Top awards clearly back in fashion
Technology advocate puts recognition down to willingness to challenge status quo
When Denise L’EstrangeCorbet received an official-looking letter in the mail her first reaction was, “Oh God, what have I done now and how much trouble am I in?”
Upon reading she was to be made a dame in recognition of the philanthropic work she and her fashion house WORLD have carried out over the past 28 years, she had to lean against her car for fear of falling over.
“I am both flabbergasted and humbled to receive such an incredible honour,” she says. “And I’m delighted not to be in any trouble for a change.”
“Dame Den” — she thinks it has a better ring to it than Dame Denise — says WORLD’s anti-establishment approach and her own firebrand reputation would have precluded her from any such honour.
“We don’t care,” she says of her organisation’s approach to business. “Maybe that’s our problem but it’s also our strength.”
L’Estrange-Corbet, 57, founded WORLD with former husband and still-best friend Francis Hooper in 1989 when the pair became fed up with their jobs at Auckland fashion retail outlets.
In an absolute “sink or swim” move, they spent all they had — $200 each — on a lease for a 9.3 square metre shop on Auckland’s High St where they sold their wares, designing and sewing into the early hours to make sure there was enough stock for the morning.
“If we had gone to our bank manager and said, ‘We have $200 each, we live in rented accommodation, we both work part-time, we’ve got a car that leaks with windscreen wipers that don’t work. We want to start a business’. They’d just say, ‘You’re completely bonkers’.”
Fortunately, they did not seek the bank manager’s opinion.
However, it was a hand-to-mouth existence for the pair and their new baby, Pebbles, for many years before they received any real recognition or an income to speak of.
“We’d lie awake at night sometimes thinking, ‘Oh my God, if we don’t get enough money soon we’re not going to be able to pay the rent on Monday’. That’s how close to the wire we were,” she says
It wasn’t until 1995 that their avantgarde, off-the-wall designs caught the fashion world’s attention and they won the prestigious Benson & Hedges Fashion Design Award and the thenunthinkable sum of $5000.
So hectic were their lives in those days, WORLD’s outfit for the awards was knocked together in a last-minute panic, made out of bits and bobs L’Estrange-Corbet picked up at Whitcoulls some 24 hours prior to the big night. The outfit now sits in the Auckland Museum.
“It’s never been about the money for us — that outfit cost us $10 — it’s always been about the idea,” L’Estrange-Corbet says.
“That’s when New Zealand heard about us and we started to become known. It’s been a whole life’s journey of being gobsmacked ever since.”
L’Estrange-Corbet was born to an abusive, alcoholic father and left New Zealand with her mother and sister for England aged 3.
There, as the daughter of a poor solo-mother where anything but a nuclear family was scorned, she experienced what it was like to be stigmatised.
The little girl from New Zealand got a different-coloured lunch ticket to the other kids at school, indicating her meal was free.
But it was that adversity, she says, which gave her the drive to succeed, and also a sincere desire to help the struggling and marginalised.
“I’m sure if we’d stayed in New Zealand and been brought up in a very normal, middle-class family I wouldn’t have had the edge, drive or courage to face the things I’ve faced; and to be so opinionated.”
She has always disregarded the norms of the fashion industry yet often finds herself in the spotlight.
“We push the boat out and I suppose that’s why we get a lot of attention,” she says. “We don’t think, ‘Let’s do this because it’ll be really wacky and it’ll get some media’. There’s always a story behind what we’re doing and . . . we’ve never tried to be anything we’re not.”
WORLD has remained committed to keeping its operations firmly in New Zealand, something L’Estrange Corbet sees as repayment for the help she received as a struggling entrepreneur.
“If it was about money we would have gone offshore many years ago, and, believe me, that carrot has been dangled so many times,” she says.
“Francis and I have always said, ‘Then what? We’d have money but we wouldn’t feel good about what we’ve done’. I wouldn’t want to think that some poor child is making my clothes, some poor woman or man is sleeping on the floor of a factory because I want to be rich.”
In 2015 WORLD became the first fashion brand to be endorsed by the United Nations. Among her many charitable ventures, L’Estrange Corbet has worked closely with the Starship Foundation since 2005, raising hundreds of thousands of dollars for the children’s hospital.
