Focus on Nina Marenzi, Founder and Director - The Sustainable Angle

Nina set up The Sustainable Angle as a result of her fascination of forestry and crops. Crops that are grown for fibre to produce our clothing and crops for food. When she looked at fashion, she could see it was trailing behind many other industries in sustainable choice. Her research led to amazing fabric discoveries and the need to bring these to the fore instead of tucked away in the corner at trade fairs, and so The Future Fabrics Expo was born. Most people are probably still unaware that most of our clothing comes from the ground, from the soil. From the soil we are degrading with overproduction. If we destroy the vital top soil what do we use to grow our food……..

 

 

D: Where did you grow up?

 

N: I grew up in Switzerland outside of Zurich and of course that’s kind of suburban. Everyone had a little patch where they could plant some tomatoes and that was one of my favourite things. And to pick some berries on the way home from school you know, that kind of thing. My mother would often be in the garden working, with a spade and doing stuff with plants, or whatever so I guess it’s just something that then sticks with you doesn’t it. Connections with nature and an appreciation for it, so I think that was definitely an important influence.

 

D: And the rest of your family, do you have siblings?

 

N: Yes I have a sister who is not at all interested in what I am doing as such. She is basically supportive but it’s not really her field she is working in neuropsychology as a professor. So very different tack. But we do talk about it you know. There’s an interesting connection now in research into people’s behaviour and what it takes to get people to move and become; not an activist, but to become somebody who is let’s say taking action. So we have interesting discussions on behaviour about it.

 

D: Do you think you have always had a social conscience? 

 

N: Maybe a bit more than others, but growing up in Switzerland you are quite a conscience person. Everyone is aware of the consequences of your behaviour and you would not dream of say, fly tipping in the street. It is just not done. You clean up after yourself. And yes I think people have a conscience but perhaps I was a bit more, interested. Therefore, I read up earlier than other people on the Kyoto protocol and climate change and all these things. My Mother was part of the Club of Rome, it was the first environmental organisation that was really looking at policy and in terms of the wider implications of what we do to nature and the implications that has on the economy for example. Look it up Club of Rome it was set up in 1967, I think it is very influential.

 

 

D: I see you have 3 degrees as part of your education which is pretty amazing, and fashion didn’t seem to be the direction you were travelling in at all. On your original trajectory, what did you see your self doing?

N: I was actually interested in doing environmental law and studying political science. There were courses on that, that I took and found fascinating. Those were early discussions around oil pollution and oil spills from oil tankers.

 

D: And what happened in the Caribbean?

 

N: Exactly, exactly and I was very interested in that and at the time those were the

pre-eminent stories in the newspapers so I was fascinated by them. At the time you couldn’t really do many courses on sustainability so to me political science was therefore a good first step. And as part of the course there were things on environmental law and like I said I was that was interested in that. Then my second degree was right after which was to do with the History of International Relations which really was something as it was in English. My first degree Political Science was mainly taught as a French course it was a very French thing. They didn’t have an interdisciplinary course as Political Science at the time, this is the early 90s I suppose. It was very interesting to see how you could have different courses such as law, policy making, economic thinking, all sorts of different histories and all taught in one course. Political Science was one of the first interdisciplinary university degrees, that is why I wanted to do it so had to do it in French. You couldn’t do it anywhere else. Of course, in Switzerland you have these 3 languages.

 

D: Yes of course.

 

N: We had French at school, but my French wasn’t very good so that was a steep learning curve. For the second degree I went to the LSE and everything was in English. At the time I was more interested in international relations and politics and how that effects, the political landscape in terms of the environment and what can be done there. How can you force companies and society to veer around and become much more accountable for what you are doing and reducing pollution and all that. My 3^rd degree was much later and was on Sustainable Agriculture and Rural Development. The reason I did that was again because it was a masters, but by then I of course had also been working, and was very keen on understanding much more on the side of sustainability from a resource point of view and the raw materials that were used. When you looked at all the industry and its impact on the environment a lot of it actually comes from the raw materials either extracting or that we are just abusing, overusing and I wanted to understand what was happening. The points that were revolving mostly were either agriculture or forestry because in terms of the climate forestry is of course hugely crucial and so is agriculture because there is so much, we are doing wrong with this intensive agriculture. Almost any industry relies of course on all of us and what we do relies on what we take out of the earth and how we are using it. How we are using it wrongly and how we are overusing those resources and how we are going across the planetary boundaries. That sustainable agriculture and rural development degree was very much exactly on those themes. That was the 3^rd degree, so the learning wasn’t all in one go it was over time.

 

 

D: The final degree seems to be the one that set you on the path that you are on now.

