Trilby Yates was a pioneering New Zealand fashion label. Founded by sisters Trilby and Julia Yates, it operated from the 1920s to the 1950s. Along with Ninette Gowns and Bobby Angus, it is considered one of the founders of New Zealand fashion design. The careers of designers Nancy Hudson and Hall Ludlow began at the label, and it is credited with introducing New Zealanders to trousers as fashionable wear for women. Founding The label was founded by sisters Trilby and Julia Yates in the mid-1920s. Trilby, who was the older by nine years, had trained as a milliner at The Bon Marché, an emporium founded in Auckland in 1904. By 1923, the business was operating as a hat shop opposite the Auckland Town Hall at 374 Queen Street, under the name "Trilby Yates: the Ladies' Paradise". Trilby was a skilled milliner, described as being able to "take a tea towel and make a hat out of it". Julia, by contrast, could barely sew, but had business skills and connections with artistic friends such as the dancer Freda Stark and the filmmaker Robert Steele. High-fashion advancements Around 1930, the shop moved to 179 Queen Street, Auckland, a more prestigious location with two streetfront windows. Julia's niece Ata Yates, who started in the Trilby Yates workroom in 1946, recalled the shop's exotic Oriental décor:"In one window there would be fresh flowers and in the other a mannequin dressed in something striking. The rest of the clothes were out of sight in wardrobes. The store was dark red and shadowy — you'd have to be brave to go in if you were an ordinary person."In 1933 Trilby died young, and her daughter Digsy was cared for and later adopted by Julia. In the early 1930s, Julia changed the focus of the shop to high fashion and bespoke womenswear. She hired 22-year-old designer Nancy Hudson, a graduate of the Elam School of Fine Arts who was designing made-to-order garments for the dressmaker Alice Thomas. Julia travelled overseas regularly in the 1930s to Paris and New York, bringing back expensive fabrics and ideas such as branded shopping bags to replace boxes. On one trip she was fascinated to see women wearing trousers "à la Dietrich"; her early 1930s display of women's trousers she later created in the Auckland salon sparked an uproar and a "Current Controversies" column in the New Zealand Woman's Weekly. Julia claimed