Patrons
Sir Sam Neill, KNZM, OBE
Sam Neill is internationally recognized for his contribution to film and television, with more than 80 films and over 45 television programmes to his credit. A versatile actor he has had leading roles in films such as Sleeping Dogs, My Brilliant Career, The Piano, and the Jurassic Park trilogy, Hunt for the Wilderpeople, and Blackbird. His television roles include Reilly: Ace of Spies, Merlin, Peaky Blinders, and The Tudors, and he has narrated and directed numbers of documentaries. He has a small organic winery called Two Paddocks, and is a longtime activist and spokesman for environmental causes.
Dr Jane Malthus
Jane is Honorary Curator of European Dress at Otago Museum and an independent dress historian, curator and artist. She was instrumental in developing the Eden Hore Fashion Collection, before and after it was acquired by CODC. She has organised exhibitions, overseen cataloguing, contributed to conservation assessment, given talks, published scholarly articles and provided professional advice to Council as required. Throughout this process she has undertaken research into the items and designers represented in the Collection. This work is ongoing.
Steering Group
Jane Malthus (PhD) is a dress historian and curator, Honorary Curator of European Dress at Tūhura Otago Museum, and sometime artist. She first met Eden Hore and his collection in the 1980s. A former academic, she has organised exhibitions, overseen cataloguing, researched collection designers, contributed to conservation assessment, given conference papers and talks on the Eden Hore collection, published scholarly articles and provided professional advice to Council. She is a founding member of the Costume and Textiles Aotearoa New Zealand and lives on a sheep, cattle and deer farm.
Claire Regnault is Senior Curator New Zealand Histories and Cultures at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. New Zealand’s dress histories and associated industries including fashion photography, textile design, retail and promotion are specific interests. She is the author of Dressed: Fashionable Dress in Aotearoa New Zealand from 1840 to 1910, winner of the 2022 Ockham New Zealand Book Award for Illustrated Non-Fiction; New Zealand Gown of the Year (2003); and co-author, with Douglas Lloyd Jenkins and Lucy Hammonds, of The Dress Circle: New Zealand Fashion Design Since 1940 (2010), which was a finalist in the 2011 New Zealand Post Book Awards. She is current President of the Costume and Textiles Aotearoa New Zealand,
Margi Robertson ONZM is a New Zealand fashion designer and the founder and creative director of the New Zealand fashion line NOM*d and fashion stores Plume. She has helped define what is known as ‘the New Zealand look’, and has shown the label in conjunction with London, Paris and New York Fashion Weeks over the years. Her significant design output has been the subject of several exhibitions including in 2025 at the Dunedin Public Art Gallery.
Paul Blomfield has been involved in the fashion industry all his life. He followed his mother as publisher of Apparel magazine and has been CEO of the Apparel and Textile Federation and Chair of Fashion Industry New Zealand. He now works as a PR consultant in Public Relations, event management, research and strategic planning.
John Crawford has a 30 year association with Naseby and the broader Maniototo area and chaired Naseby Vision Inc., for 13 years and remains a committee member. Naseby Vision has had an interest in the future of the Eden Hore collection since it was acquired by the CODC and has been actively involved in the Council’s consultation process. Previously, John was General Manager of Dunedin-based international television production company NHNZ Ltd. He now co-owns, with Jacquie his wife, Big Sky Adventures Ltd, an Otago Central Rail Trail tour business.
