Queenstown’s home to more than its fair share of renowned high achievers. To that list you can add one of the world’s leading interior
architects, Mia Feasey. She tells PHILIP CHANDLER why she and her family decided to move here and why she feels at home in New Zealand
Her clients include Google, Facebook, Uber, Amazon and KPMG.
Mia Feasey’s owner of a global interior design consultancy, Siren Design, which has about 65 staff between offices in Australia in Sydney and Melbourne, in Singapore and, latterly, in New York and London.
Raised in England, she arrived in Sydney, aged 20, with just £1000 in her pocket.
After working up to six jobs, Feasey had her first business at 21 and then, in 2005, started Siren.
Now 45, she, her hubby, David, and daughters, aged 13 and 11, have made a life-changing move to Queenstown, and couldn’t be happier.
Both ‘‘mad skiers’’, she and David had discussed moving to Canada while sitting on chairlifts over there.
Then, about five years ago, they were captivated by Wānaka when coming over to this area in summer for the first time, for a wedding.
They asked a buyer’s agent to look for property there.
‘‘She was like, ‘no, no, you can’t be in Wānaka, you’re too far from the airport’,’’ Feasey says.
The agent instead found them land in Queenstown’s Dalefield, which had a ’70s stone cottage on it, and Arrowtown architect Anna-Marie Chin was commissioned to design a home.
When Covid hit, Feasey had second thoughts about building.
‘‘’Cos I design workplaces, I really was frightened, I didn’t know what was going to happen to my business.’’
Her builder convinced her he should start and then do a lockup if needed.
While waiting for their house, she and her family rented an Arrowtown Airbnb that was available for 18 months as the borders had shut — ‘‘it was wonderful’’.
‘‘I got to know Arrowtown — I still feel that’s my place.’’
They then moved to Dalefield last July.
Feasey says it was their plan to settle here before their daughters went to high school.
‘‘My husband and I are very outdoorsy, and I wanted the girls to have a different kind of experience to the one they had in Sydney.’’
She’s also so happy about getting a better work-life balance and getting to ‘‘completely rethink’’ how she operated her business.
‘‘I’ve been going 100 miles an hour for a really, really long time, I went back to work when [my younger daughter] was three weeks old.
‘‘I’m certainly not stopping, I just want to do things smarter.
‘‘I’m like a different person — I used to do 10 meetings a day, back to back for, what, 20 years.
‘‘I do four, now, and I’m exhausted.’’
Having been forced to stay here during Covid border closures, she now calls it ‘‘a blessing in disguise, as stressful as it was, as the business knows it works without me having to be there’’.
Feasey feels so fortunate she could move here while young and fit enough to enjoy the Queenstown lifestyle.
She goes mountain biking with a women’s group every Thursday, attends a pottery class at Lake Hayes and has done three or four multi-day hikes, with more planned.
In winter, she’ll skin up and ski down nearby Coronet Peak and be home by 11am for the start of Sydney’s business day.
And she loves being home when her daughters come back from school — she speaks highly of both Wakatipu High and Arrowtown School, which one each attends.
Feasey thinks a reason she feels at home here is because of her adopted Aussie mother’s Kiwi mum, who was from Lower Hutt.
‘‘There’s a lot of things she passed down to me, around values, I reckon came from her mum.’’
She adds: ‘‘I’m now starting to think my business is actually running well with me remote, and I’d like to start getting involved here.
‘‘I’d like to do a ‘profit-for-purpose’ — it won’t be design or consultancy.’’
Feasey says they’ve kept their Sydney home.
‘‘We had a plan, we’ll build the [Queenstown] house and if we love it, we’ll stay, and if we don’t, we’ve got a holiday home.
“And we love it, so we’re staying.’’
