The Swanndri – New Zealand’s gift to the world! The ubiquitous woolen shirt favoured by farmers, hunters and increasingly, everybody else.
Here at First Scene our Productions Department holds an impressive collection of the beloved shirts. Our swannys have appeared in tv shows, movies, theatre productions and commercials – they’ve become a kind of visual shorthand for “New Zealand bloke”.
How, we wondered, did this humble bush shirt achieve it’s iconic status? This week we decided to find out!
It all began in New Plymouth, when English born tailor, William Broome, realised that there was a need for a hard wearing, warm and weather-proof garment – the sort of thing that a man could chuck on over his work clothes.
The original shirt was designed by Broome and registered along with the familiar swan-in-circle logo in 1913. Swanddri? Like water off a swans back apparently – and it sounds better than Duckdri!
Production happened upstairs at Broome’s shop, The Palatine, where heavy woolen cloth was cut and sewn into oversized olive-green, collarless shirts, with short sleeves and a long-hanging back. The shirts were then sent out to the family home for water-proofing.
The shirts were immersed in Broome’s secret water-proofing formula for 2 days, in long concrete tubs. They were pegged out on the line to dry by William’s wife Ivy, and eventually parcelled up and sent off to the post office with Broome grandson Bob Bowler on his bicycle.
Shirts were sold for many years as ‘one size fits all’, due to the maker’s inability to predict which size the shirts would shrink to after their dip in the formula. “They didn’t always shrink to the same size,” Bob Bowler says. “So he couldn’t cut to fit, as it were.”¹
While the secret formula remained a secret, there is some evidence to suggest that it may have been inspired by a waterproofing recipe found in a book called “Fortunes in Formulas”, which lived in the Broome family bookcase, and had come with William from his Staffordshire birthplace.
Innovations such as the hood, long sleeves and lacing at the neck were added in the late 1920s by fellow tailor John McKendrick, who eventually acquired the rights to produce Swanndri in 1955. He bought the business outright from the Broome family in 1964.
Operating as John Mack Ltd out of his Waitara factory, McKendrick introduced pre-shrunk fabric for Swanndris. The garments were more wearer-friendly and could be made in different sizes and styles.
As well as the original shirt in NZ-bush Olive, Swanndri classics such as The Rover and The Ranger appeared, in a brightly coloured range of checks and plaids.
The new material was sourced from Alliance Textiles of Timaru and in 1991 when McKendrick retired, he sold them the business. All production moved to Canterbury and Swanndri had left Taranaki for good.
Over the next 20-years the Swanndri range took a few interesting turns, including 3 collections designed by Karen Walker.
A few short years later and Swanndri changed hands again, this time with production moving to China under the auspices of Swanndri NZ . Thus the iconic kiwi shirt can no longer claim to be be Made in New Zealand.
Although the range has expanded to include women, children and even dogs, the original bush shirt is still the company’s core business.
Today Swanndri is still doing what William Broome designed it to do over 100 years ago – keep us warm and dry while we go about our work!
¹One Size Fits All – The Swanndri Success Story
For more information about our swannys, bush shirts or the Productions department, please visit us at http://www.firstscene.co.nz
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