Activewear and cycling in to work
Great style, well put together, or just someone who catches our eye. Every week reporter Carly Gooch gets out and about to discover the people behind the clothes in Canterbury.
These women are keeping active, even if it’s just having an “obsession” with a label associated with getting athletic, while one cycles to work and another does pilates.
Fiona Kirk, 50ish, is in administration and lives in Redwood, Christchurch.
She cycles to work in the central city with her husband every day so she wears outfits that are “easy to put in my bag”.
The commute takes “30 minutes tops”, she says. “One guy [at work] bikes in from Lincoln.”
The couple’s workplaces are close enough that they “meet in the middle” for their lunch breaks and grab coffee at Espresso Studio, which makes “the best coffee”.
“They know our names and orders off by heart.”
If she wears the right necklace with her dress from Pagani, she says she feels “like a Christmas tree”.
Leigh Morgan, 46, lives in Auckland CBD and works for NZ Health Education Association.
“I’m obsessed with Adidas.”
But she says her lifestyle trainers are from Scarpa Shoes as her wife works there.
Leigh grew up on a farm in Whangārei and has moved around since leaving her hometown, including teaching in Nelson for seven years.
She has been in Auckland for 13 years, she says, going to Mardi Gras every year. This year she went to the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras for the first time and says it’s “a whole other level”.
There are parades, concerts, DJs, night clubs, restaurants, and so many people get involved in the event - “there’s so much going on there,” she says.
She wears Adidas clothes and shoes by Kennel and Schmenger.
Ella McCall, 22, lives in Christchurch and is a student at the University of Canterbury.
She is in her fifth year of studies, her final year of law.
Law was her pick as she “wanted to help people ... to make a meaningful difference”.
In her spare time, she likes to be active and has recently taken up pilates.
She wears a Kate Sylvester dress and Veja shoes.
Net immigration jumped in February, bucking a downward trend that saw the monthly figure decline over each of the previous five months, according to Stats NZ.
Its provisional estimates are that a net 11,651 migrants arrived in February, reversing the recent trend that it believes saw net arrivals fall to 5458 in January.
Annual net immigration eased very slightly to 130,856 in the year to the end of February, it believes, from 133,793 in the year to the end of January. That was because a very large monthly net gain of 14,589 migrants in February last year dropped out of the rolling annual totals.
But as well as reporting a fresh monthly spike, Stats NZ has further revised up the record annual net migration gain that occurred in the year to November last year.
It now estimates annual net immigration peaked at an astonishing 142,159 in the year to the end of November.
Last month it had revised that estimate up to 141,403, after previously estimating that the figure had peaked at 134,381 in the year to the end of October.
Stats NZ estimates 253,172 migrants arrived in the year to the end of February while 122,317 migrants departed the country, both of which it now believes would represent a record.
Because of the way it estimates the number of migrants, both those figures could be revised over the next 16 months as it learns more about how many people crossing the border have really stayed in or left the country.
It believes 50,800 Indians, 35,000 Filipinos and 29,000 Chinese people migrated to New Zealand in the year to the end of February, with the next largest group of arrivals being 27,200 New Zealanders returning home.
Stats NZ counts someone as an immigrant based on its calculation of the chances they will spend at least 12 months out of the next 16 months living here.
Similarly, it classifies someone as having emigrated if it thinks they are going to spend more than 12 out of the next 16 months out of the country.
That means the figures count a lot of people who might not fit the traditional image of an immigrant or emigrant, such as people who are on working holidays here or overseas and students travelling here or overseas to study.
Immigration Minister Erica Stanford announced a tightening of immigration rules last week, bringing in a mandatory English language requirement for migrants taking up low-skilled roles under the Accredited Employer Work Visa scheme.
The maximum stay for most of those roles is being reduced from five years to three. A rule that had provided bus and truck drivers with a fast track to residency has been removed and employers will also be required to get in touch with Work and Income before seeking visas for migrants filling low-skilled roles.