Photography by Sally Tagg.
Peta Mathias lives a double life that many of us dream of having – an endless summer equally split between France and New Zealand.
A foodie, fashionista, travel guide, book author, chef, broadcaster, sublime singer and a self-made woman for whom French trills off the tongue – Peta Mathias is the kind of person you want to be when you grow up.
Her energy and enthusiasm is as infectious as it is inspiring, which is undoubtedly why her international travel tours and twice weekly Auckland city supper clubs are so popular.
During Good magazine’s photo shoot her face lights up at the suggestion that she reclines across the gorgeous tangerine velvet sofa in her Auckland apartment, upon which she promptly arranges herself as gracefully as a gazelle ready to spring at a moment’s notice, her vibrant outfit accented by sequined “Mermaid shoes” by Alberto Gozzi.
“I was reading a novel and in it a woman went to sleep on her tangerine couch,” she muses, stroking the fabric of the originally pink sofa. “I called the upholster and said, ‘I want a tangerine couch’.”
Peta is well-known for her love of colour as well as mixing fabrics and patterns, and orange – which she describes in her book Shed Couture as “a determined, vibrant colour” – is up there with her favourites.
Her first fabulous style memory was a burnt orange Chanel suit her father bought for her mother on a business trip to the US. “My mother was slim, gorgeous and had a perfect figure and that suit was the most gorgeous thing I had ever seen in my life,” says Peta. “She wore it to mass and to parties.”
A Trelise Cooper orange silk dress embroidered with millions of sequins was her choice of outfit for her one-woman shows, which toured New Zealand, and when she was awarded the New Zealand Order of Merit in 2012, she wore the same dress to the afterparty.
She also loves red and dyed her hair red for 30 years before lockdown revealed its true white in which she now revels. An Azzedine Alaia French tablecloth-style red and white check full skirt is a current favourite item, paired with a pink skivvy and Marni earrings.
“Not everybody would think the way I dress is stylish, but I like it and it expresses my personality,” she says.
Accidentally sustainable
During lockdown when she dug through the clothes she had stored away in her garden shed for 20 years, she realised that it was full of valuable, beautiful items that were crying out to be worn again. Her discovery inspired her to write her latest book, Shed Couture, in which she shares her love of clothes and the message of “accidental sustainability”.
Her mother, a painter, was a big influence growing up because she was stylish and made all her own clothes as well as Peta’s and her siblings. She could also knit and embroider, skills she passed onto Peta who believes learning how to repair your
own clothes is an essential tool of fashion sustainability.
Peta still loves mending for the same reason she likes bread making: it’s calming.
Peta has dedicated a chapter in her book to shopping and preserving clothing, with tips for how to clean and care for your natural fabrics the sustainable way.
Scotties Recycle is one of her favourite places to shop, and many of the designer clothes she has bought over the years have been from designer recycle shops – Marni, Dries van Noten, Christian Lacroix, Jean Paul Gaultier – in perfect condition.
“My mother always used to say, ‘when you’re flush, buy really good clothes, so that when you’re broke, you still look fabulous’,” says Peta. “She was the original sustainability queen because she wore her clothes for years and years and they always looked wonderful because she looked after them.
“When I discovered designer clothes, they were so ridiculously expensive that I thought, ‘I’m going to look after these and make these really work for me’. And if you get sick of something you can give it to a recycle shop or pass it on, which gives you permission to buy another frock.”
One day, if she feels like it, she’ll pass that beautifully made dress on to someone else, which is another reason to look after your clothes properly “because they’re in better shape to recycle when the time comes”.
Make sure to keep the label in the garment so that it retains its value, advises Peta.
On a par with good sex
Buying a new dress or shoes is like having sex for the first time with a new lover, says Peta. There’s nothing to compare with that first thrill of something new, something “happy-making”, something that raises the self-esteem.
Fashion, according to Peta, is also about identity and memories. The way we dress is often influenced by people in our childhood, whose way of being and dressing we admired. It’s about the sense of one’s own value.
“Dressing beautifully is not superficial, it is about self-worth,” she says. “It’s also the closest you can get to being an artist. If you can’t paint or draw, your creativity can lie in putting your outfit together in the morning and it’s a simple way of making yourself feel happy.”
Her love of fashion and food often blend. She finds joy cooking in beautiful clothes and her book, A Matter of Taste, was illustrated with photographs of women’s accessories made of food taken by Italian photographer Fulvio Bonavia.
The singing chef
Being a chef with voice training has also stood Peta in good stead. She is known to break out an Edith Piaf song during her intimate Supper Club gatherings – a cooking lesson followed by a meal with matched wines where you’ll consume more olive oil than you thought possible, as well as a book reading by Peta.
Peta studied opera for years and while she didn’t make a career out of it, if people ask her to sing a song, she will because she thinks it is mean not to, and if you have a gift you should share it.
The idea for her Supper Club was inspired by the Covid lockdown when her principal business – culinary travel tours – were put on hold.
It’s a different concept from eating in a restaurant because it is a learning experience as well as being very intimate (limited to 8 people) and being in her own home. She had intended to halt the Supper Club once tours resumed but they’ve proved to be so popular she now does both.
Making dreams happen
In 1980 Peta went to Paris for three days and stayed for 10 years. She ran her own restaurant because back then a female chef had to open her own restaurant if she wanted to make a reputation. When that chapter came to an end, and she returned home to New Zealand she found she missed France and her friends so much that she decided she would have to work out how to live in both places. Initially she returned for one month, then two months, until she had a plan to live her “double life” – six months in each place.
While there were many obstacles on her path, she remained focused on her goal despite what people would say, because it was the path she wanted to follow. And there was also a bit of luck. “A lot of it is just the ball being kicked into your court at the right time and you picking it up and running with it,” she says. “Some people can’t do that. They don’t even see the ball.”