She has worked with the Leukaemia and Blood Cancer Foundation, the Muscular Dystrophy Association, Duffy Books in Homes, Eat My Lunch, the IHC Art Awards, Diabetes NZ, the Mental Health Foundation, and is a member of Global Women.
She is an honorary fellow of the Universal College of Learning and took out the Westpac Women of Influence for Arts & Culture award this year.
“We’ve always thought that if our profile can help a charity then we’ll use it for that and not by throwing money at them because, believe it or not, we don’t have any,” she says.
“If you’re doing something and you can get money out of people to give to a charity then why wouldn’t you?”
“If we had gone to our bank manager and said, ‘We have $200 each . . . We want to start a business’. They’d just say, ‘You’re completely bonkers’.
Frances Valintine wants all New Zealanders to be ready for a digital future. “For over 20 years I felt that I was a bit of a lone wolf, slowly trying to change the conversation, looking at the future of work and the future of capability and skills,” says Valintine, who has been appointed a companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit for her services to education and technology.
“But now, there’s been an increase in awareness in the importance of technology — not in the thinking of people as coders and programmers, but actually understanding that technology underpins every industry.”
The education futurist has established three successful education organisations fronting a digital procession and is an advocate for getting women into tech.
“I have a drive to change the way we think about the future, making sure that we have a generation that is prepared for what’s coming and [making sure] education is fit for purpose.”
The 46-year-old says the accolade came as a “complete surprise” but puts it down to constantly challenging the status quo.
“I’ve contributed a lot of my time into initiatives that slowly turn the dial so that we can get everybody on the same journey about why things need to change and the importance of not leaving anyone behind,” she says.
Valintine grew up on a farm in Taranaki. She started her corporate career as general manager of the Media Design School in 1998, and later chief executive.
Prior to that, and after finishing school, she travelled to London as a photographer before working in fashion production in Turkey. Upon her return to New Zealand, Valintine began working for the Government,
Change can often come from one simple idea but then it comes from all the people who back you. Frances Valintine
recruiting international students.
In 2013 she founded The Mind Lab, which partnered with education provider Unitec a year later in 2014 and later founded Tech Futures Lab in 2016. Valintine didn’t go to university until she was 40, where she completed a Masters in Education Leadership from the University of Melbourne.
“I’m one of those people who diverted in a zigzag line through my career.”
Earlier this year she fronted the “no degree, no problem” campaign, an open letter signed by more than 100 New Zealand companies acknowledging the demand for contemporary skills, often learned outside formal education.
“What I realised was that there were a number of people just like myself that worked our way through without going to university at all,” she says.
“People assume I went the traditional route but actually I’m very much of the view that sometimes life takes you off in different directions, and you can follow that — it doesn’t necessarily have to come in an organised line or linear fashion.”
Valintine says she got her entrepreneurial spirit from her mother.
“I grew up on a farm and I always wanted to make the best of every situation. I’m a problem-solver at heart,” she says.
“If you’re not driven by an end goal and you say ‘I’m just going to keep following the problem I’m trying to solve’, you naturally become entrepreneurial because you’re not thinking about business or how much money you can make — you’re actually thinking about how much impact you can make, and that takes you on quite a different entrepreneurial journey.”
Valintine’s education organisations have taught one in 18 teachers in New Zealand. While that sounds significant, she says it only tallies 3500 teachers out of 50,000.
“Our view is that it’s great, but we need a lot more teachers to be taught this,” she says. “We want to increase that dramatically [in 2018].”
Valintine has won many awards for her efforts to get society ready for a digital future, including the HiTech New Zealand Flying Kiwi Award, Sir Peter Blake Leadership Award in 2016, New Zealand Diversity Award, the Top 50 Global EdTech Leaders Award, the Next Woman of the Year Award for education and the Westpac Women of Influence for innovation in 2015.
Looking ahead, Valintine says next year she will be focused on upskilling teachers and executives, making sure New Zealand is on the same page, digitally.
In the past few years she has taught more than 150,000 students, and often catches herself thinking about where these students would have gone if she hadn’t woken up one day and decided to create The Mind Lab.
“I have these moments where I feel really proud that I started something that other people have gravitated towards, and also join my team and my vision,” she says.
“Change can often come from one simple idea but then it comes from all the people who back you.”