Karen Walker

Shoppers who've bought them tend to say yes. The eyewear is known for a distinctive, slightly off-kilter aesthetic and solid build, and reviewers often note the quality justifies the price even if it sits above high-street frames. If you want a pair that reads as a design object rather than a basic, they make a strong case.

It's the house of New Zealand designer Karen Walker, prized for a quietly subversive, characterful take on women's fashion. Beyond ready-to-wear, the brand is widely associated with its eyewear and its playful jewellery, all carrying a tone that leans clever and individual rather than obviously glamorous.

Karen Elizabeth Walker is a noted New Zealand fashion designer, born in December 1969. She grew up in the Auckland suburb of Remuera, attended Epsom Girls' Grammar School, and started her own fashion label in 1987 while still in her teens.

She is from Auckland, New Zealand, and the brand is rooted there. She opened her first store in Newmarket, Auckland, in 1995, and the label's New Zealand origins are a big part of its identity on the world stage.

Walker began her fashion label in 1987. She opened that first Newmarket store in 1995, and in 1998 she both started selling to Barneys New York and showed her debut runway collection, the year that really put her in front of an international audience.

Two 1998 milestones did it: she began selling to Barneys New York and staged her first runway show the same year. She later deepened her US presence by signing a partnership with the retail chain Anthropologie in late 2011.

Yes, at the highest national level. She was appointed a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit in the 2004 New Year Honours for services to the fashion industry, then promoted to Companion of the Order in the 2014 New Year Honours, and she received a World Class New Zealand Award in the creative category in 2009.

A long and varied list. She has designed clothes worn by Björk, Rihanna, Natalie Portman, Sienna Miller, Alexa Chung, Liv Tyler, Claire Danes, Zooey Deschanel and Jennifer Lopez, among others, and dressed Kate Winslet for the Michel Gondry film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

Think a high-casual, anti 'it-girl' sensibility: original, a little offbeat, and confident without trying too hard. The brand favours strong shapes and a knowing sense of humour, which is why its eyewear and jewellery read as distinctive rather than safe.

The eyewear is the most accessible doorway into the brand's point of view, since a frame carries that characterful design in a piece you'll wear constantly. If you'd rather start smaller, the jewellery, including the brand's recurring Runaway Girl motif, is an easy and personal way in. Choose whichever fits your daily wardrobe more naturally.

She does. Walker is also regarded as an expert on colour for interiors and has partnered with paint company Resene to produce her own line of paint colours. In December 2024 she was appointed to the board of Creative New Zealand, reflecting a profile that reaches across the wider creative sector.