We caught up Kate Sylvester's Production Coordinator, Leo Dashper, to see how he spends a day on the job.

6:30AM I begin my Friday the same way I begin every other day of the week - with 3 Weetbix, oat milk and a banana. On Fridays, I like to put a bit of brown sugar on top as a treat.

7:30AM I walk to work, which is a nice way to start each day. It takes exactly 23 minutes. I get some of my best thinking done in the 46 minutes I spend walking to and from work each day. For another Friday treat, I stop for an oat flat white and a chat with my friend Mate. I really like his coffee, and I like talking to him even more. Every other day of the week, I’ll just give him a wave through the window.

8:00AM I get to work, make a plunger of coffee, and check my emails. We’re still producing the last of our Summer '21 collection currently. A lot of my day is occupied with making sure our lovely local manufacturers have everything they need to get the clothes made on time, and made beautifully. Our locally produced garments pass through a lot of different hands all over the city before they are ready to send to our stores and stockists. 

9:00AM I’ll send out our ecommerce orders for the day. As well as onshore production, I also take care of all our online dispatch.

11:00AM On a Friday, I’ll deliver new product to our retail stores. I really enjoy driving around Auckland City with a van full of clothes. Something about it feels very exciting. The van is a lot of fun. I’ve nicknamed her “The Grey Lady”. A lot of my colleagues have begun to call her this too, which I like.

12:00PM If I have the time, I like to stop for a takeaway sandwich and another oat flat white while out for delivery. I’ll save the sandwich until I get back to work - I am staunchly against eating and driving at the same time. I think that it makes two fun experiences (eating, and driving) much less fun than they could be individually. It also seems a little dangerous.

3:00PM I’ll spend the rest of the afternoon doing a very wide variety of onshore production tasks - I like to save my mindless, physical tasks for a Friday afternoon. Things like moving heavy boxes, or ironing a large amount of the same thing. It’s nice to switch off your brain at the end of the week and do the same thing a whole bunch of times until it’s time to go home.

5:00PM In a non-lockdown scenario, I’ll usually see my beautiful lovely friends straight after work on a Friday evening. If we feel like drinking a beer, we’ll go to one of our two favourite bars. If it’s winter, we’ll instead often have a sauna and steam at the Olympic Pools, followed by either a Laksa at Selera (487 Khyber Pass Road) or a big bowl of noodles from TianFu (477 Khyber Pass).

Kate Sylvester

1 Teed Street