Creative couture: Mount designer in the Blak

Courtesy of The Chamber of Commerce, Enterprise Magazine.

Once upon a time Teresa Hodges gained top student accreditation at the Bay of Plenty Polytechnic.

Teresa’s story is a fashion one. She is the creator of BLAK, her label that made its debut in 2007 and has since grown in leaps and bounds. Teresa’s clothing is now available in many pockets of the world, known in Australia, Japan, the United Kingdom, the USA and New Zealand.

A former designer for Moochi, Teresa launched her own business as BLAK BASICS to cater for a perceived huge gap in the boutique market for fashionable, affordably priced basics.

BLAK BASICS took off quickly with customers loving the uncomplicated look and before long Teresa was launching BLAK LUXE.

“The main idea for this was to give me more creativity as a designer while allowing BASICS to be kept true to what it is,” Teresa shares.

Teresa’s business was launched just one season before she showed as a collective at New Zealand Fashion Week where she was selected as part of the Verge Breakthrough Show. It was, she says, an exceptional platform from which to launch a label and business trebled as an outcome.

From there BLAK grew to Australia, New York and Japan. During BLAK’s first season within Australia, 17 well known, high-end boutiques came on board as stockists. When BLAK LUXE was launched in 2009, it slotted into all existing stockists.

Read the full story about Teresa Hodges and BLAK in Enterprise.