3 min' read
When we first began, Wild Fibres was rooted in a love of festival fashion.
The two of us met at a festival, and that shared experience sparked years of travelling through festival communities around the world. We discovered that festivals were about so much more than music. They were places where creativity, self-expression, movement, connection and friendship all came together.
When we returned to New Zealand, we created our own fashion business, specialising in festival clothing. From the beginning, we were drawn to natural fabrics, textured materials and designs that felt comfortable, expressive and connected to the earth.
We wanted to create clothing that people could move in, dance in and truly make their own.
And wherever there was good music, community and fire, there were flow artists.
People spinning poi, moving with staffs, dancing with fans, juggling, hooping and expressing themselves through rhythm and movement became such a natural part of the festival landscape that it wasn't long before our paths began to cross.
The Beginning of Our Flow Art Connection
Our first flow-inspired clothing requests came from close friends we had met through the festival community.
They began asking whether we could create specific garments for them — pieces that were comfortable to perform in, expressive enough for the festival environment and practical for movement.
At first, we made these garments simply as favours for friends.
But every custom piece taught us something.
We started to understand how important it was for clothing to move naturally with the body, remain comfortable during long periods of movement and still reflect the individual personality of the person wearing it.
Slowly, we began to see a deeper connection between what we were creating and the flow arts.
The clothing wasn't simply festival fashion anymore. It was becoming part of a larger language of movement, creativity and self-expression.
Finding Our Place in the Flow Community
As more people approached us for custom clothing, we began creating designs specifically with the flow-art community in mind.
We experimented with silhouettes, natural fibres, flexible construction and details that allowed people to move freely while performing.
This is where our friendship with Sacred Flow Art became an important part of our journey.
Sacred Flow Art creates and supplies flow equipment for performers, including both fire and LED flow props such as hula hoops, poi, staffs, dragon staffs, rope darts, fans, levitation wands and juggling equipment.
We're mates, and over time we've naturally exchanged stories, ideas and information because our communities are so intertwined. Their understanding of flow artists gave us valuable insight into how performers move, what they look for in their equipment and clothing, and how garments can support rather than restrict their practice.
You can explore their range of fire and LED flow props here: Sacred Flow Art.
Designing for Movement
Those conversations helped us evolve our designs.
Clothing for flow artists needs to do more than simply look beautiful. It needs to move with the performer, feel natural against the skin and work across a range of environments — from relaxed festival days and dancing to energetic flow and fire performances.
We began thinking more carefully about how fabric moves during spins and turns, whether a garment remains comfortable during long periods of movement, and how colour, texture and shape can complement the movement of props.
Our designs became increasingly community-led. Rather than creating in isolation, we listened to the people wearing our clothing and learned from their experiences.
One example is our Desert Doof Dress, which we developed with an integrated hood and face covering. For flow artists performing around fire, clothing choices can become more than an aesthetic decision.
Many synthetic fabrics can melt, shrink or drip when exposed to high heat or flame. This encouraged us to explore natural-fibre clothing as an alternative for people who wanted expressive festival fashion while being more conscious of what they were wearing around fire.
The hood was designed with practical considerations in mind, including helping keep hair contained and away from flames, while the face covering offered additional protection from smoke and environmental elements.
It became a beautiful example of how our festival clothing could evolve in response to the real needs of the community.
A Shared Festival Community
Our relationship with Sacred Flow Art has always felt complementary.
They provide the tools that flow artists use to create movement and expression, while we create clothing designed to move alongside them.
Their LED and fire props and our garments meet in the same spaces — festivals, fire circles, dance floors, workshops and outdoor gatherings.
A pair of poi, a staff, a hoop or a set of fans can become an extension of the performer's body. In much the same way, clothing can become part of the movement — flowing, twisting and responding to the dancer without distracting from what they are creating.
Our journey into flow art didn't begin as a business strategy. It grew organically from the community around us, the friendships we made and the people who began asking us to create clothing for the way they moved through the world.
And this was only the beginning.
Check our friend's website: https://sacredflowart.
Continue with Volume 2 — where we explore how our designs evolved alongside the flow community, and the connection between clothing, light, fire and movement.