 

N: That’s mainly because we had to write a dissertation at the end of the course and typically of course you have to choose a very specific narrow subject to write your dissertation on. I was fascinated by again of course by forestry and crops and crops for fibres and crops for food. At the same time, I was also someone who was very interested in design and fashion and I couldn’t understand how, when you could make so many of your lifestyle choices sustainable you weren’t. You could cycle instead of taking a car, or instead of a conventional car you could have a hybrid. These are the things you could easily do. Or you could always have a green electricity provider that was a no brainer. Yes it was a little bit more costly but then, since you were an environmentally minded person you are going to use little electricity anyway. So there is all that and the more you think its only costing a tiny bit more, doing the right thing and promoting this industry, it also reminded you to save on your energy use. When it came to fashion and clothing it seemed to be very much behind other industries so I looked a bit more into that and I couldn’t quite understand why it was so difficult to find an equally high-quality product with a lower environmental footprint at the same time there.

So, the fashion industry was lagging behind a lot of other industries. At the time the only real good fibre that was prevalent in clothing was organic cotton. And you only could find it in certain items like baby clothes. So I decided to write my dissertation on organic cotton and why was it not used more? Through that research I saw that there were so many amazing alternative materials available yet at the same time they were not really being shown to brands as a viable option. At the trade fairs there was hardly anything. It was like looking for a needle in a haystack. Which of course is very frustrating, and the designers don’t have the time to do this and they also don’t necessarily have the training to understand. It was important to me to give the designers easy access to that information and the educational background information. To make sure they could access it. To make sure it’s easy and digestible and the information that they are getting, was clear. I was conducting a lot of interviews for the dissertation with fashion designers who are also very much solutions driven. A designer is always someone who is looking for solutions, for making a design that perhaps has a certain function and it could be a better function in the next design stage etc, etc. They were of course very open to all these new materials I had found and as soon as you showed it to them you see how a light bulb would switch on and they would say “oh yes this is amazing” and they were inspired. All of a sudden absorbing all of this information easily because they were touching and experiencing the material, therefore their minds were open to receiving this information. Of course you could also go to designers and tell them all about the sustainability information and you could take them through PowerPoint presentations but it doesn’t have the same effect. It’s much more powerful if they can touch the fabric at the same time.

So the aim became to create the Future Fabrics Expo as a space where we curated these amazing materials taking the best of the best including all the sustainability information per fabric summarised in an easy non tech language, this was very important. It’s not that it was non tech it’s just that it was digestible in bite size yet still giving the designers everything they needed and if they want more all the contact details were there so they could get in touch. At the same time it was very important to provide background information throughout The Future Fabrics Expo so we would have certain focus on certain themes each year. In general the designers seemed so open to it, they just didn’t have the right platform. So that was what I got stuck into and it has just grown from there.

 

 

D: Did The Sustainable Angle come straight on the back of The Future Fabrics Expo? Did you see it as the natural progression?

 

N: It did. In the beginning we had a few more things on food production, but that was pretty much when we were very absorbed in The Future Fabrics Expo. That had mainly driven everything. At the same time, we had a lot of information on regenerative agricultural practices which we have focused on especially in the last 2 years and that is of course goes full circle with my studies, on biodiversity and intensive farming practices which are at the root of a lot of out problems today. Soil fertility loss, resulting in a lot of biodiversity loss, a lot of it comes back to our farming practices and it was very nice to put that into The Future Fabrics Expo as a focal point, while also showing the materials that are made with these fibres and that are grown this way.

 

D: Students are probably not even taught in school where their clothes come from. Where the fabric in their clothes come from. Some people don’t even know where their bananas come from. And that comes from education, doesn’t it?

 

N: Exactly, and The Sustainable Angle is now delivering this educational information, we are putting together and researching that, as a not-for-profit organisation, because usually education is not really a commercial venture.

In 2018 we set up the Future Fabrics Expo as a UK limited company because we had to make these decisions for the bigger exhibition spaces and by then so may exhibitors had joined. In the very beginning it was very much a curated showcase and we collected all these materials then showcased on the behalf of the companies.

There are so may trade fairs for a mill or an exhibitor to go to already so to have yet another one is sometimes almost not feasible. Especially not if only a small range of your collection which is sustainable. So it was a great bridging of that problem for us pulling it all together and providing that service. Having all the information attached and how they could get in touch. Now a lot of the exhibitors actually want to be there in person.

Want to be at the show and have a stand. So this is why we had to set up this small Future Fabrics Expo as a UK company. The Sustainable Angle is partly supporting it and is involved with the Expo of course.  

 

D: I have seen how you have grown as I first came to the Expo a few years ago and it was in a small room and it was amazing to be in amongst all the fabrics, to be pulling them out and to see where they had all come from and to be seeing what you have said about all the pieces of information that you have on each one. It was very cool to see. You have grown so much from then which is fantastic. With all of the speakers and content you have now I am sure is bringing even more people to the Expo.

