phil Wood’s menswear shop.
Phil Wood, now in his 90s, worked in the shop until fairly recently when his daughter took it over and he inherited the shop from his father who, in turn, learned about menswear from his father who was a tailor. Phil is probably best-known for his part in the discovery of the bones of the Haast Eagle, a giant bird with a two metre wingspan.
Last Saturday I took a trip to Kawatiri to see the shop and to find out if I could meet Phil as part of a heritage project to collect stories from local people about the textile industry as it was. Phil is an important part of that history. I did get to meet him briefly and will be making a trip up to Westport to interview him about the shop and his family connection, but before I went to his home I stopped in at the shop to see if there were some things to add to the collection.
The shop is old in style with shelves and cubbyholes and racks, and although there is a lot of new stock there are also old pieces, all made in New Zealand. The studio collection now has two pairs of trousers, four ties, a New Zealand Defence Forces gabardine and a packet of labels from Rudge Wood, paper bags from the shop and some other labels from an retailer in Nelson. The connection of the latter to Rudge or Phil is not known.
The Rudge Wood name was Phil’s father’s label and one of the pairs of trousers has a Rudge Wood swing label on it still, dating back to the 1960s or 1970s. The other pair is equally interesting. The swing label on the pair is Jermyn Street, a familiar name to anyone who knows the British capital, but the trousers were made in New Zealand and look to be 1980s in style with a pleated front. The original price for these trousers was almost one hundred dollars, a lot of money forty years ago!
This heritage project will be part of the work of the Textile Trust for the next few years. Please get in touch or leave a comment if you have any contacts or information about the history of textiles in Aotearoa, particularly where it connects to the West Coast.
