FULL STEAMPUNK AHEAD!-Purple shows her true colours

PURPLE TAYLOR (54) IS A STEAMPUNK ARTISAN AND CRAFTER WHOSE STUDIO REALM IS A TREASURE TROVE OF JEWELLERY, CLOTHING AND ART

- Julie Jacobson

“Where did my name Purple come from? Very once upon a time, I was going through a phase in the late 1980s where everything I owned was purple. Plus, me, my flatmate, her best friend, a girl on a course I was doing and a girl at my parttime job all had the same given name so it was just easy to be Purple. It’s unique and it stuck.

I grew up in L&P town − Paeroa. The bottom of the Coromandel Peninsula is my glamorous description! It was a quintessential childhood, I suppose. We had a rural outlook, so we’d spend a lot of time outside on our bikes, or at the beach.

When I first left school I studied retail merchandising and advertising at Waikato Polytech. I guess it was something a bit arty. But then I ran away to join the gypsies, the travelling artisan community who do fairs and festivals around the country.

I travelled with them doing a bit of apple picking and other seasonal work before I moved back to Paeroa to help Mum when my sister, who’s 21 years younger than me, was born.

It seemed everyone in Paeroa was having babies – and I didn’t want to be a solo mum! – so to escape I went to polytech in Nelson and did visual arts.