Our Story
Photography by Awhina Russell Fine Art Photographer.
Stewart Island Helicopters flew us out to Murphys Island.
The easterly is the wind nobody on Stewart Island asks for.
It puts boats on the beach. Throws waves over the wharf. Drives salt into everything you thought would last.
It also brings the dawn.
We named the brand after it.
Because life does that too. The thing that tests you can come from the same direction as the thing that calls you forward.
Our icon comes from an East Cardinal Mark, a navigational sign used at sea. It warns of danger beneath the surface and points towards safe water.
Safe passage lies to the East. For us, that means meeting discomfort and moving through it.
Built together
Photography by Awhina Russell Fine Art Photographer.
Stewart Island Helicopters flew us out to Murphys Island.
EASTERLY began with us on Stewart Island, at the bottom of New Zealand.
Built around raising our family, working lives, hard seasons, wild ideas, and a shared love for the island we call home.
It is our love story, too. Between us, our children, and the island that holds us.
Not the polished kind.
The kind built through weather. Through change. Through everything life asks us to carry, and the decision to keep carrying it together.
Designed on Rakiura
Every EASTERLY design begins here: with Rakiura’s land, sea, weather, wildlife, working lives, and stories.
The island gives us the raw material: things seen, felt, remembered, and survived. Those become the foundations of each design.
Every piece has something behind it.
Not perfection. Not performance.
Story. Character. A sense of place.
Skilled production partners print our finished designs on garments made to order. Nothing is mass-produced for us or left sitting in an EASTERLY warehouse waiting to be sold.
Each piece begins only when somebody chooses it.
The logo
Alana Moffatt of 4AM Studio helped refine the EASTERLY logo.
She took a mark that already carried deep meaning for us and gave it clarity, balance, and precision.
Her contribution was specific and important: helping shape the logo that represents EASTERLY today.
Why EASTERLY exists
What you wear can stand for something without shouting.
It can remind you where you come from. What you have survived. What still matters.
EASTERLY is for the people who keep showing up.
The ones carrying more than anybody knows. The ones who feel everything and turn up anyway. The ones who have faced the weather and kept moving.
Strength does not always make a noise.
Sometimes it simply gets up and meets another morning.
The light points home
Any light EASTERLY earns will point back towards the island that made it possible.
Towards Rakiura’s people, causes, communities, and guardians.
Not to make ourselves the story.
To help others see where the story is.
Photography by Awhina Russell Fine Art Photographer.
This began with an island, a family, and an idea that refused to leave us alone.
Still being built.
Still becoming.
Still heading East.
The East doesn’t negotiate.
It just rises.
And so do you.
Old Ways, Small Hands
Mutton birding — filmed by the family, for Kea Kids News. Tradition, food, family. The stuff EASTERLY was born from.
Featured on Country Calendar
University research, pāua harvesting, and the wild art of the island. Season 2022, Episode 8 — aired 10 April 2022. Available to NZ viewers only on TVNZ+. Sign up is free.