 

N: It does yes. A lot of it means that there is a ton of organisation and admin, it’s a really big thing.

 

D: Was that somewhere you ever imagined your degree would take you?

 

N: No, I didn’t think it would get that big but there still is a need for it so we just keep going. 

 

D: How do you choose the fabrics that you highlight at the shows?

 

N: We have our own environmental criteria. Which we set out which were established together with the Centre for Sustainable Fashion in 2011 for the first Expo. Then just recently 2019 we updated them and refined them a bit because things had evolved and those 4 (which are also on our website) are on Biodiversity, Waste, Water and Energy we are trying to keep them quite broad but at the same time they are going into detail a bit more. It allows us not to do it quantitively but mainly qualitatively. Also when perhaps a fabric is not certified to a certain standard we still take them in if they can be transparent and have a traceable supply chain because sometimes those innovations are very new and certifications don’t exist yet so we allow for that too. Also this year (2020) we are working to add a chemical criteria, that is going to be a good new addition which is mainly focused on the processing of the fibre and the fabric, we are very keen on that.

 

D: That’s great, because that is the final part of the process before it reaches our skin.

 

N: That is exactly what it is.

 

D: You have over, is it, 3,000 fabrics now in the show?

 

N: Actually in the show itself we had over 5,000 at least in the curated section and then many more in the whole Expo and an online section for those who can’t attend and of course because of Covid that was something that became much more important to develop. That’s working quite well.

 

D: Yes I enjoyed your Expo online, it was good.

 

N: We were torn, we didn’t want it to be called an Expo as such. So we called it a live event it was really, really important to show that it is not an alternative Expo that it’s just something to tide us over, help participants and exhibitors to gain some visibility and some connection but it’s not replacing the Expo.

 

D: I guess it also helps those who are new and catching up, it gives them a space to come and listen to the speakers.

 

 

D: What do you think is the most surprising fabric that you have at the moment?

 

N: I am still very fond of Linen and Hemp. How well it blends with silk and cotton so that is something I am very keen on. Any of those Bast fibres as they are called, are really inherently so much more sustainable. They don’t need to be irrigated and they don’t need to grow on fertile soil. So the more we head into the problem of food crops having to grow instead of fibre for clothing that is a really important. Linen and Hemp are brilliant for that. I am interested in the blends, that is my main love. I like to be surprised by the high content of Linen and Hemp without actually being able to tell it’s there.

You were probably hoping for some whacky innovative material which we have plenty of so it’s quite difficult to name. Its quite amazing what you can make out of mushrooms, apples and algae and they are fabulous ones.

 

D: Mushrooms were the ones that surprised me the most.

N: It is very, very fascinating.

 

D: It is good because we use so much cotton that linen and hemp would be fabrics that could replace possibly, cotton and not have the same environmental impact like you say.

 

N: Absolutely. We make a big difference between conventional cotton and organic cotton of course regenerative organic cotton that’s something we are very keen on stressing the difference. But still if you grow cotton it has to grow on fertile soil, which could be used for food of course.

 

D: You mentioned about blending the fabrics, when you blend the fabrics and the 3 you mentioned are very good, when they come to the end of life is it easy to recycle the 3 to create something new if they are blended?

 

N: As long as they are blended with natural fibres with cellulose it’s not a problem at all as long as they are natural.

 

 

D: How do you work with the mills that weave the fabrics?

 

N: We try to communicate their sustainability achievements as much as we can. We try to show them in the Future Fabrics Expo in a way that makes it very attractive for designers to discover them. We give them the choice of being involved in our seminar series to make sure they can speak and represent themselves. There are a lot of things we do. Then there is the whole digital and online side which is very important these days.

 

D: Does that help them be more transparent, help with the next part of the process for when the designers come in.

 

N: Absolutely, it is very important, a designer has so many things they have been getting used to for the past 20 years with all these massive trade fairs and more and more trade fairs and you have to go to all of them and it’s very difficult to find something that you really want amongst all of these 100s of and 1000s of things so we try to help them especially now that there is so much green washing around. We are very keen to help people understand the difference between the materials so that they are not falling victim to claims that are not substantiated. So we do a lot of work on that. We are less and less only doing research, discovery and curating, it’s also very much about making sure that we really have the best of the best on board and that these claims can be backed up.

 

D: And getting the message out to everybody.

 

N: Exactly yes.

 

D: I have spoken to some factories who are working on small runs do you have mills who are doing the same so it is easy to take it to the factory to create the small run of clothing? Therefore, reducing waste?

