QT Auckland is celebrating NZFW. Meet Adrion Atelier.

New Zealand Fashion Week is here, and we’re throwing the doors open. Throughout the hotel this week you’ll find a running showcase of Adrion Atelier, the independent NZ label making a very welcome return to NZFW 2026 with a new collection, The Dying Crafts. Think of it as a preview. The piece that started it all, and the looks that closed out their NZFW debut.

Naturally, we couldn’t resist. QT has never treated art and fashion as something to admire from a distance. Adrion Atelier feels the same way about craftsmanship. Two brands, one good eye.

Meet the designer

Adrion Atelier is the work of founder Adrian Williams, built on contemporary tailoring, serious craftsmanship and design that’s been properly thought through rather than knocked out overnight. The label picked up the Fashion Quarterly Emerging Designer Award along the way, and you’ll currently find pieces at The Shelter and 47 Frocks.

This year Adrion Atelier is back at NZFW with The Studio showcase, presenting a new collection called The Dying Crafts. Built alongside local collaborators across embroidery, quilting, pleating, ceramics, weaving and hair braiding, it’s not a nostalgia trip. It’s a genuine question: how do these old skills still earn their place in fashion today, and what happens when you slow production down and put the maker back at the centre of the story.

Why QT Auckland

QT has always made a home for art, design and a bit of culture with attitude, from the Aotearoa Art Fair Sculpture Trail to the gallery walls in our own lobby. Adrion Atelier’s whole philosophy, texture and craft and story over chasing trends, fits right into that world.

Both brands believe good design deserves an audience, not a single moment on a runway and then a life in storage. So for NZFW, QT Auckland isn’t just lending a wall. We’re giving the label’s story room to actually be told, to guests who already know good design when they see it.

On display at QT Auckland

Three pieces from the Adrion Atelier journey, dotted throughout the hotel this week.

Gold Sequin dress Made for Adrion Atelier’s NZFW debut, this piece is built from intricate gold glass beading that shifts and catches light with every step.

The Hoffman blazer dress One of the closing looks from Adrion Atelier’s NZFW debut. Structured tailoring meets full evening glamour, with a gold sequin surface that catches the light against a sharply cut silhouette and an exaggerated standing collar that pushes the whole thing into architectural territory. Call it understated overstatement, if understatement ever looked this good.

Red silk ombré dress, Crossing Borders Before Adrion Atelier existed as a business, it existed as this dress. The very first piece Adrian Williams made, and it still holds a personal place in the label’s story. Red silk ombré, traced in black. The colour shift speaks to the beauty of starting somewhere new, the black border to the harder, quieter moments that come along with it. Crossing Borders was about the emotional weight of beginning again in an unfamiliar place, and this is where that story began.

Come and see it

The pieces are on display throughout QT Auckland all week.
Adrian Atelier

Photography: Stephen Tilley – The Outsiders