Vintage Queen Street

John Rykenberg ran a store front and photography studio of Auckland photographers from the late 1950s through until the late 1970s. During that time the studio captured Auckland's daily life and produced a particularly interesting Queen Street series in the 1960s - it probably comes as no surprise that
there are road works visible in some of the images.

I love the menswear from this time, the experimentation and DIY dressing that was so prevalent. New Zealand was beginning to embrace sixties culture but much of the clothing still had a post-war feel about it.

Denim jeans had made their shift from workwear to mainstream fashion and key global influences of music and cinema were starting to cast their shadow. Rock and roll was still a relatively new phenomenon in New Zealand, but you can see it influencing everything from haircuts to trouser lengths.

With the apparel industry protected by government tariffs there was virtually no imported clothing; everything that is shot in these street scenes would have been predominantly made locally by names and brands that today are only found in vintage stores and opportunity shops.

Gareth Shute wrote a great article for The Spinoff on aspects of the collection when it was first donated to Auckland Museum that you can read here.