Trilby Yates

[1][2] The careers of designers Nancy Hudson and Hall Ludlow began at the label, and it is credited with introducing New Zealanders to trousers as fashionable wear for women.

[3] Trilby, who was the older by nine years, had trained as a milliner at The Bon Marché, an emporium founded in Auckland in 1904.

[3] By 1923, the business was operating as a hat shop opposite the Auckland Town Hall at 374 Queen Street, under the name "Trilby Yates: the Ladies' Paradise".

[3] Julia, by contrast, could barely sew, but had business skills and connections with artistic friends such as the dancer Freda Stark and the filmmaker Robert Steele.

[8][5] Julia travelled overseas regularly in the 1930s to Paris and New York, bringing back expensive fabrics and ideas such as branded shopping bags to replace boxes.

[2][5] The designs of Nancy Hudson made the label very successful in the 1940s, aided by US servicemen stationed in New Zealand purchasing clothes for their girlfriends.

[2] Nancy Hudson left Trilby Yates in the late 1940s to work in Australia, and was replaced by June Gould (née Todd), and then Maxine Sigglecoe.

The Auckland Town Hall , c. 1910 . The row of shops to the left would later become the first premises of Trilby Yates.
179 Queen Street, which from around 1930 to the early 1950s was the storefront of the company. The workroom at 26 Durham Street West, the street to the right, has not survived.