By day she brings you products and advice in the always sunny beauty section of this mag. By night she is one half of a sweet-as-pie New Zealand-based label. Please welcome Romy Grbic as Pony, and her little sister (who has retained her original name) Ruth; together they form the label Ruth and Pony. With purses inspired by jelly fish and camp strawberries, every piece is handcrafted with love and impossible to resist. The Grbic sisters sat down with Trespass to tell the story of Ruth and Pony.
Hello Ruth and Romy
Romy: Hi Liv!
Ruth: Hello!
So, talk to us, how did Ruth and Pony get started?
Romy: Well, we’re sisters, right, and for at least the last 5 or 6 years we’ve talked about having a label together. We have had the name Ruth and Pony in our minds for a while. Then at the end of last year I quit my job, Ruth finished her course, and we decided it was a great time to put our plan into action!
Ruth: I’ve always been pretty creative and I’m happiest when my hands are busy, and Romy has recently discovered her brilliant knack at PR/social networking. We also mutually agreed that we didn’t want to go back to 9-5 jobs where we’d accomplish nothing much for ourselves except money. So we decided to risk it and combine our natural talents to start our own business in our living room!
Who does what with Ruth and Pony? Do you both design and actually make the pieces, or is one of you more involved in a specific process?
Romy: It started out with Ruth doing all the sewing. I handle all the online stuff, but I’ve started doing some sewing as well. I’m loving it! At first I was just using patterns that Ruth had already made, but I have now even designed my own purse, Ninja Cat!
Ruth: I’m pretty much clueless when it comes to everything Romy does for us. But I can sew a pretty mean purse.
Do you both spend your days seeking inspiration from the sweet things in life? I see cupcakes, strawberries (camp strawberries at that) ponies, love hearts, cassette tapes … what does it take to make it into a Ruth and Pony purse?
Romy: I think it has to be cute! I think that we’re both a little bit quirky, Ruth especially, and I’m probably a bit more girly. So yeah, to make it into the range you must be sweet with a bit of an edge. We’re also both passionate about the ocean and marine life, and so we are now working on a range which we plan on donating part of the profit from each purse to the people who made the film The Cove, to help them on their mission saving dolphins in Taiji, Japan.
Ruth: I definitely love to spend my time seeking inspiration from the sweet things in life! I love anything beautiful with a bit of quirkiness, anything that makes me smile by looking at it, so I try to put that into our designs because we want our purses to make other people smile.
What was the first thing you designed and made?
Romy: It was in form 1, I was 11, and it was a duck doorstop. I was and am still so proud of it. It was gingham too, the cute-quirkiness was already coming through then!
Ruth: (laughs) I don’t remember being quite as proud of my first creation. From memory, it was a pillow with an upside down bear which I painted on the front. I’m not quite sure why it was upside down, but it was pretty terrible. I think if I found it now though I’d probably love it.
What’s it like working with your sister?
Romy: I love it! Being the elder sister, when we were little I used to boss Ruth around a little bit, but working with her I get to see the mature side of her. I’m so proud, she’s grown up so much!
Ruth: Well now that I’m as tall as her it’s a lot better! But it really is good, we share a lot of the same ideas but we are also very different so we complement each other. It’s also great when we get to share the excitement when things go well! I don’t think I could have been so openly excited about opening our bank account with anyone else.
Do you have a favourite from the Animal Collective? I think mine is Monsieur Jelly.
Romy: I am also so in love with Monsieur Jelly. I especially love him when he stands up! Aristotle and Franklin are also favourites of mine as they are probably the biggest purses we make, so fit the most stuff in them and are a practical shape to carry as a clutch. Plus they’re so wise.
Ruth: Oooh yes I just LOVE Monsieur Jelly too! You can’t help but let out a little squeal of happiness when you see him smiling at you.
Romy, you are obviously our brilliant Beauty Ed, Ruth what do you do when you’re not hand stitching purses?
Ruth: I just finished a course in Film and TV production, so at the moment I am trying to build up a reputation as a freelancer in the industry. I have also just found a new passion, jewellery making! So a lot of my free time is spent in a jewellery workshop where I have heaps of fun using hammers and saws and blow torches to make delicate pieces of silver jewellery. It’s awesome, I get to feel like a bit of a boy for a few hours, and I get something pretty at the end of it. The best of both worlds!
What’s next for Ruth and Pony?
Romy: World domination. The world would be such a sweet place. All roses and cupcakes and ponies.
Ruth: Agreed.
And, perhaps most importantly, how do we buy ourselves a Ruth and Pony purse?
Romy: The easiest way is to visit our website, www.ruthandpony.com and then send us an email to ruthandpony@gmail.com telling us which one you would like! Right now I’m working on getting us a little shopping basket on our site to by-pass the email. But if there is one that you want, but maybe want a different colour scheme, let us know and we will happily custom make to your order. We also sell on Etsy.
