Fashion designer Vicki Taylor isn't keeping the ladder to herself.

Stepping into the archive at taylor's Uptown HQ feels like walking into a wardrobe that opens to another world. Here, floor-to-ceiling clothing rails hold a library of brown paper patterns, decades deep. It would be easy to lose an hour in here, and easier still to lose track of what year it is.

"This is what 27 years of archives looks like," laughs designer Vicki Taylor, the woman behind the successful fashion label that carries her surname.

Her latest Spring/Summer 26 collection Somnii, shown at NZ Fashion Week, is inspired by dreamscape - the moment between sleeping and waking where things feel both familiar and strange - and was presented by live performers shapeshifting amongst swirling smoke.

taylor pieces are known for their interesting textiles and quality of make, and often can be worn multiple ways. "I don't believe in fashion for one season," says Vicki. "I love structure and pushing the boundaries of what I'm doing. I like mixing traditional tailoring with something soft and making it much more wearable."

Vicki has been designing under her own label since 1999, and in 2014 founded The Shelter, an avant-garde concept space that champions New Zealand design.

The Shelter programme currently supports 20 New Zealand designers at various levels, from Adrion Atelier to Rory William Docherty, along with alumni that have since gained international momentum, including Maggie Marilyn.

The Shelter won Fashion Retailer of the Year at the FQ Fashion Awards in July and the Excellence in Community Contribution Award at the 2025 Auckland Business Awards, recognising Vicki's decade-long commitment to nurturing the next generation of New Zealand designers.

Her impact was also seen on the runway at NZ Fashion Week in August, where many of the young designers under her roof showed collections, including Adrion Williams of Adrion Atelier, J'AKE, Rhian, Fringes by Finn Mora-Hill, Winnie Catherine and Anthurium.

At the conclusion of NZFW, a designer breakfast at The Shelter brought together designers for a panel discussion, where Vicki made the distinction that they do everything across their business.

"There's no way you're going to get a Marc Jacobs piece sewn by anybody even close to the designer," said Vicki. "So to be able to have that as it comes out in New Zealand is actually an incredible privilege. It would be called 'couture' in the rest of the world, but here we're just called an emerging brand."

This became evident when she sold her secondary label SYMETRIA into Selfridges in the UK for five years. "I shared racks with Yohji Yamamoto and Commes des Garçons. That's where they perceived my design level to be and we were the third-best seller in that area for many years, and I think that gave me the confidence to keep doing what I do," says Vicki.

By selling internationally, she learned first-hand about some of the pitfalls that a designer can face and pulled out of Selfridges when the department store took more than a year to pay her for a delivery. These days, she's happy running five bricks-and-mortar stores on home soil and sharing her knowledge with others "so that hopefully they can have a smoother run."

"I don't teach them design. That's up to them. But we teach them the importance of the business side," says Vicki.

In the early days of her career, she recalls receiving help from established designer Jane Daniels, to whom she is grateful for helping mentor her through some of the challenges of setting up a business. Now she is paying it forward with The Shelter.

Vicki believes New Zealand has an opportunity to be known for our design and quality, rather than quantity. "We need to be like the little boutique area of the world, where if you want the best of everything, you can come to us. Like the Denmark of the Southern Hemisphere."

There's still so much she wants to do creatively, and she's loving seeing the young designers at The Shelter taking the creative reins of their own businesses.

"I think there's starting to be a pushback against homogenised commercial corporates, and uniqueness is becoming important again for the consumer. That puts us in a really interesting position in New Zealand because uniqueness is what we do, and we have incredible creativity."

Decades from now, she hopes people will say she maintained her identity and quality when it comes to her own designs.

And she's stopped worrying whether the ideas will stop coming. "As soon as I go quiet, they all come racing back in and there's something else that inspires me, and so off I go."