Simplicity, McCall’s, Vogue, New Look and Butterick sewing patterns disappear from NZ stores
Big brand sewing patterns will no longer be available to buy in New Zealand. Kim Knight reflects on a loss that goes beyond the fabric store.
What do modern parents give their children when they turn 21?
“Money and anxiety,” said a millennial respondent to my unscientific office poll.
In 1991, you did not get cash or a car or a ski trip to Hokkaido. Back then, you received gifts that signified your transition from learner adult to fully contributing member of society. A cut crystal bowl for your future Christmas trifles. A monogrammed pen to sign your rent cheques. Well-constructed guest towels.
I turned 21 and my parents bought me a sewing machine. It was time to go forth and hem my own trousers.
The milestones I’ve sewn on that machine include a sensible skirt before a career change I hated, a plunging silver-sequinned birthday top when I found myself 35 and single, and a wedding dress I made during a Covid lockdown and have worn once so my grandmother could see it before she died. (This is not as tragic as it sounds. I found something I liked more at a shop in Point Chev.)
I know how to cut on the bias and put a dart in a bust and why it is crucial to match the notches. I can baste and gather and understand that “haberdashery” is not a Harry Potter spell.
Buttonholes are beyond me, but if I follow the instructions and change the presser foot, it only takes me three hours to insert a zip.
In 2026, these skills are redundant.
Niche social media accounts occasionally take me back to a future where sewing from scratch is valued. At work, I sit near a fashion journalist who champions sustainable and circular design practices. But I cannot recall the last time I walked past a fabric store.
Recently, I opened an email: “Simplicity sewing patterns will no longer be supplied to New Zealand – this covers the brands Simplicity, McCall’s, Vogue, New Look and Butterick. This means that once existing stock in the country is gone, it won’t be restocked through local suppliers.”
The Australian-based company that supplies these patterns announced in February that, as part of a global restructure, it was closing its Sydney warehouse. In New Zealand, that means Pattern Postie – the country’s first online, mail-order sewing pattern business, which is run by Whangārei’s Bronwyn Summers – is winding down after 14 years.
Summers told me the timing was good (she is a former librarian who recently decided to retrain as a high school teacher) but her customers were “devastated – really devastated”.
She’s stocked up on what she can (basic skirts, good hoodies and an additional full set of McCall’s that will arrive late this month) and expects her supply might stretch another year, “however, once these patterns sell out, I won’t be able to replace them”.
The future is digital, downloadable and designed by smaller, independent producers. The legacy brands have competition; the internet is full of cheap and/or free self-printable patterns (sticky tape not included).
But, as Summers notes “there are still a lot of people out there who don’t want to use PDFs as their primary source”.
Count me among them.
In the top of my wardrobe is a box of sewing patterns dating back to 1983 when I was still borrowing my mother’s sewing machine. Some of them have been used so often they are more pinholes than paper; all of them represent very specific moments in my life.
I learned to sew when I was 11 alongside a bunch of other country kids who came into town once a week for “manual training” at Greymouth Intermediate. The first pattern I pinned and cut was a wraparound skirt; the first social shame I felt was when I realised all the other girls were sewing delicate Laura Ashley florals and the material my mother had bought me (bright red with yellow, blue and green balloons) was very, very wrong.
Once, it felt like every small New Zealand town had at least two fabric stores. Linen-silk-organza-et al. In the corner, a pile of pattern books. While fashion magazines contained photographs of clothes I couldn’t afford worn by women I would not become, a sewing pattern book was an exercise in hope – hand-drawn illustrations of aspirational everywomen with customisable necklines. Lick your finger, flick the pages and write down the code numbers for your favoured design.
Summers says: “Someone will send me a photo saying, do you have this sleeve . . . and I’ll be like, ‘oh, that’s 1873’.”
She cites basic skirts, a coat-skirt-trouser combo and a handkerchief-hemmed tunic among her “most requested”. There is a weirdly popular pattern featuring eight sleeve styles from the 1930s – and the one that “went crazy” after it featured as a technical challenge in series 11 of The Great British Sewing Bee.
Vogue V2000 is an iconic 1970s Diane von Furstenberg wrap dress pattern re-released to celebrate its 50th anniversary. It can be customised by length, collar, cuffs and the way it’s tied. It is available in sizes 6-24 and will, according to the label, “flatter hourglass, inverted triangle, rectangle, and triangle body shapes with minimal adjustments”.
Buy now. Fashion is rarely this accommodating.
Kim Knight joined the New Zealand Herald in 2016 and is a senior journalist on its lifestyle desk.