 

N: Yes we have that, on the digital platform there is a whole button called SMOQs so you can find that relatively easily in that filter. Of course it’s always a problem for small designers as sometimes there is this barrier of minimum order No.s. I think often sustainability often gets a bad name in the sense that people say “Oh, you know the minimum number was too big.” Most young designers have that problem, whatever fabric they want they just can’t get in small enough quantities. Unfortunately with the mills the machinery dictates how big the run needs to be. It’s very difficult to find a way in between but we try and bridge that gap a bit by making it really easy to find those that take small minimums.

 

D: It is the same if you were writing a book and doing a print run.

 

N: Exactly a good analogy. 

 

 

 

D: The future, what would you like to see in 5 - 10 year’s time? How would you like to see The Sustainable Angle growing and the Future Fabrics Expo?

 

N: Well, I always think there is a space for education. It is important to make sure that everyone understands what the background information is so that they can make a choice and not fall victim to greenwashing. I think we will always do that. We see ourselves as a really big filter, we take the best of the best, the most sustainable fabrics, and we pull it all together and deliver a service for all of those who are interested in those materials so they can find them easily without too much of a headache. It is a matter of trust. We deliver all of that and they can trust that what they find in the Expo meets their criteria.

 

 

Focus on Jodi Muter Hamilton - Founder of Other Day and Lab 2030

 

 

 

 

 

 

I first met Jodi at a Fashion Roundtable event. She has had an interesting multi-faceted career from Fashion Designer, where she took her love of the outdoors and the sea and turned that into a swimwear brand. However, her career does not follow a linear path. Her story is one of resilience and strength which she now uses to help others navigate Ethical and Sustainable Fashion.

 

D: Where did you grow up Jodi?

 

J: I grew up in a place called Seghill which is near Whitley Bay and Newcastle. I know Mum used to push me along the sea front which helped put me to sleep, and I think that's what’s instilled my love of the sea.

 

Water is very important to me and increasingly so. I have been a keen swimmer for years and I feel that full submersion changes my entire being, even a small connexion like having a shower. I pretty much wash my hair everyday as I feel the need to be completely submerged in the water.

 

In 1988 my Aunt and Uncle bought a lake in Durham, it had been an old quarry and they converted it into a lake. They then had a caravan and stayed on the land till they got permission to build a house and clubhouse and went on to become the first ever importers and promoters of windsurfing in the UK. I used to go and swim in their lake even when it was cold, which it was most of the time.

 

So, I have always had that water element around me and a love of swimming even though actually I wasn't the greatest swimmer at school that came later. I also kept my horse at my Aunts and was able to ride the horse in the lake too.

 

As my Aunt had the business I was always around business people. But going further back, in 18, I think it was 1883 my family, on Dads side, founded a soft drinks business called Muters Soft Drinks, in Bedlington near Newcastle. It was still in operation when I was born and Mum would go in and do all the accounts. Dad used to work in the business too but….well in a nutshell he was a bit of a rogue, enjoyed things like fast cars, and eventually drove the business into the ground so that was the end of the era for that. As a family overall, we've never really worked for anyone else, we worked for ourselves but worked hard. Dads side were a bit more well to do. My grandma was always impeccably dressed and had mink stoles she was the most stylish woman ever. On the other side, my mum's parents, never owned the house they lived in, which was pretty normal at the time. It was a very nice, spacious council house, they paid rent and had a very simple life. For example the meat van came round on Friday and they would buy two chicken legs and that was their meat for the week. A very frugal very simple life. My grandma on Mums side worked in the mills in Haworth in Yorkshire when she was young. My grandpa worked in the Navy as plumber, so services. Dads side were all in the RAF, grandma an officer in the Wrens so it is a dual aspect.

 

 

D: How did your parents meet?

 

J:  Just going out in Newcastle Mum was then and still is quite an attractive woman. I think they met when they were about 16 but didn't get married until a lot later. Mum went to London to work and on her return they met again she would have been in her late 20s then. Quite funny characters together, two different worlds. I think she really appreciated that difference in a sense. Her life was very different to his. He went to private school. His Mother was quite extravagant. A different life, a meeting of the two.

 

D: I would usually ask here what your early influences and you've explained that all beautifully.

 

J: Definitely my paternal grandma was incredible, but even looking back at the simple things that my maternal grandma had, she had this 1950s leather or pleather sofa that was this really odd lemon colour, it was beautiful but was a really random purchase for someone with a frugal mindset. Certain other things she did too make me reflect and think she was a lot bolder than she seemed. For example, she replaced the picture of the Queen in the hallway with an insane plastic head of Tutankhamun. I can just imagine what my grandpa's reaction to that would have been. However, Mum has had a lifelong obsession with Egypt, probably because of that.

Mum was born in Haworth, which was known for worsted yarn and cloth. Worstred is a fine cloth made from fine fibre wool. The family were all keen knitters and with my grandma being in the mills, Mum subsequently is the most incredible knitter. She then went on to own a haberdashery and wool shop. That craft element particularly around wool has always been really strong with us.

