Ōamaru’s Becky Dennison is always looking for the next opportunity, but the business owner doesn’t sit around and wait for it to come to her.

The 30-year-old, who will have been running women’s fashion store Hyde Boutique for five years in December, is on the cusp of her next venture - launching her own clothing label.

Clementine has come to fruition from Becky seeing a gap in the market for accessibly-priced designer pieces that are fun.

“Because there's a lot of sexy, there's a lot of corporate, there's a lot of really casual fun stuff, but having things that are a little bit fun, a little bit different, but still like really easy to style and wear. So that's sort of where we are going with it.”

When she says “we” she mostly means she, but Becky’s accountant partner Kris Rush is a details man, and helps make the dreams a reality, she says.

Clementine will launch in November, and be sold through Hyde and other New Zealand retailers. 

The designs are nostalgiac and inspired by “the little glimmers in life”.

“Making the small things special . . . it's quite wholesome but also a little playful,” she says.

She is co-designing with a contracted designer, starting small with about five styles, and taking her time to find the right factories to work with.

“I was like, start smart, start small. I don't wanna bite off too much.

“The dream would be, like, if we do grow, an in-house designer. But yeah, I have no design skills apart from knowing what I want - I can't even draw.”

Becky, whose relatable videos of try-ons and pieces to camera have brought her business an Instagram following of more than 28,000 people, says creating her own label has been a dream for a few years.

Last summer she decided to stop putting it off.

“You kind of think it’s not the right time for it, but the time will never be right. The time is now. So then at New Year's, I was like, ‘right, I'm gonna get it into it’.”

It will be a separate business from Hyde that she foresees will be easier to manage further down the track, alongside other things, such as starting a family.

The name Clementine came to Becky from a Hyde customer order. 

“I saw her name written and I was like, ‘oh, Clementine’ . . . it’s a really beautiful name. It's pretty, feminine, but it like, it still has a bit of a nod to like the past, but also it's fun.”

It embodies what she is aiming for with the brand, and little clementines have made their way into some of the illustrations on the clothing.

“So then we started working with a graphic designer in Australia doing all our branding and we really wanted to do it properly. 

“We were like, let's not just come up with the name and do a logo, Let's do all our brand colours and our fonts and our everything. So it's been quite a process.”

The pieces will be easy to wear - tops and “a little bit of denim” - with a focus on good quality, well-fitting essentials.

She says it’s nice to have a bit of “creative excitement” away from retail. 

A first glimpse at the Clementine swing tag. Image: Supplied

Becky wants to launch her label “properly”. She has photoshoots with professional models planned, and is involving a public relations company.

“I keep saying that - ‘properly’ - because Hyde is pretty grassroots, and just, we are how we are, but we want it to be quite separate from Hyde . . . and we also want it to be not reliant on, like, it won't be my face on it.”

But there will still be a local in-store celebration to launch Clementine, and a long lunch involving “all the florals and cutesy things”, she says.

Five years in the retail game hasn't all been plain sailing, and Becky has taken risks which have provided learning opportunities.

She opened another Hyde Boutique in Ashburton in 2022, which has since closed, and also took over Lynn Woods in Merivale, Christchurch, which closed in August.

Becky has learned the importance of making hard decisions, and not to worry how those decisions might look to other people. 

“It's obviously emotional, but you can't let your emotions dictate your business decisions.”

Those decisions were “bittersweet”, because although things hadn't turned out the way she hoped. they meant she could put all her resources back into her main focus, Hyde.

For Becky, the key to her success in business is to be herself, and not try to fit a mold of what everyone else is doing, thinking or saying.

“That's your superpower actually, just being yourself. It means that you don’t have to turn on and turn off.”

She sometimes spends up to eight hours a day, recording try-ons of new clothing, and posting to social media. 

“If you're always just consistently you, you don't have to try and it's not hard, and also that's what makes you stand out sometimes. People like working with and interacting with real people.”

Sales for Hyde are almost evenly split between online and in-store, although the online portion is now more than 50% and growing monthly. The business ships across the country, and regularly to Australia.

Becky plans to continue growing Hyde, and have it remain “very much true blue, authentic”, while she sees Clementine becoming a business that stands on its own as a name in New Zealand fashion, maybe Australia, “then ideally Europe and America”.

“But we’ll just work with one first. We’ll see how we go here,” she says.

The first samples of the designs are due to arrive in the next few weeks, which is both exciting and nerve-wracking.

The samples will be the regular size 8 of most samples, and also Becky’s size 12, so she can “fit-test and wear-test” them.

“Wear it around, what does it wash like? Is it durable? Is the fit right, is the shouldering in the right places? Is it too wide? Is it too long? . . . It's kind of scary, but it's kind of like, if not now, then when, you know?”