Twelve Questions: Katherine Lowe

1. How would you describe your personal style

Casual. I've never been very good at dressing up. I like white shirts, jeans, T-shirts, flat shoes and black A-line skirts. Yeah, it is classic and probably quite boring to most people. It's all navy, white, grey, black. I don't like anything to be very tight. I have photographed my outfits for my blog but I got to the point where I thought, I'm not a model, why am I doing this? I got a message on my blog one time that was like, 'who do you think you are?' And I was asking myself the same question.

2. Do you get a lot of mean comments?

I'll give you an example, hang on, here's one: "I think the words 'frivolous and ridiculous' possibly apply to more than your spending habits, but then you are very young and Mummy and Daddy have possibly spoilt you a bit too much, have a great day." I guess it's not super negative, it's very passive aggressive. I don't think there's anything I could say that would make this person feel any differently.

3. How did you come to start a blog?

I used to work at a digital agency and one of my work colleagues bought the url Katherineisawesome for my birthday. He set up a blog on it with all these pictures of me and 'Happy Birthday!' comments from my friends. I thought, oh this is cool but I never really did anything with it, until about nine months later I started playing around.

4. How old were you on that birthday?

I've had the blog for six years but I'm not going to say how old I am. At a certain point I just stopped saying my age in interviews. It's just this weird paranoid kind of anxiety that I've got about what I've achieved in life and all the young people around me achieving things.

5. Has your Chinese culture played a big role in your life?

My dad says he remembers one time I said something about a Chinese or Japanese kid in school. He said to me 'you know you're Chinese right?' and I said 'no I'm not'. I don't speak Chinese and I've never been to any Asian country - not even on a stop- over. My mum is New Zealand- born and my dad moved here when he was 2 or 3. With my grandparents we'd do this cemetery visit that's traditional twice a year, put flowers down and burn paper money for the spirits. I think there are probably some cultural things that were different in our house - you weren't encouraged to be really outspoken or argumentative. My boyfriend's family is a lot louder than my family would ever be. But I don't know if that's a cultural thing, or just my family.

6. You recently wrote about racism on your blog - why was that?

I feel like there's this big thing at the moment. What do they call it? Hipster racism. It's where people are like 'I'm not racist. I'm so not racist I can say racist things or I can make a racist joke and it's all right.'

If you say something about a race and someone of that race is offended, it's probably racist. And I think it's very hard for white people to understand - and I get that, because you've never experienced it and you never will.

7. What were you like as a teenager?

I was pretty quiet and nerdy. Good at maths and English. I had braces. I had glasses. I was under the radar. I went to Epsom Girls and I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people didn't even remember me from school. I knew I could skip a class and go to Newmarket and get a coffee and it would never be like 'where is Katherine?!'

8. How did you meet your boyfriend Ben?

I've known him since high school but I hadn't seen him for ages. He does audio engineering and I needed someone to help with something for the blog. I thought - I know who can do it, Ben can do it. He's very caring. Very, very open minded. Probably the least racist person I've ever met. I mean, he cares a lot about women's rights and equality - I hadn't had a boyfriend before who would talk about those things. I feel like I'm quite highly strung, kind of neurotic, I like to be organised, I like lists, things written down. And he's very laid-back, he just goes with the flow.

9. Your brother, photographer James Lowe, goes out with Lorde and before that you did one of the first ever interviews with her. How did you hear of her?

It was when Royals first came out - there was a link to it on Facebook and I just thought it was really, really good and asked someone from her label if I could interview her. I think she was 16. I got along with her really well and I wasn't really expecting to; only because I used to do a lot of those interviews with teenage models, so I was expecting a quiet person with not many opinions. She was friendly and really, really smart, almost intimidatingly so. I remember thinking to myself, what if she uses a word that I don't know? I never gave her any fashion advice, no. Ella knows what she likes.

10. You have a day job in a modelling agency - but is it possible to make a career out of a blog?

I get emails all the time from people asking, how can I be a blogger and get invited to stuff and get free stuff? Or, how can I get rich doing this? I'm like, if you want to get rich, become a lawyer.

11. Who would you say are the three most exciting designers in New Zealand right now?

Lonely Hearts have been very smart with their brand. The amount of press they get from their lingerie alone is just insane. Everyone would expect me to say Karen Walker and I do think she is very, very clever. In the same way that I think Taylor Swift is clever - they both know exactly who they're selling to.

And a third... Do you know Georgia Alice? It's a relatively new brand by a girl called Georgia Currie, you might have to Google it. She's doing some interesting and exciting things. She's either got great PR, or people love her clothes, because I feel like I'm seeing them around a bit. Lots of what I think is exciting is how people manage their marketing strategy.

12. So is the hype around a brand as important as the substance of it?

Yeah definitely. I think deep down everybody just wants to be liked and be cool and if it's out there that something is cool, and people don't know what to wear, I can see how they'll just buy it.

An example? I'm going to offend so many people... Okay, Isabel Marant wedge sneakers. I'm just surprised that after about eight seasons people are still buying them and three people have just told me that they want to buy a pair. They cost about $800 or something. I was like, this is ridiculous, someone needs to explain this to me.

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