The rabbiter’s hut
A DUNEDIN DESIGNER’S BEAUTIFUL BESPOKE GARMENTS INCORPORATE WILD PEST FUR. NO WONDER CENTRAL OTAGO’S PLENTIFUL RABBITS STEER WELL CLEAR OF JANE AVERY’S TINY EARNSCLEUGH HOLIDAY CABIN
IT SHOULD BE prime rabbit country, this hectare of grass and rock with dying, drying gorse, a lone pine self-seeded long ago on a crop of ancient rock and plenty of places to burrow and breed. “Strangely enough I see hardly any rabbits when I’m here,” says Jane Avery. “I think they know what I do with them.”
Once a television reporter and producer and now the designer behind Dunedin label, Lapin, Jane creates limitededition, bespoke coats, jackets and accessories featuring Central Otago rabbit fur.
The label, French for rabbit, is all Jane — she’s stitched every stitch. She has been sewing since she was 11, learning from her mother. “I started sewing in earnest when I had my son, who’s now 18. I’d stopped working as a television reporter so I no longer had a nice clothing allowance.”
When Jane moved to Dunedin from Auckland in 2011 she knew her next move would be a fashion business. But such is the southern climate that palazzo pants and breezy blouses are not practical, while coats are a necessity.
“I’ve always seen a resource in the rabbits and I started thinking, ‘How can I use this fur?’”
Meanwhile, at the cabin she and husband Jeff have built on Earnscleugh Road just out of Alexandra, there’s no place for designer duds, least of all a Lapin “eco-couture” original. Better is her favourite Nitro Circus T-shirt, jeans, tramping boots and a second-hand Workshop wool jumper so Jane can put her hand to whatever’s needed — planting willow trees, rooting out gorse, emptying the composting toilet. Best not to wear one’s best for jobs like those. “Sometimes it does feel like we’ve taken on a lot, but you do a bit at a time. The paddock management did get to me for a while.”
Jane and Jeff bought their hectare of Central Otago paradise in July 2016 and started building their tiny cabin in May 2017. They had just sold their house in Dunedin and, after missing out at a couple of auctions where Jane feels they should have earned commission for driving the price up, they decided to rent in the city and instead buy “up Central”.
“We drove all around the region. We liked Clyde and Earnscleugh, and then this place came on the market. We came to look and stood here on a bleak, cold, snowy day and decided to buy it,” says Jane.
It’s quite the spot, with terrific views of the Dunstan and Old Man Ranges. For Jeff, raised near Toronto, the area reminds him of home. “I look across at the snow on the top of the Old Man Range, and it’s calling to me to come backcountry skiing. If we planted blueberries and had bears, I’d feel right at home.”
The pair can’t yet decide what shape their future home will take, but they’re having fun imagining. Ideas range from a yurt on top of the rock; a Scandi-style stilted pavilion incorporating the pine tree; or a container house with a Japanese hot tub atop the rock.
They’re now into their second summer with their cabin, taking the time to learn the seasons and how the wind prevails, and to decide whether to plant olives or vines in a sheltered gully over the back. “It’s an ongoing argument,” says Jeff. “Certainly, our future house will be bigger than our cabin. We’re not tiny-house people.”
“This cabin is about as big as the wardrobe I’d love to have,” says Jane. “Not that we’ll build a house big enough for that. We aim to build something compact, functional and inexpensive, so long as it has a studio for Jeff and a workroom for me. Whatever we do, our vibe is not to have to disturb the land too much — although that pine tree’s probably going to have to come down.”
“I like it,” says Jeff. “I like its Blair Witchy vibe. It provides shade, and it’s a perfect bird tree with tūī and bellbirds and fantails.” There’s always a lot to talk about when you have a hectare’s worth of lifestyle potential.
Until they make a permanent move — which may not be too far off now their son Angus is about to start university — they remain renting in Dunedin, where Jane has her Lower Stuart Street workroom, and Jeff is an editor, director and composer for NHNZ (formerly Natural History NZ).
The pair met in China in 1999 when Jeff was working in Beijing. Jane stopped off to see a friend on her way to London and met Jeff. She never made it to London. Over the next year the couple made television programmes and corporate videos in China, before moving to Auckland where Jane joined the Holmes show as a reporter.
“Then Peta Mathias walked into our lives,” says Jeff. For the next 10 years — among other projects — the pair made cooking and travel shows with the popular flame-haired presenter, including documenting her travels to India. It was there Jane got hooked on the potential of vintage saris, particularly in combination with New Zealand rabbit fur. “I’m now addicted to India. I’ve been three times — once on a buying mission — and I need to feed my addiction again soon.” That requires days spent in sweltering markets in Jaipur and Mumbai, feeling her way through tonnes of fabric. Vibrancy, texture and prints are a selling feature of her handmade designs (though she also offers a range of simpler wool coats as “sensible pieces”) for those eager to ditch the ubiquitous black puffer.
All sewers have a fabric stash and Jane’s is a cupboard of carefully folded textiles, including antique Scottish paisleys and Kashmiri embroideries. The best saris hail from northern India and Pakistan as they’re heavier silks, thus lending themselves to being repurposed as winter coats, she says. Many of the designs are geographically significant – the Taliban-ravaged Swat Valley in Peshawar, for example. “I have a lot of respect and admiration for the craftspeople, and I use the fabrics very carefully. It almost seems criminal to cut them, but I look at a beautiful fabric and think, ‘ Those would make great bomber jacket sleeves.’”
Many of the saris could be 40 years old and they’re all in excellent nick, barring the odd turmeric accident. Jane will wash the stain, or carefully cut around it, fitting the fabric to her design. She then adds a layer of wool insulation, lines it and pieces it together.
As a final touch, she heads down to Mooney’s Furriers to pick up her prepared rabbit skins. Using Mooney’s cupping machine, she invisibly stitches in the collars, yokes or trims to complete her coats.
While the saris catch the eye, the rabbit fur shares equal billing. For Jane, her coats are a complete eco-product using natural or preloved fabrics combined with a massively destructive pest. Through the winter, when the rabbit furs are at their most luxurious, her Earnscleugh-based rabbiter Ray Moffat retrieves rabbits he believes will fit Jane’s bill. He carefully skins and bags them, then stores them in his freezer until there’s enough to send to the tannery, Invercargill Animal Tanning Services. Tanned, Jane takes them to Max Wilson at Mooney’s.
“It’s my major investment for the year,” says Jane. “I pay Ray, then the tannery, then Max, and suddenly I’m up for thousands of dollars. For a bespoke business that’s only three years old, it’s a big scary adventure.” Add in the good 30 to 50 hours it takes Jane to handmake each garment, and it’s easy to see why a Lapin coat is what’s known in fashion parlance as “an investment piece”.
Jane experiences no disquiet about using the animals in her garments. “Fake fur is made from petrochemicals so that’s terrible environmentally, and I’ve no intention of using a farmed product. The rabbits get a quick dispatch, and they’re being eradicated anyway for the good of the land so we may as well honour the animal by using as much of it as we can.
“But I do a little internal ritual when I receive a new batch of furs. I have a moment of saying ‘thank you’ to the rabbits. The tragedy of it is not lost on me, but there’s a practicality and realism to using a pest resource. I think most New Zealanders understand that.”