Designer’s modern twist makes taonga affordable
Artist Paretuiri Simeon says many wha¯ nau Ma¯ ori want to have a Kākahu (cloak) for special occasions.
Graduations, weddings, birthdays, 21sts, tangihanga, unveilings, special occasions — right down to small kākahu for tamariki graduating from kohanga reo.
“Isn’t that cool?” the Tūrangi designer and wearable artist says. “I wish they did that when my children were at kohanga reo — so cute.”
Paretuiri even makes tiny kākahu that mothers put on their newborn babies to wear when they leave the hospital. Those are often passed around families for each new baby. Another thing she makes for babies are muka pito, a traditional tie for the baby’s umbilical cord with medicinal properties and so much more pleasant and culturally appropriate than a plastic clip.
“People buy them but I also give them away to people who are pregnant.
They’ve been sterilised — I boil them when they’re done.
“And it’s nice to keep it all sustainable and natural.”
Paretuiri’s shop, Te Koha Māori Art Studio in the Tūrangi town centre, sells Māori-made artworks and kawakawa balms, but its speciality is Paretuiri’s Māori feather cloaks, known as kākahu huruhuru.
“People were coming to me and asking ‘can you make a kākahu, I desperately need a kākahu’, but the traditional ones were out of their reach. So they would say ‘why don’t you sew me one?’ and they told someone and they told someone else and that’s when I got the idea of having a shop.”
A traditional handmade kākahu has hours and hours of work in it. There is one on the shop wall that Paretuiri made by hand. Each feather has been individually twisted in and the cloak has a tāniko, traditionally woven edging. It costs $3000, a sum that’s hardly surprising when you learn it took six months to produce.
But Paretuiri also sells machinemade, fully lined kākahu where the feathers are sewn on using a machine and a whatu or whare band along the top.
Because the machine method is considerably less time-consuming, those kākahu sell for around $600 to $700.
“I thought as long as I’m going to make imitation feather cloaks I might as well make them look real,” Paretuiri says. “My family, my extended family and my people can’t afford those [handmade] pieces.”
Paretuiri sees what she is producing as a legacy item for wha¯nau, a taonga to treasure and to share around the whānau as needed and pass down in future.
“I say to people ‘treasure your kākahu’. I have a pamphlet for the care and protection of it and I tell them ‘each time your ka¯ kahu is worn, record it’. It makes a really marvellous heirloom.”
Besides specialising in traditional and contemporary kākahu, Paretuiri also makes items from muka and harakeke.
There are whāriki (woven mats) and putiputi (flowers) made in a traditional weaving technique called raranga, from harakeke Paretuiri harvested herself.
Her niece Nadia Marshall makes poi and also earrings — tiny kete and woven dangly earrings are both beautiful and uniquely Māori — and another local, Maataparekaru Mellon, makes kawakawa balms, widely used in rongoā Māori.