 

D: So your mum was entrepreneurial to the point where she owned her own shop.

 

J: Yes, she owned the shop in the 80s or 90s. It's interesting, there's a running theme, particularly for the women in our family, of never entirely reaching their full potential for whatever circumstances we find ourselves in as women. Because of this, it’s been one of my personal quests to support other female business owners, help them navigate things, because it is tougher, it is tough as a woman.

 

D: Totally which is why we're still talking even now about breaking glass ceilings and pushing for equality.

 

J: And childcare and all that stuff and equal bank balance and it just goes on and on and on.

 

 

 

D: So, you took all your fashion influences and entrepreneurial influences and went to university to study fashion.

 

J: Kingston, yes, I went there in 1998. It was quite an influential time for fashion, it was all about Alexander McQueen. We were very heavily influenced by Comme des Garcons and Yoji Yamamoto and Issey Miyake mainly, a lot of Japanese designers and their approach. Looking back it was elegant in a very modern way. But also looking back at traditional crafts and again the wool elements which meant my final graduate collection was sponsored by John Smedley. Mum helped me with a lot of the knitting on Dubied industrial knitting machines.

Although all my Uni friends have split up internationally, we remain a tight close group because the course was really intense. I don't think any other Uni’s at that time were like Kingston. It was very particular. You had to be in 9 to 5 every single day and if you weren't, they would ring your halls of residents and make you come in. A lot of other Uni’s even at that time like Saint Martins, for example, didn’t  have a campus and they didn't get as much tuition, we literally were all together in that classroom everyday. We even napped under the desks in the rolls of fabric, you know like disco naps. As a result, there is still a really tight bond with most of us. We've all gone on to do really interesting things, two went to Max Mara one is currently at Margiela one was at YSL, three at Burberry, plus a lot of created our own independent brands.

I guess it solidified our work ethic that as a student you don't necessarily have, or you are encouraged to be free spirited.

 

D: On my photography course we were in everyday without fail we didn't have to be but we would. We had to be there because we had to use the equipment, the studios and the dark rooms. You would go out and take pictures and come back but, we were there.

 

J: For us we were physically making, we were pattern cutting we were making toiles, we were fitting, we were designing, we're in the library, we didn't have computers, we were physically doing work with our hands, in the knit rooms, booking time to do everything. We had two technical machinists and the tutors and everything was super hands on which I think, since then has been lost. The fashion schools are not like that anymore.

 

D: Do you think that maybe that's because most of the manufacturing from the UK moved offshore?

 

J: We've lost that connexion haven't we. That understanding of how things are technically made and being able to make them ourselves. I think that needs to happen again. I know some universities are definitely focusing on making that happen more. Fashion education is a whole other discussion. There have been a lot of changes because of digital and not all of them have been beneficial. I think it is a case of needing to reassess what’s beneficial and what's not and coming back to what we're actually trying to achieve craft wise. Obviously that's a big thread for me personally.

 

D: After University – actually before that, your final your final show, was it swimwear?

 

J: It wasn’t. I did do a specialist Lingerie project but my final show was inspired by a Salvador Dali and Lewis Brunel's film ‘Un Chien Andalou’ I really enjoyed it and then I read the book. It really absorbed my mind. So for the final collection I looked at men’s tailoring, deconstructing and really playing with form and shape, Predominantly it was black and grey and white because of the film and it was quite dark, interesting, powerful.

After Uni I needed a break. So, I went and did a snowboarding season in Colorado and worked in the mountain restaurant and stuff there, which I thoroughly enjoyed.

During Uni I had been working in skate and snowboard shops which appealed to my outdoors side and influenced the season in the Mountains of Colorado. When I came back to the UK I worked in retail again in a snowboarding and skate shop. At the same time doing a year as a PR intern. However, I made sure I wasn’t doing normal internee stuff. The PR I interned with had the account for Burton snowboard shoe brand, so it was a good match for me. I created product placement and events and things around that. I then went in and managed 4 stores across Covent Garden Dials area which carried similar streetwear. Gradually I moved my way up to head office, into what would now be called brand management. I ensured that what was being projected by the brand and their brand ethos was presented to consumers and connected in the right way.

 

 

D: So you were very much business orientated immediately after university.

J: Because I've always had to work. My first job was with Mum. She used to do alterations for a lady who had a shop selling, Joseph Ribkoff and Frank Usher slightly formal wear, wedding guest, type wear. Mum used to do alterations for the women who bought these garments and I worked in the fitting rooms. Doing the odd sewing jobs that was from the age of 14. I have literally worked since then, I have always had to pay my rent etc. I turned down interviews and jobs if they were not going pay me enough. I had to follow a more stable path financially.

