How fashion designer Kat Tua is challenging Māori stereotypes

New Zealand’s activist roots and history of protest also manifest through clothing. Menswear designer Kat Tua talks to Dan Ahwa about a deeply personal bespoke creation designed to underpin the values of her brand Manaaki for an international audience.

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In New Zealand, anti-Māori sentiment often masquerades as freedom of speech, or is present in the company line of “it’s racist, but legal”, and while racial profiling and stereotype have fuelled the inspiration behind the seminal work of artists and creatives for decades, the emotional turmoil it takes to get there still cuts deep for many.

In art, there is Tāme Iti’s experience of being punished for speaking te reo at school and Robyn Kahukiwa’s reclamation of tino rangatiratanga (self-determination), themes both manifested respectively through vivid paintings.

In literature, Witi Ihimaera often explores the loss of Māori culture due to the prevailing Pākehā worldview; and in Patricia Grace’s 1987 novel Potiki, the author addresses the repression of indigenous people and the struggle to maintain dignity in the face of losing control of ancestral lands.

In music, it’s the socially conscious pop of Emma Paki’s System Virtue and Moana Maniapoto’s back catalogue of empowering anthems that speak directly to the heart of issues impacting Māori.

As most good creatives know, some of their best work is created from the things they loathe the most. In Kat’s case, it is an outlier to her everyday, mainline collections; a bespoke denim suit emblazoned with anti-Māori cartoons and headlines is symbolic of the kind of fashion the designer wants to communicate – not to the converted, but to a growing customer base outside of New Zealand who are unfamiliar with Māori injustice.

The journey has been gradual.

Kat’s work history includes working for some of Australia and New Zealand’s leading fashion brands before quitting the industry in 2020 and working as an Uber driver in Sydney.

“It felt nice to let go of the reins and just see what happened,” she explained to Viva in 2023. “It gave me the space to really think about what I wanted to do and after a few months, I decided to start a menswear brand.”

Her brand Manaaki has since snowballed much further than most emerging fashion brands as one of the recipients of the Mr Porter Futures programme, the brother site of renowned London-based luxury e-com website Net-a-Porter.

As one of 1000 applicants from 77 countries, the well-known menswear e-tailer remains committed to Kat’s unique design ethos.

Manaaki is only three seasons old and Kat is now preparing to launch her fourth collection in January 2025.

Her designs marry the values of te ao Māori, but for an entirely new audience; Mr Porter’s discerning customers from Europe to the US, whose access to Māori culture is limited.

After returning home in 2022 during a pre-election year, the romantic lens filtered by time and distance was lifted when she sank deeper into the reality of race relations today, and for a new bespoke design, a statement art piece that stemmed from her research looking at the 2018 book Savaged to Suit: Māori and Cartooning in New Zealand by Paul Diamond.

Paul’s collection of widely criticised cartoons and dehumanising news headlines from over 100 years explores how Māori and Māori culture has featured racist stereotypes and microaggressions that have existed in New Zealand for centuries – and even to this day.

The resulting bespoke “art piece” features a medley of 56 confronting cartoons and headlines that offended Kat the most, printed as fabric patches, and strategically placed across a boxy denim jacket and matching baggy jeans, silhouettes that have now become staples since her debut spring/summer 2023 collection.

“This piece has become a way for me to deal with some of that feeling of being overwhelmed when I came back to Aotearoa,” says Kat.

“Being overseas, especially in Australia, there was a perception that Māori in New Zealand have better equality with non-Māori in New Zealand. You know those stereotypes exist, but coming home made me realise how there has been little progress. Obviously, so much of former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s politics focused on equality. But when I returned home, it was a pre-election year and the gloves were off. There was a clear sense of a shift happening. I was overwhelmed by it. I left Aotearoa when I was quite young and then I came back in my late 30s more aware.”

“I really wanted to create a powerful bespoke piece that demonstrated the idea of how these stereotypes have formulated over time, but respectfully because these are people’s artworks, so I can’t sell this for commercial gain. It’s a think piece.

“This is over 100 years of stereotyping that has created a public perception of Māori. This outfit represents the metaphorical outfit that Māori wear every day when they leave the house.”

