Faradays Queen St Opening: The Couple Behind Auckland’s New $30m Department Store

Constance and Eddie von Dadelszen are racing to open Auckland’s newest department store. They tell Bridget Jones why the project will either win big – or fail massively. They are dressed to match the staircase. Constance von Dadelszen in cream silk, her husband Eddie in black. It’s not accidental, When we visit, it’s 23 days until Faradays, the department store co-founded by the von Dadelszens, opens. That staircase (nine tonnes of steel and Italian Arabescato viola marble that closed Queen St when installed) is still cloaked in bubble wrap and cardboard, but you can peek at veins of warm greys, creams and a hint of cat’s tongue pink. Even to the untrained eye, the outfit choices are spot on. At the top, on the third floor, there’s no sign of Lottie’s, Josh and Helen Emett’s new restaurant. There are no clothing racks or changing room curtains. Just dust that Eddie tries to protect his wife from. The grand staircase featured on the ground floor of Faradays was installed by teams from Cape Construction and Ackworth House.One flight below, more marble – there will be more than 400sq m of it – is being slotted into place on the floor. The work is so fresh that a misstep by Faradays’ dedicated photographer sees her shoe heel coated in wet grout. Eddie grimaces once she’s out of earshot. That stuff is concrete-based, designed to keep this floor in place for “100 years”, he says. There’s no saving that sole.The site doesn’t just look like a construction site, it is one. And while they don’t seem like two people freaking out over timelines, Gantt charts and being the faces of a $30 million development they think will change Queen St, beneath the water, these beautiful swans are swimming for their lives. “We’re really throwing every single bit of ourselves at this to get it right,” Eddie says.“If this works, it will win very big – or fail massively.”Computer generated render of Lottie's, the new Izzard and Fearon Hay-designed restaurant from Josh and Helen Emett. Photo / Paul Izzard DesignThe von Dadelszens have been together for 20 years, married (in Florence, Italy) for almost seven. She says they met as students at the University of Canterbury. His answer is more romantic, which is surprising given the number of times he ribs his wife for being the more emotional one.“I tripped up the library stairs on the law school, staring at Constance. That was the first time I saw her,” Eddie says unabashedly. Did Constance notice? “I noticed somebody tripped. It wasn’t until he offered to buy me a drink at a bar …”She declined, but her best friend reckoned it was worth accepting. “Twenty years later, two children, four businesses, here we are,” she says.“We’re really throwing every single bit of ourselves at this to get it right,” Eddie von Dadelszen says. Photo / Dean PurcellThe pair, who grew up in Christchurch, knew instantly they were on the same path. He says they are “almost identically ambitious”, while she says he immediately believed in her potential, even while stringing together $20 op-shop outfits; they are “each other’s biggest advocates”, especially when loved ones questioned some of their decisions.“When we’re sitting there in our 80s, we don’t want to have left anything to chance or have a ‘what if’. It’s better to have tried and failed and tried again than potentially not at all,” Eddie says.“We know the number of eyeballs that are on us [with Faradays]. But with opportunities of this scale comes a certain amount of responsibility … You don’t just get given a cheque and off you go.”That responsibility weighs heavily: to the building, where Milne & Choyce established its flagship department store in the 1920s. To the people who have backed them to execute their vision – investors, shareholders and brand partners, many trusting the couple to launch them to the New Zealand market for the first time. To Faradays’ 80 staff. And responsibility to their young family. “There’s a huge amount of risk in this,” Eddie says. “But it’s very deeply calculated.”An artist's render of luxury department store Faradays give an insight into how the finished project will look.Constance describes herself as someone who trusts her gut, but there were moments even she got the “speed wobbles” about the project. “Eddie stood by me on those days, and he was like, ‘there’s going to be a way that we’re going to pull this off, just trust the process’. And as a mother you’re like, ‘oh well, trust the process. But also I’d like to house and feed my children’.”There’s a lot the couple can’t talk about when it comes to the development, including what caused some of those fearful moments; there are commercial sensitivities and details they have agreed to keep confidential. But they can talk about what it means to them. Even if they haven’t fully comprehended it yet.“We won’t ever understand the scale of the opportunity that we’ve been given,” Eddie says. “I mean, we’ve f***ing fought really f***ing hard for it. But it’s still an opportunity that we’ve got. We won’t see [what that is] for two or three years, right? We’re just so focused on making it happen. And I’m sure one day I’ll take a step back and go, ‘oh my god. I was 41 and I got to open a department store on Queen Street with the love of my life’. What a f***ing incredible thing to tell [our kids], right?