When you're a New Zealand accessories brand with a cult following for your cool, edgy handbags, how do you go about a collaboration with a trio of candy-coloured characters with long rainbow manes, pegasus wings and unicorn horns, who live in a magical land called Equestria and have the backing of one of the world's largest toymakers?

That was the question Liam Bowden of Deadly Ponies faced two years ago when he was approached by Hasbro with a proposition – to create a collection of bags and accoutrements in collaboration with one of the most successful children's toys of the past three decades: the My Little Ponies.

It didn't start like that, though. "We were creating a men's collection and wanted to use a specific colour that was really linked to one of the brands Hasbro represented, so we approached them about that colour and working together on that really small thing," says Bowden.



"And instead they were like: 'What about this – your name, your brand, really speaks to My Little Pony. We'd love you to do a whole capsule collection with them'."



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And while that collection is just 13 pieces in limited numbers, it was no small task to create, with an archive of thousands of Ponies in multiple reincarnations stretching back 35 years, each with exacting design specifications of colour, shape, proportion and detail.



"They [Hasbro] gave us a lot of text and graphic assets, and we had to do a lot of research on the different types of Ponies through the years, it's been around so long and it's been reinvented quite a bit.

Chris Skelton Designer Liam Bowden "went deep" on his research of My Little Pony.

"The world of My Little Pony is so huge," says Bowden, "and they each have different hobbies, personalities..."

After a long process of elimination, Bowden and his team chose three key Ponies – Twilight Sparkle, Rainbow Dash and Applejack – as the nucleus of the collection.



Bowden says there were a number of reasons for choosing that trio, but it was largely their iconic statuses, their "cutie mark" (the individual emblem stamped on each Pony's flank), what they stood for (each Pony has special virtues and strengths), and how they complemented each other.



"In the research we did in the initial stages we were going through a lot of fan blogs, different animations and illustrations that fans had done, rather than just the stuff Hasbro had created," he recalls.



"And it was a whole spectrum, there was stuff that was really normal and stuff that was really not. Both adults and children are very big fans – some of it was extremely adult..."

Now the children who played with the first generation of toys have grown up, there are hundreds of blogs and fan forums dedicated to the Ponies, a booming trade in collectors' items and customised toys, even global Pony conventions. Perhaps most eyebrow-raising, a subset of the (largely male) adult fans even have a name: Bronies.



"It's nuts, you know, the passion people have for My Little Pony," says Bowden, though he admits he too went "pretty deep" into the MLP world.

Chris Skelton Deadly Ponies designer Liam Bowden and his team spent two years working on the quirky collaboration.

"When we were designing and sampling there were rainbows everywhere!



"You definitely look at them in detail and figure out their personalities and imagine them as being alive kind of, and being real. Because they're not horses – you can't ride them – they're creatures, their own kind of thing."



Although he didn't have a My Little Pony of his own, Bowden did play with them as a child.



"My cousin Sarah had a big collection and I remember playing with them. I once dumped one in a cup of Milo and ruined it and she was mad at me for, like, decades!



"She doesn't know we've made this collection yet. I should probably send her a Pony to say sorry."



Bowden says the range was "nutted out" within about 12 weeks and since then he and his team have been kept busy "doing all the other stuff", as well as continuing to release their usual four to six seasonal collections per year.

"I guess we started by brainstorming lots of stuff and then editing, editing, editing," he says.

"The key first step was figuring out how to incorporate MLP into our brand and have a synergy between them both.



"Ninety per cent of the pieces we wanted to work outside of the collection as well."



The process was simplified somewhat by drawing on both shapes and colour palettes that already existed in the Deadly Ponies archives.



"That made it a lot easier as we weren't developing new colours, we were referencing old ones, but there was still lots of back and forth," Bowden says.



"And it's the most colours we've ever developed in one go. Normally maybe we'd do two colours and a black for a season – three colours – but for this we were developing seven, eight, nine colours all in one go, which had to work together.



"So it was really just a few elements where we used direct assets from Hasbro and My Little Pony, and even with those pieces we kind of edited the colour palettes to make them more subdued, so it was all about making it less childlike. Thematic and playful, but in an adult way."

Deadly Ponies The Pony Puffs were definitely a challenge, says Bowden.

The biggest challenges – and, Bowden says, "there have been a lot" – included the production of the patchwork rainbow that features on many of the bags and purses.

"Just trying to get that exactly right. From a distance it just looks like a rainbow, but close up it's all interlocked patchwork panels that create this symmetrical piece, so that was definitely a construction challenge and a different thing for us.



"Also creating the Pony Puffs [large, plush key fobs shaped like the Ponies' heads] – we've obviously created bag accessories and small things using different elements – but to create something so intricate using so many different parts all needing to be custom dyed and made, was definitely another challenge.



"And then even something like the little Pom Pom purses that have the cutie marks on them, the marks had to be completely accurate to the actual vector files from Hasbro, the placing, the tonal representations. As it was on leather and as the leather bent it distorted little bits, we had to make it smaller, move it – again something we hadn't even dealt with before."