I have always wanted to be in charge my own destiny and to have my own brand. I knew from the start it had to be activewear, not just a standard fashion brand. However, I didn't have experience in swimwear design at the time.

 

D: Swimwear makes sense with everything that you said so far, with your love of the sea

and being active. When you set up your swimwear brand Black Neon you were working in parallel, creating the brand and doing other work at the same time.

 

J: Exactly. What is really important here was that I didn't have any experience in swimwear and swimwear is really technical. So, I had to go and find that experience. At the time there were only about 3 companies making swimwear in the UK.

Amazingly a friend found an ad on a job board, and sent it to me as a joke in an email and said “this is your dream job, maybe you should go for it”. We were both laughing and then I thought, “no, actually, I am going to go for this job”.

It was head of design sampling at a factory in Mauritius. I badgered them and badgered them to take me, even though I didn't have experience. Bhavnita, who I met out there and I'm still dear friends with was out there already. That gave me the experience I needed even though I couldn't speak Creole. My common language with the workers was around the language of sewing. I used to literally go sit on the machine and show and turn and they would understand, and then do it. Had I not already had that technical experience that would never have happened.

 

D: Exactly, right back to when you were 14 and all that learning right through university stood you in good stead for this.

 

J: They did want me to stay a lot longer. But then Bhavnita left, I stayed for a few more months then left too. Mauritius is funny place to be as a western person working. It's fine if you're a tourist, it's an interesting place, a melting pot of loads of cultures, I really enjoyed it, but I didn't want to stay there five years. When I came back I found a factory in Wales that used to be Agent Provocateurs old factory before they outsourced to China, to make the swimwear as I needed it to be really high end. However, the long and short of that was, because I was a small, unknown, new brand, my production wasn't a priority for them. I had worked really hard to set up stockists. In UK we don't have that many swimwear stockists but the ones we do have a very high end like Selfridges. However, I didn't get the deliveries from the factory in time so I couldn't sell them to Selfridges even though they were receptive.

This happened two years running, and I ended up with loads of stock I had to sell somehow.

So, I went to Ibiza to sell it. I went round all the shops and their feedback was you are not Eres or Dolce & Gabbana, so I sold the swimwear direct, to the public on the beach. Not ideal but I needed to get some money back on my investment.

 

I believe Black Neon was one of the first ever independent fashion E commerce platforms. Because of all my digital knowledge I designed it with a friend. At that time it was really expensive. Everything was custom build and we had to set it all up with world pay. I remember being on the phone to their agent going “okay can you please explain to me how I set this up?” and then as they told me I had to programme it in.

 

D: Of course it’s all much easier now.

 

J: Yes you just click on it, and its £20 a month and it zooms off, all done. But it definitely wasn't like that 2008, 2009. Then we had the financial crash, so not ideal for a luxury swimwear product from an unknown brand.

So I went and worked for the Financial Conduct Authority as an EA for 4 years to pay back the debt I had acquired building the swimwear brand.

 

D: How did it feel to have to walk away from it?

 

J: It was disheartening for sure. But I still kept things going. I made a couple more collections and made jewellery to go with it. And slowly started selling in really nice little boutiques.

Also what was quite successful at the time was the content I used write. I used to interview people and blogspot.

 

D: I still have my blog there.

 

J: I love it I think it's really cool for the time. I could see from the backend of the blog I was getting a lot of traction and remember thinking, that’s interesting.

Then I thought OK well the blogging is really successful what can I do that's the next step on from that? I noticed people in America are listening to podcasts and thought that’s it.

 

D: Yes, you were a very early adopter of that in 2017.

 

J: I decided I am going to do what I used to do, which was interview and talk to people but audio. So, I taught myself to do that, how edit and how to set it all up.

 

At the same time I'm really good at working with founders, start-up founders and helping them scale up. I go in get them up and running and move on. In 2014 l helped launch the world's first ever fashion styling app with founder Douglas Orr. I then went on to work with another comparable company called Proximity Insight which is a styling platform that Matches Fashion, and other large well known luxury retailers use. The solution is white label which means it easily adapts to the different companies brands and helps them to create a high level of personal service for their customers..

So by that point I really started to understand data, what it can do and how you can change people's behaviour. That's kind of been a building theme for me. By working for small companies I would be very hands on and spend time doing a lot of the HTML coding for them. From 2010 onwards my work also encompassed the systems and workings of platforms and companies.

 

D: So that's given you a huge, rounded foundation for everything that you're that you are doing now.

 

J: It’s a toolkit for sure that helps me, but also allows me to help start ups use the toolkit too. The sustainability element in my work came – when I join the dots back, its right back to the wool mills in Yorkshire. It’s my love of swimming, the outdoors and horse riding. It’s always been there with me. It’s what I said about female equality and balancing workforce against brand.