“But at the moment it’s like, shit is the fit-out going to clear customs?”The pair have built businesses before. Constance set up Love and Object, a vintage jewellery and accessories business and Eddie operated fashion label Dadelszen after working as Working Style’s creative director. They opened Faradays’ first iteration in Parnell in 2021. Josh and Helen Emett are set to open a new restaurant, Lottie's, inside Faradays.They say nothing they’re attempting now would be possible without what they did before. “We couldn’t have opened a department store 20 years ago. We wouldn’t have had a clue what we were doing. We wouldn’t have had the credibility in the market either. But you know, part of the entrepreneurial journey for me has been that, possibly, my reputation and the fact that I’m fiercely ambitious – but I’m also fiercely loyal and I do my very best not to let people down – has rubbed off positively on some pretty influential people,” Eddie says.“[And] that reputation has meant we did attract significant capital [for this project]. The building did need the right tenant. I think in a small way, the beautiful Faradays in Parnell possibly gave a window into what we could do if we were funded properly. Like if they can do that there, imagine what they could do [here].”Constance agrees. “You have to prove yourself and we’re fortunate that we got off the starting line when we were really young. I’m so fortunate that I’ve learned these [lessons] by the time I’m 40 rather than learning them in my 60s. Not a lot of people get that opportunity.”Eddie describes them as “pretty stubborn” people, but swears disagreements are rare and often diffused with a hug. “You have to prove yourself and we’re fortunate that we got off the starting line when we were really young," Constance von Dadelszen says. Photo / Dean PurcellAt home are their kids, Arthur, 6, and Bella, 18 months. Constance was pregnant with Arthur while planning the first Faradays and with Bella this time. With no immediate family in Auckland, it can be tough to balance it all. The family has a nanny, but they do the school drop-off every day and pick-up more often than not. “They know they’re 100% the centre of our worlds when we get home. And then when they go to sleep, we clock on again,” Constance says, noting many of their European partners start work as they put the kids to bed. The plan is for Arthur to cut the ribbon to open the store. He’s been given custom scissors by one of their team. “He’s ready. He’s practising around the house just chopping things up,” Eddie says. Even the idea of it makes them both emotional, because their kids motivate what they want Faradays to be for customers. “A mentor once said to me, you can’t be everything to everybody. But we want to be something to most,” Constance adds.“It’s not just about putting nice things inside a nice store.”Render of how Kim Kardashian's Skims brand will look in the Faradays department store.The things are nice, though. Faradays will stock brands including Barbour, Loewe and Kim Kardashian’s Skims. But Constance, the store’s chief creative officer, believes although luxury is a word many have attached to the store, it’s a term they are “very uncomfortable with”. “Luxury for many people is seen as something that is just completely and utterly unattainable and something flippant without substance,” she says. “And what luxury means to us now is somebody being able to spend a whole day at Faradays and experience all the different things they can, from skincare treatments or holistic treatments through to buying a beautiful gift for a friend to laughing their asses off in the restaurant with their girlfriends or their family. Luxury, now, is time.”Eddie acknowledges that wasn’t true when Faradays opened in Parnell. In a post-lockdown world, he remembers customers were eager to spend and there was a status approach to luxury. “It was, you know, what does this belt say about me as a person?”“And you won’t see a logo on us [now],” Constance adds. Quiet luxury then, that’s the term, isn’t it? Style and substance. But how did they know they had style? Suddenly, it feels like getting someone smart to describe the signs of intelligence. And the news is not good: if you have to ask, the answer is probably obvious. “I think [style] is just in you … or not,” Eddie says. “I could never do what our CFO does, right? Like it’s a skill set. And that’s one of the great joys … I can look at somebody, man or woman, and I just know exactly how I would dress them to look their best. As a CEO, you’ll probably spot me on the retail floor a hell of a lot of the time.”There’s a lot to do before those floors are ready to walk, but they promise the store will open on time. Not by accident, but by design.“We mapped this out in our heads for five years. And it was just about putting all the puzzle pieces together and it being the right time, the right place. It’s going to be incredible when we open the doors to have that moment that we dreamed about.”More Fashion