‘Passionate maverick’ and fashion designer: Yanny Coates (Split), 1947-2022

Early in 2013 Yanny Split enjoyed an artistic triumph. Yanny’s involvement in New Zealand fashion design and wearable art dates back to 1987. While there have been many shows, fashion parades and awards won, an exhibition dedicated exclusively to her work at the Waikato Museum is a definite career highlight. Wearable Yanny Split Amazing Art saw seven of the 26 clothes she donated to the museum on display. Balance worn in the fashion parade ahead of the exhibition opening, unlimited color preview. Yanny always preferred that her art be visible on the human body.

Leafa Wilson, the Waikato Museum’s concept lead in the visual arts, described Yanny as a “Waikato treasure” and a “unique designer and textile artist”. Doris de Pont, a friend and former business partner, said Yanny had “always been brave”, having “the courage to do what it took” to realize her ambitions. Huntly’s humble beginnings, linguistic eccentricities and improbable domicile proved to be no hindrance.

Jannie Groeneweg was born December 11, 1947 in Bovenkerkerpolder, North Holland Province, the second of 12 children of Aart Groeneweg and Antje Groeneweg (nee Rottine). It was a traditional orthodox Protestant family, challenged by the deprivation of postwar life, squeezed into what Yanny’s sister Anita describes as “too small a house”. Out of necessity, the sisters slept together in a bed in the attic. When Yanny was ten years old, the family moved to Amstelveen, near the Amsterdamse (wood) boss. Again, accommodation struggles to fit 14 people.

Yanny’s first piece of art, a piece of felt sewn on fringed hemp, was made at age 10, in a church craft workshop.

READ MORE:
* Migrants are required to enter the Waikato textile fair
* Hamilton’s upscale art gallery is closing its doors after 40 years in business
* Auckland designers serve as judges at the Hokonui Fashion Design Awards

After completing her primary education, Yanny was asked to choose between attending a regular high school and a “girls school”, colloquially known as a “spinach academy”, where lessons were given in cooking, pattern making, and sewing. He chose the latter. Less suited to her burgeoning talents were typing lessons, at which point Yanny decided that a career in secretarial work just wasn’t for her.

Leaving school at the age of 14, she started cleaning the house. At the age of 15, Yanny worked in a bakery, where she learned to bake. He continued his education at night school. Classes in storefront and trade lead to jobs in retail assistance and store management. In 1968, he secured a position as window stylist for Vroom en Dressman, a large department store and would continue in that capacity for C & A, a fashion department store. After stints managing cafes and bars, further evening school in floristry saw him open his own business in 1976 in south Amsterdam, selling flowers and plants and tending plants in surrounding businesses and institutions.

Yanny’s first marriage required her to sell her floristry business and take a job running a sports complex. Her divorce provided focus and encouragement. In 1981, aged 35, he enrolled at the Vrije Academie, an art school, finding his métier. A year of study in The Hague was followed by four years in Rotterdam, where renowned designer Cargelli proved a supportive mentor, starting personal and professional friendships that would be maintained in decades to come.

Courses in fashion design are comprehensive, covering initial design, pattern drawing and cutting, silk painting, applique, knitting, millennium and fashion parade organization. There was a trip to Paris and a vacation in the South of France.

In 1985, together with five other Vrije Academie students, Yanny founded a fashion cooperative in The Hague, Studio Split, as a place for their respective works. It was here that he met New Zealand fashion designer Doris de Pont. Although her business was formally cooperative, Yanny, says de Pont, “was a driver – organizing promotions like ‘a day at the races’ – where we all dressed in our best and paraded as a group – determined to draw attention…[with] flyers are available to direct our new customers”. A fashion show at the beach pavilion in Scheveningen and a group show featuring 120 garments, at Artline, a dealer gallery in The Hague, were Yanny’s next initiatives, which were implemented on a grand scale.

Studio Split is a star that shines twice as bright, lasting only a year. Yanny’s work failed to sell as well as her peers. “My one is just a little bit far,” he said Waikato Time‘ Denise Irvine in 2013. It was clear to her that she would not survive as a seamstress.

Kept a promise that if she didn’t settle down happily in her country of birth before she was forty, she would emigrate, and in 1987 Yanny moved to New Zealand. With the relocation came the formalization of his professional moniker. Reasoning that Jannie Groeneweg was too difficult for New Zealanders to pronounce correctly – and not having the effect she wanted – Yanny changed the spelling of her first name and used Split from her studio to use as a second name.

Initially partnering with Doris de Pont at a fashion studio on Auckland’s O’Connell St, Yanny again concluded that “the commercial side of the clothing business is unappealing”. More interested in “making a statement through design”, she combines a part-time job in the Candy Textiles sample room with designing, entering award shows and “experimenting with new ideas”. Subsequently, working with Singer, selling and demonstrating sewing and knitting machines, continued to subsidize Yanny’s art, as did part-time jobs in various Auckland restaurants.

Yanny made an immediate impact at the Benson & Hedges Fashion Design Awards, her work being nominated in 1988, 1989 (twice) and 1990 (three times). In 1990 she won the Wool Section, for, as de Pont explained, “a pagoda silhouette dress; wide trousers, A-line tunic and cropped jacket – all in white wool”. There is considerable irony in the fact that “not an iota of color or embellishment” is to be seen.

Throughout the 1990s and beyond, Yanny’s work continued to appear at the Benson & Hedges awards – later renamed the New Zealand Smoke Free Fashion Awards – for a total of 13 nominations. From 1991 to 2005, the entries she received into the World of Wearable Arts competition numbered 33, including six outfits in 1995 alone, both possible records. In 1993 he won the Wool Section in a colorful machine knit outfit inspired by reggae icon Bob Marley.

Yanny’s success at awards and exhibitions across the country is too numerous to list. As well as prestigious exposure in art galleries to New Plymouth, Christchurch and around Auckland, her fashion parade graces museums, nightclubs, race meets and once – famously – nudist clubs. The parade in downtown Auckland for the royal visit of Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands in 1992 was a very memorable tribute to her home country. In 2006, Stitch, a book about the contemporary New Zealand textile artist, devoted a chapter to Yanny’s work.

Yanny meets Alan Coates, an antiques dealer, at an Auckland nightclub. The couple’s immediate relationship survives the discomfort of Alan’s imminent departure abroad, with Yanny, after some hesitation, choosing to pick him up from the airport. Their 1994 wedding, in Auckland, not far from where they live, a shed large enough to accommodate both of their professional pursuits, is of extraordinary color.

To the surprise of many, Yanny and Alan chose to stay in Huntly, shrinking significantly. After teaching fashion design part time as a tutor at Unitec, Yanny continued as an educator at Waikato, teaching summer classes at Raglan Art School and at Huntly College, eventually becoming adult community education coordinator for the latter. He takes workshops throughout the area and founded an art trail and art events in Huntly. Yanny serves as trustee and co-chair of the Arts Development Trust, Arts Waikato. In 2010 he received the Arts Waikato Outstanding Service Award.

Never having really mastered English, Yanny was supported in her written expression, as she was in all her endeavors, by Alan, a very useful editor. While what Doris de Pont called “Yannyism” often amused her friends and acquaintances, she never let her imperfect command of the language limit her. “Despite the quirky turns of phrases”, said de Point, “his odd spelling and pronunciation – you always know what he means”.

According to one of her sisters, Yanny was a “vibrant, creative, energetic, quirky maverick”. [and] impetuous”. In his life, as in his art, “there is always movement.”

Yanny Coates died December 4, 2022. She was survived by her husband Alan and a large family in the Netherlands.