Black Neon Digital Podcast was the start of interviewing everyone so I could find in the fashion space. That is which is how I came to speak to Tamara from Fashion Roundtable.

 

D: Where did the name Black Neon Digital come from?

 

J: My swimwear brand was called Black Neon. Black Neon is a fish so that was a good starting point for building the brand. And 12 years ago it was quite punchy. It was simple it, looked nice together. Design wise I was very sure that I wanted predominantly black swimwear with neon pops and it really worked. Adding digital to the end created a differentiator between the swimwear and tech sides of the business. I launched that on the 20th of June four years ago, 10 days before Raf my second child was born. I knew I had to get it done, before he arrived. I spent at least four months building the website. Early starts, 5.15am every morning. For me at that time becoming Black Neon Digital was the easiest way to move forward.

 

 

 

D: You changed the name recently to Other Day.

 

J: I'm so happy to have done that. After 12 years it was time for change. Life changes, you change and things change. I was very happy to have worked on the new branding with two really good friends of mine. Charlotte was a year below me at Kingston and went on to work with Wolff Ollins for 10 years. She recently founded a design studio called The Modern Studio with a woman called Ruth who happens to live near me too. Our work took about 2 years, because they, like me, were doing it on the side of other jobs.

 

D: As we are talking about names, where has the name Other Day come from?

 

J: I wanted it to be set in the daytime. With Black Neon it was quite dualistic like yin and yang and had that feeling. For Other Day the Day part is because I am very sun sign driven around daylight, early mornings, bright sunshine and swimming. So it had to be something to do with time and space and daytime and that kind of element. ‘Other’ is, something I have found I say a lot when I am connecting people, I say “oh you should speak to Dvora, I was speaking to her the ‘other day’….. The word ‘Other’ I felt also was a nice way to be an alternative, a different option, a different element, another way of looking at things.

 

D: How do you help people with their strategy and communications?

 

J: I think one of the things I am good at is distilling what people want for themselves, out of life and their business. So, I help them to align with that and with external factors happening in the world and with their intentions. For example working with Suzi Delaney from R.Planet and Tamara from Fashion Roundtable, they all want to achieve huge things but it's got to be one step at a time. I think I'm quite good at understanding what drives and individual, the outside world and the business opportunity. What it is that makes something attractive to people and then being able to communicate that, in, not a simplistic way, but in a way that's digestible understandable and positive.

I do not believe that negativity supports any sort of positive action.

I do my best to help promote that to whoever I'm speaking with. For someone like Fashion Roundtable for example, who’s work can be really dark at times, and very, very sticky and actually exhaustingly so, you can't always communicate that in a beautiful positive way, so it's give and take. But it's ultimately supporting, predominantly female founders, to shine in their roles and support them in a really rounded way even though my role is communication strategy and business development.

 

 

 

D: Alongside it being female facing it’s also helping people navigate sustainability and ethical production and more.

 

J: 100% from the supply chain to looking after themselves and their own well being. And being aware of policies around climate change. There is so much happening at the minute that even the work that we do through Lab2030. There is so much happening in the sustainability space, the dial at the minute is so high, the noise level – I figure out how to help people cut through that noise. Because, it's loud it makes it harder to find your way. I feel like a lot of founders, particularly, feel they've got to be everywhere. I am able to say ‘no, you're really good at this’ or ‘this is really about you’. For example, in discussions about sustainability with one client – who is a very well regarded fifth generation family business - I suggested to think about the heart of the business. Which is essentially all about longevity and legacy. Therefore, it makes sense for their sustainability practices to be centered around family and people and community. With the aim of leaving the world in a better place than when you set out. For all the love in the world, you can't tackle every single element of sustainability at once and do it amazingly. So, pick one, focus on that, get it right then move on to the next. Be pragmatic about things.

 

D: Taking it step by step. We're all guilty of this. You see the overview and want to do it all, but then you sit down and try and do it all at once it can actually stop you moving forward.

 

 

D: You've just touched Lab 2030 tell us more about it? What are your aims?

 

J: Initially I came up with an idea that I wanted to create a traffic light system for clothing in a similar way to what we have on food so we can understand exactly what we are buying and how good or bad it is. There are five scope elements which are Material, Manufacture, Carbon Footprint, Impact and Design. We wanted to look at all those areas and give them a rating. Laura Gibson joined me about three years ago, we met and at a APPG event and she liked the sound of the project. She loves the nitty gritty, going deep and working things out. More recently we brought together a fascinating Advisory Council together whose names I will release soon, they span from arts, tech, consumer behaviour and of course sustainability. They have all been trying to tackle this exact thing throughout their more recent career. We’ve carried out some really interesting research around consumer behaviour in partnership with an amazing person, Shaunie Brett. We are now seeking funding to expand the research, as it brought up some really intriguing finds that are not exactly in line with the current narrative of sustainable consumer habits. We were initially called Project 2030 because the idea was to create a project that made the traffic light system but have now broadened that a bit and changed the name to Lab 2030. Essentially, we are exploring and discovering insights for the fashion industry around what we're calling the most timely questions. These come back to the 2030 global goals, that help accelerate as fast as we can the desired outcomes towards those goals. So it's more of a research lab that's, not for profit, that's less determined around a very focused outcome. Because with a business head on you kind of look for a predetermined answer to prove your case so that you can validate an idea, a market or prove to funders that your idea is valid. Instead we flip that to be, ‘this is the question that needs a real answer, this is what we are looking at. Now lets’ do the research’. That way if the result doesn't line up it’s OK. It's there to support industry to battle through some of these tough questions. 

