Ensemble was NZ's fashion website — after five years it ran out of runway

Ensemble was an independent New Zealand fashion, style and culture website founded in August 2020 by Zoe Walker-Ahwa, former editor of Fashion Quarterly, and Rebecca Wadey, a fashion, beauty and marketing expert. The site covered fashion, beauty, wellbeing, women's health, culture and pop culture with a guiding ethos of "for both intelligence and whimsy." It quickly built a loyal readership and was acquired by Stuff, New Zealand's largest digital publisher, in 2021.

The co-founders took back independent ownership in December 2024, regaining full editorial and business control. Less than a year later, on October 22, 2025, they announced the site would close. In a joint statement on Instagram and Substack, they wrote that maintaining the standard they demanded of themselves was "no longer sustainable — emotionally, financially or creatively" and that they knew "when something has come to a natural end and when it's time to leave the party."

Paid Substack subscriptions were paused and later cancelled. The founders said they would publish farewell stories and highlights from the archive before the site went dark.