Bowden says a lot of the processes involved going back and forth over seemingly minute but ultimately essential details, with both parties learning what would pass muster according to Hasbro's "stringent guidelines" as they went.



"To them they're entrusting a heritage brand, in a way, to someone else to reinterpret and present," says Bowden.

CHRIS SKELTON/STUFF "There were rainbows everywhere," says Deadly Ponies' Liam Bowden of the project.

So what happened next was a bit of a surprise.



Hasbro signed off on a new My Little Pony, one created by Bowden specifically to represent Deadly Ponies – the first time Hasbro has allowed another company to officially create a Pony.



"Looking at the Ponies, they were all playful and fun, but we wanted to create one that was not dark or ominous, but a bit more sophisticated and considered, and something that would blend in again with lots of different colours."



And so Shadow was born. All-black, sophisticated and contemporary and known as a bit of a prankster, not only is Shadow the equine embodiment of the Deadly Ponies brand (and, some in Bowden's team have hinted, in some ways the designer himself), the newest My Little Pony has served as a muse for the trailblazing collection.



"As we were going through the process we were asking: 'What would Shadow do in this situation? What would Shadow think of this?' So I guess it is kind of an embodiment of the entire range.



"We wanted the collection to be playful but refined and thoughtful and very much about quality and craftsmanship – everything that Shadow loves," Bowden says with a smile.

The collection releases on August 3, with Deadly Ponies' Britomart store in Auckland playing host to the range, though it will also be available online and through selected wholesale partners around New Zealand.



With runs of 50 or fewer pieces of each design, and with the additional MLP fans on top of Deadly Ponies' already strong local following, the collection isn't likely to stay in shops long, but Bowden says the limited edition element has always been part of his brand's ethos.



"That's what always happens: we'll put so much work into a bag or a scarf, and then they're gone," he says.



"The fun part is making new stuff. And we've learnt so much through this process, almost designing it and making it was the easiest part."

And, having begun by teaching himself how to construct leather goods in his garage 12 years ago, it's the making and learning that still spurs Bowden on.

Deadly Ponies Items from the cool new collection hit stores on August 3.

"I guess what drove me to start Deadly Ponies is the same thing that drives me today: just to make things, really," he says.

"There are so many opportunities for us to use different materials and different things that wouldn't be available if we were furniture designers or something – like, we can use resin or we can make marble buttons or we can do leather fringing or we can decide to use bleached canvas...

"So we're constantly learning, and a lot of those things we do are done by us, we're not sending it down the road to get bleached. I'm really into knowing and learning how to do it, how does bleach work, how does it withstand this or that – I find that constantly interesting," he says.

"That's how I started out, just being hungry to learn, and that's still going."

Is that passion for the infinite possibilities and hands-on, interminable development at the core of what has made Deadly Ponies into something of a household name, lusted after by teenagers and their mums alike?

Bowden finds it difficult to pinpoint the cross-generational appeal. "I like to think we have a customer base who appreciates what we do and the quality that we try to put into everything we make – not making things that are throwaway or that you get rid of after a season, that will last a long time.

"So I guess with that comes certain kinds of loyalties that we have to them and they have to us.

"We have 12-year-olds who will come in and buy something with their birthday money, we have business women who own five or six of our bags, we have 96-year-olds. We have a regular VIP in her 80s who comes in every one or two months and buys multiple pieces. I guess it still resonates with her, which is cool – you would think if something was resonating with a 12-year-old it's not probably not going to appeal to an 86-year-old.

"And that's who we want to be, we're not exclusive, we're not about creating something that is intimidating or feels like it's not for some type of person, we want it to be for everyone.

"Some people appreciate it just for being functional and some people are like: 'Oh that's a cool, creative twist.' And some are just like: 'I've got to have it because my friend has it.' There are so many reasons why customers purchase."

And while each release introduces new colours, materials and styles, the My Little Pony collaboration is only the second Deadly Ponies has done with such a high-profile (and unexpected) external party. The first was working with the Len Lye Foundation to create a range of pieces drawing directly on the celebrated New Zealand artist's experimental film work.

Bowden says they get approached about collaborations "every second day, pretty much", but what attracted him to both projects were the challenges they presented.

"I heard an artist talking the other day, saying a mentor had told her that a challenge for her should be painting in the colours she hates the most, that she finds the most ugly, and try to find beauty in them.

"Not that I've done that with either of our collabs – I think Len Lye's work is amazing, but he was a video artist, and this is a children's toy, so it's about how can we take that and interpret it into a leather good. That's the challenge.

"I definitely was at a point where I was like: 'No more Ponies!' But now we're building a world around the collection it's a lot more exciting and it reinvigorates us all. Like, I'm talking to you and realising: 'Oh, this is exciting, this is kind of fun. And, oh my god, we've created our own Pony – that is pretty amazing!'"