All the Cool Girls Came Out to Welcome Harris Tapper to Moda Operandi
For Auckland-based Lauren Tapper and Sarah Harris Gould, an 18-hour flight to join their New York fanbase for a tipple was a no-brainer. On Wednesday evening, the Kiwi duo marked their official launch on Moda Operandi—and ergo their first US retail…
Reported by Vogue.
There are easier ways to announce yourself in New York than flying eighteen hours from Auckland to do it in person — but Harris Tapper isn't interested in easy. The New Zealand label, founded in 2017 by Lauren Tapper and Sarah Harris Gould, made its first foray into the US market official this week with a sunset cocktail party at Bridges in Chinatown, celebrating the brand's newly launched partnership with Moda Operandi, according to Vogue.
The guest list read like a master class in downtown cool: Moda Operandi co-founder Lauren Santo Domingo, president April Hennig, designer Claudia Li, model Ella O'Keeffe, editor Lindsay Peoples, and enough stylists and Vogue staffers to fill a masthead. They showed up in the middle of a ninety-degree heat wave — and still committed to the brand's signature velvet and wool pieces from the pre-Fall 2026 collection, which had gone live for shoppers just hours before the first glass was poured. Dedication, or a very good air-conditioning situation at Bridges. Possibly both.
A Launch Pad With Purpose
"Moda is such a great launch pad, particularly for emerging and independent brands," Tapper told the crowd. "We design for the woman on the go, who wants something a little different and more romantic." That woman, it turns out, has been paying attention — the brand built its following largely through Instagram before landing its first American retail home. Both founders studied design but spent years working across different corners of the industry before launching the label together, which explains why the clothes feel considered rather than precious.
The evening leaned into its own sense of occasion. Guests sipped white Negronis and worked through a menu of oysters with kumquat and chili, cured sardines with Meyer lemon, and tuna with dates and sesame at the Michelin-starred spot — a rare treat given how hard a reservation there is to secure. Later, a pop-up portrait studio run by photographer Holly Sarah Burgess competed for attention with Harris Tapper-branded playing cards scattered across the cherry wood bar, which inevitably turned into a few rounds of Gin Rummy.
If the point of a launch party is to make people feel like they were there at the beginning of something, Harris Tapper pulled it off — because the cool girls who showed up already knew the name, and now the name has a New York address to go with it.
Read the original at Vogue.