 

 

D: So you are team building at the moment.

 

J: Yes and trying to find money, not for profit funding for that.

 

D: There was something you mentioned you are doing called ‘Radical Collaboration’ which sounded really interesting because as you say the Fashion industry is traditionally secretive.

 

J: Very much so.

 

D: And they need to be sharing now.

 

J: We must, I think it’s the only way. The different ways of collaborating and sharing information is really fascinating. We are trying to get funding to create an open-source knowledge base, so that all this information and all the things we find can be presented, so that industry can use it for free. As things are quite secretive, even a lot of academic information is behind paywalls, or you only get access if you are at university. We are certainly far off ‘open to all’ but hopefully we can change that.

 

D: It's the smaller more ethical brands and sustainable brands who are actually sharing, with each other like for example Phoebe English and Maggie Marylin who are saying I'll share all my information with you. 

 

J: Exactly and I think the more ethical and sustainable players in the field, really want to push the industry forward and SME’s need to have scale so maybe something that we could achieve with that, is to pool resources and work more as a unit. Yet always remaining independent in our designs. The Trampery are really good at that they really help and support it. Also LCF, CFS (Centre for Sustainable Fashion) are fostering sustainable practises, work that they've done with all the SME’s. Their report is pretty incredible. It's very long 200 pages but it's good. 

 

D: What do you think drives you?

 

J: Good question, what I really enjoy, that makes my heart sing is connecting, connecting the dots between things. When I can see something on say a systems level in a creative company that I think could be utilised at a tech firm. Or when I see someone's doing something and then find someone in another corner of the world doing something that would fit with it, I just love bringing that together. Having the vision to think well that could work in this way, I think that's what we'd excites me. Particularly with Lab 2030, what I've enjoyed with that is that although it started as an idea around the traffic light system and that I had an extremely clear vision of how it would come to life and be presented instore, it has already evolved. Though right now industries are talking about this very idea and there have been a lot of articles and discussion around it, but I'm already no, no, we've moved on from that look there are better ways of doing it. I like the initial very early adopter exploration of things, but also then handing it over too. I enjoy helping people to really use their skill set and passions in the places they want it to be.

 

D: How do you see the future?

 

J: A really interesting question, because, different to how I would have perhaps guessed it to be say 5 years ago. Even when I think about moving away from London, which I am just about to do, I've been here since 1998 and its 20 years since I graduated this year. That's quite a milestone and I think a lot of people are thinking a similar thing. I almost feel like fashion has changed so much in 20 years it's insane. Chatting on our uni chat group the other day I asked had anyone actually watched London Fashion Week in July? The answer was no, where previously we would have said, did you see this or did you see that, what the collections were like, what the designers are up to, who has moved house, what are we interested in and so on. I have to say it just doesn’t feel relevant to us anymore. Even though we still work in fashion. I'm sure it still is to other people but everything's changing, everything is up for grabs, and I personally want more,…. who said it the other day? Someone said something like, “put your focus where it makes you happy”. Or, you know that old saying, on the We Work badge “do what you love”…..all very good but how are you going to get paid? I don’t have that privilege of doing what I like everyday thanks. But I have started to think about that a little bit more and I've been more confident, in the past five years, of really understanding and leaning into my own, whether you want to call it spirituality, or whatever you want to call it, but my own belief systems, and allowing things to be a bit more, in line with myself.

On a really basic level, now that we've switched from being ‘Black Neon’ to ‘Other Day’ has given me the confidence that I can really, project that. More people are aware of these things now, it's not as taboo, everyone's manifesting now. I think so much has changed that I feel less, even though I'm actually a really competitive person, I'm a Leo, I'm from a family of entrepreneurs, but I feel less competitive with myself now. I feel more, well, we're moving, I wanna be by the sea, and I just wanna see what happens for a little bit. I want a bit of space, but at the same time still work on things that are important like Fashion Roundtable and helping other people and their clients. I've even managed to turn down clients which has been quite novel for me. A big step and say no to things that don't 100% feel right. To say no to money is always a big one. But not all money feels the same.