Not having a fear of failure also helped though she has failed lots and will probably keep failing.
“If I hadn’t invented the double life I would have invented something else. Buckminster Fuller said, ‘If you do a job you love, you never have to work again for the rest of your life’ and I really took that on board because that’s what I do. I find the things that I really love doing and I turn them into a job. That way you’re never frustrated, you never feel you’re on the wrong path or should be doing something else,” she says. “I’m just a restless nomadic type person anyway and so I’ve made it work for me.”
When she was younger she drifted for quite a long time. Marriage, children, a proper job or big house didn’t appeal. She wanted to be free and craved adventure and excitement, and to see the rest of the world, and once she got on that path she became addicted.
Sacrifices
While many profess to want her life, she says it’s not for everyone and not without its downsides.
“Whatever path you choose, nothing’s going to be perfect. You have to give up something to get something. I had to give up husbands and children because what I wanted was a stronger pull than staying in one place and doing that thing. So, when people say, ‘God, I envy your lifestyle’, they don’t know what I had to give up.”
Prior to her travel adventures in her youth she trained to be a nurse, which she describes as her biggest mistake. “I just wasn’t that girl. I was that girl who wanted adventure, excitement and romance and nursing didn’t provide me with any of those things but it did provide me with the ability to work hard and to finish something because even though I hated it I was determined to finish it and it taught me how to be stoic. If you want to get somewhere in life you’ve got to finish what you’re doing and not flip from thing to thing.”
Does she have regrets? “Lots”. Unlike the Edith Piaf song ‘Non, je ne regrette rien’ (I have no regrets), which she often sings at Supper Club. And she tries to learn from them.
Managing long-term relationships has been hard and that is one of the prices you pay when you move around a lot and live two lives, she admits.
“Most of my relationships have been long distance because of that. Longing for that person and the time that you’re not with them and as time goes by and they’re longing for you because you’re not there and you think, ‘oh how fabulous, I’ll never get sick of them’. But in fact it is quite damaging and it is quite hard to maintain as the years go by.
“And then, if you’re a happy person anyway it doesn’t matter whether you’re in a relationship or not. Happiness isn’t a goal in itself. It’s a by-product of being on the right path.”
Magical moments
Some of her happiest moments in life have been eating with friends and lovers. The act of coming together rather than the food itself.
“When the food is made with love and you’re with someone you love, those are the best food moments. It’s about how you felt when you ate that food,” she explains. “A good food memory would be with my family, my brothers and sisters, because we all get along really well and when we get together we party really hard and we’re all good cooks so it’s like a really big blowout.”
Wherever she is she likes to eat seasonally. In Uzès, her home away from home in France, the main local crops are grapes and olives so olive oil and wine are her two favourite food groups.
In New Zealand, during summer, she is crazy about artichokes, asparagus and lamb and her favourite “fast food” – really good cheese on Vogel bread accompanied with a glass of wine.
Culinary escapes
During the European summer Peta does a guided tour of the famous Uzès Market followed by a cooking class of seasonal and Southern French recipes and lunch washed down with local wines.
She also regularly runs international culinary and textile tours to Marrakech in Morocco, Puglia in Southern Italy, Uzès in France, Spain and India.
In 2024 she is mixing things up and expanding on her culinary tours, offering for the first time a shopping, textiles, home décor tour from Delhi to Jaipur. She has also recently added a Portugal tour.
Each tour is meticulously researched, and she’s personally slept in every hotel and eaten every meal on the itinerary, and for many of her tours has been working with the same hotels and guides for more than 20 years, who go the extra mile. “If something’s not good anymore then I’ll change it, but I don’t believe in fixing something that’s not broken,” she says.
That includes her future plans. When people ask what she plans to be doing in the next 10 years her answer is always the same: “What I’m doing now”.
At age 74 she has no interest in retirement and doesn’t believe in it as a concept.
“I like my life. I have nothing to retire from. My job is fabulous. Most people don’t have a job where they get to travel the world. I don’t find that tiring, I find it exhilarating,” she says. “I also want to keep working because I want to keep contributing. And you can’t just take in life, you have to give. And so my way of giving is to keep sharing my cooking knowledge with other people and making them happy.
“I also don’t even feel like I’ve peaked yet. I have all sorts of plans and projects. I never stop. You have to keep physically moving and you have to keep your brain moving. Some people do crosswords, I travel. If you travel, your brain is always healthy because you’re constantly solving problems. Sitting on a chair and retiring is not the way to keep a healthy brain.”
And she’s started writing her next book – a series of “scurrilous observational essays”.
What advice would she give her younger self?
“I would say don’t worry so much about what other people think. And, don’t wear baby pink bell bottoms ever again!”
Does she ever have down moments? “Of course!”
“When I sold my first restaurant in Paris, and I was weeping because I was so exhausted, and I had really come to the end of my tether because it was such hard work. The restaurant had to be sold because it wasn’t doing so well anymore and a regular client who came every week, said to me, ‘don’t weep. This isn’t a failure. You could fail again many times before you get it right’. And that was a very good piece of advice because it made me feel not so bad about myself… And, you do get over it, and you do get on with things, because fortunately, time heals all wounds.”
Staying centred
Aside from staying mentally and physically active (she loves yoga), Peta’s biggest strength is that her stability comes from within. It doesn’t come from big houses or flash cars.
“When it comes from within you can ride the vagaries of life more easily, than someone else who is dependent on external things to make them feel secure,” she explains. “Which is why
I can be a nomad.
“And, when I’m down in the dumps, I put on a beautiful dress and I cook.”
