Taking Shape! Joanna's Booming Fashion Dreams

Meet the Designer Who Looks on the Plus Side

- Julie Jacobson

With her bright blue hair, enormous beads and rainbow-coloured skirt, you can’t miss Joanna McLeod. And that’s exactly her point.

Fed up with being labelled and stigmatised, the 38-year-old is a proud “fat” person, bringing colour and fun to fashion for plus-sized Kiwis.

By day the Wellingtonian is a civil servant – albeit one who pointedly eschews the drab and sombre tones traditionally associated with the capital’s public sector – and in her spare time she is the brains behind new clothing label The House of Boom.

Launched in July last year, Boom was born from Joanna’s frustration at the lack of ethical clothing options in larger sizes.

“I wanted to wear bright colours, not prints that look like couches or things with random ruffles and frills,” she says. “With no disrespect to mothers of the bride, that is not me.

“I complained about why noone was doing anything for so long that in the end I thought, actually, I guess I will.”

Society’s anti-fat bias was another motivation. Joanna, the daughter of a diplomat, spent her early years between New Zealand, Rarotonga, Germany and, from age 10 to 14, in Japan.

Being a big, tall child meant diminutive Japanese clothing was out of the question for Joanna, so any new clothes would generally be purchased on annual trips back home.