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Auckland Museum Applied Arts Collection of Printed Textiles
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Catherine David Designs | Dubbelt Morris Textiles | Adrienne Foote ~ 'Footeprints' and 'DNA Clothing'
Margaret Marr~ 'Whenua Fashions' | Mike Brookfield ~ 'Virus' | Finn Morgan ~ 'The Front Room' | 'Workshop'

Based in Auckland, Adrienne Foote has designed and printed textiles since the early 1980's. Initially using the label 'Footeprints', in 1994 she was joined by fashion designer Doris de Pont to create the fashion label, 'DNA Clothing'.

Both labels are well represented in the Auckland Museum Applied Arts collection featured here. The extensive Footeprints collection from the 1980's and early 1990's includes quirky hand-drawn images and political issues of Nuclear Free and Women's Suffrage.

click on each image to view image galleries

While studying at Elam Fine Arts School at Auckland University, Adrienne received a gift of screen-printing equipment. Already interested in fashion and textile design, this enabled to her to start creating original T-shirts and clothes.

Her first works were marketed at Real Time, a retail outlet in Ponsonby, in the early 1980's. During this early period, Adrienne produced her prints in a small back room in her parents' house in Remuera. Auckland.

At that time this was her ownly source of income and she sold her work through stalls at local markets. In 1986 she opened her own shop "Beast" in Auckland's Karangahape Road, producing work under the label 'Footeprints'. She produced fabric lengths and a range of garments including shift dresses, beach shirts as well as t-shirts.

There was a strong anti-nuclear feeling in New Zealand at the time fuelled by the French testing of nuclear bombs in Tahiti, and the visit of nuclear powered ships. Each year for four years, Adrienne produced a "Nuclear Free t-shirt". The Museum has two examples from this range.

Foote: "Designing and manufacturing a print that expressed concerns we felt, was a fulfilling way to effect change by communicating a message."

From 1994 to 2002 Adrienne Foote worked with Doris de Pont. The highly successful 'DNA' fashion label sold internationally and in 2002 they won an Industry New Zealand Enterprise award.

Some of the Museum's Footeprints garments and the DNA collection were purchased from Adrienne through the Disney Fund; others were donated by local Auckland photographer, Deborah Smith.

From a research paper "Adrienne Foote - Textile Design", Oct 2001 by Julie Donaldson, (Unitec Institute of Technology Library); and from conversations between Adrienne Foote and Jean Clarkson July, 2002. Revised October 2003, Angela Fraser, POI Research Team, Auckland University of Technology.

Read more about Adrienne Foote in the Profiles Section