Some of the most confronting headlines that struck a chord with Kat include the headline “Fed up with pandering to Māori Radicals”, part of an Act Party advertisement from 2011.

Another, “Should One Race Control New Zealand’s Fresh Water?” was taken from an advertisement paid for by The New Zealand Centre for Political Research. The advertisement was spearheaded by former Act leader and conservative politician Don Brash and featured in both the Sunday Star-Times and The New Zealand Herald in 2016.

In August this year, the New Zealand Herald published a widely criticised wraparound advert from Hobson’s Pledge that urged readers to sign a petition to return the seabed and foreshore to “public ownership”, a right-wing lobby group in New Zealand that was formed in late September 2016 to oppose affirmative action for Māori people. Hobson’s Pledge is also led by ex-Act member Don Brash.

“That ‘Should One Race Control New Zealand’s Fresh Water?’ headline plays into that Iwi Kiwi vibe, which is highly separatist” says Kat.

“I mean, if it’s not one race, is it one man?”

Systemic racism is also illustrated in the work of cartoonist Al Nisbet including one famous work depicting Māori as Lotto-playing dole bludgers. “The free school food is great! Eases our poverty, and puts something in your kids’ bellies!” was published in the Press on May 30, 2013.

“It was a highly racist cartoon,” says Kat, “which was taken to the Human Rights Commission but subsequently found although racist, was legal.”

But it was the cover of Savaged to Suit: Māori and Cartooning in New Zealand that disturbed Kat in particular.

“It’s called ‘Three Generations to Make a Gentleman’ and it has pictures of the ‘evolution’ of a Māori into the idea of a ‘gentleman.’ This is from 1923 and known as the ‘white convertible savage’, because back then Māori were seen as savages who needed to be converted, who needed to be saved by the white saviours.”

Kat says all of these depictions play into stereotypes about Māori the complainer, the stirrers.

“What I also found interesting is how some of these patches represent a divide within our own people – the concept of the ‘good Māori vs bad Māori’. It’s a conversation for people to question ‘What is this I’ve been told to think and believe’ or ‘What are my experiences with Māori? With my neighbour who’s Māori? With my grandchildren, who are Māori?’ Because I know a lot of white people who have Māori grandchildren, yet their views are racist. They’re not really thinking about their grandkids and how that could affect them and the trauma that can project as they grow older.”

Kat’s personal response to the topic of race relations through her designs sees her join a canon of designers who have come before, including Māori streetwear pioneer Jeanine Clarkin and subversive Ōtaki-based label Hori Clothing (whose opening hours are listed on its website as “decolonised hours”).

But Kat’s perspective is not influenced by the past. Instead, she’s focused on the present and the future.

“I feel like the one thing that I’ve had a lot of success with my brand is really knowing what I’m about and knowing how to communicate my message,” she explains.

“People have a good understanding. Yes, it’s a Māori brand and it’s Māori clothing, but it’s also a combination of the traditional and now. It’s a representation of what it is to be Māori today.

“There were so many things growing up dealing with my own stigmas that I didn’t realise was always there,” says Kat. “In this political climate, in this world where your culture is constantly seen as problematic, it’s hard not to carry that with you.”

“They’re all created by this perception and these stereotypes. As a parent, you don’t want your son to have that sort of experience.”

Kat’s 12-year-old son has also played a part in the brand’s DNA, and is often on set helping out on his mother’s campaign photo shoots.

Along with her four brothers who love wearing her clothes, there’s familiar synergy when it comes to the vision of her brand, a brand Kat says can be loved and worn by anyone – whether they live in London or Warkworth.

“My son is the reason why I’ve done a lot of things. If I didn’t have him, I’d still probably be designing for other people’s brands. Once you have a kid, your sense of purpose changes. You think to yourself ‘What world am I bringing my kid into?’”

Is it possible to envisage a utopia where we can all get along?

“It has aspirations for me,” says Kat reflectively.

“If we were to live in a society that was Te Tiriti-driven and how that would’ve looked like today, my clothes are a representation of that. Everyday, practical fashion infused with Māori elements.

“It’s very reflective and symbolic. It’s my idea of a society where we can coexist in harmony.”

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