Best Design Store

This design store is friendy, quirky and fun.

As the name implies, there is a lot of love in this Hawke’s Bay store. Bright, spacious, and curated with a careful eye, Aroha Lamour has a love for design that is carried through every part of this small business. The welcoming and approachable feel of the store permeates through the entire space. The small family-run shop reminds one of provincial mom-and-pop stores that use to line the main streets of small towns.

This is no typical small town store, however. Aroha Lamour stocks the country’s top labels in fashion, homeware, graphic prints, babywear, lighting and furniture that would fit in the most cosmopolitan of cities. Outside of a big centre, a storeowner may be tempted to stock cheaper brands, and while there is a consideration for a range of budgets (and some amazingly good buying) there is no cheapening the stock. It is simply the best collection of fashion labels I’ve come across, each sharing a similar high quality and beauty as chosen by Melaina Karaitiana who has an uncanny ability to find pieces that are both original and unusual but wearable and comfortable. This isn’t about occasion dressing here; rather, as with all the design stocked in the shop, it looks at design as an integral, everyday part of a good life.

Outside of fashion, the stock is a mix of products from local designers (as you will see in our Hawke’s Bay profile pg 114, there are a lot to choose from), designers around the country, and work that owner Rakai Karaitiana has created himself.

When you walk in you are greeted like an old friend, even if it is your first time. Design is integral to the store and the staff is all a mix of designers and artists. The store is surprisingly large: huge ceilings and a large floor area subtly separated into smaller sections with different stock in each. At the back of the store, a large screen-printing press is on display and this is where Rakai screen prints the graphic prints that hang along the walls, or will print a t-shirt for you while you wait. Rakai also designs objects. Continuing that push to use local contractors, he has been experimenting with the possibilities of water cutting, creating cut-outs of Crown Lynn plates. He also designs fonts and updates the store’s design blog.

Too often design stores can be intimidating, glossy and unfriendly dens of high-end design, or crammed with kitsch, funny and lewd knick-knacks that don’t seem particularly well designed at all. Aroha Lamour is neither intimidating nor trite. Everything in this store is beautiful and well-designed. Add to that a friendly and caring staff, and this store has rapidly become the design hub for Hawke’s Bay. Nicole Stock