“Has today's Fashion World been built on ill-gotten gains?…”
Where do I start... how do I even begin to write about the journey I’ve been on.
For the past 4 years I have been trying to break into a futile, elitest industry. A meaningful career in fashion is tough even for those that went to fashion school, but gaining a career in fashion is near on impossible if you are a self-taught and self-funded independent sustainable upcycling designer with an accounting background and no formal qualifications!
Here’s how it all started…
The year 2020, aged 41, I’d spent the last 22 years working in accounting, not exactly a resume for fashion is it! I’d also spent the last 22 years trusting the high street brands, trusting online British fashion brands and buying clothes frequently and ignorantly, without the understanding or even slightest wonder about where those clothes originated and who had made them. Wow what a sh*tty person!
In my defence, I didn’t realise what type of industry I was fuelling at the time or why in my early 40’s I was even buying these clothes and bags!!
Looking back, it was clear that I was filling a void..not due to a lack of love or friendship but a void driven by not having an outlet to express myself as a creative human or being able to navigate what my true potential could be as a human and what I could offer the world.
Throughout my years working in accounting jobs, I’d generally get bored after two years, at first stepping into the company I worked for all bright eyed and eager. Immediately wanting to prove my worth and getting stuck right into problem solving, creating change and challenging the status quo, and once I’d transformed or crisis managed that company out of a mix of under investment and at times bad decision making, I’d move onto the next company to repeat the process.
Not many of my past employers realise that for the first 15 years of my accounting career I had no formal qualification in Accounting, I was what recruiters called QBE – Qualified by experience! At 19 I had gotten a job as a credit control assistant in a manufacturing company in my local town Corby. At the time I was attending night school at the local Tresham College doing a BTEC in Business (the equivalent to A levels back in the day).
Leaving school at 16, I had gotten myself an underwhelming E in Maths GCSE and had resat to then earn myself an E once again. I didn’t do particularly well at school in any academic subject, I got E’s and D’s, and a B in Art and Design Technology.
After leaving school with a few GCSE’s but no real plan, I had to graft day and night working and studying to create an opportunity to have a real career. I got my night school BTEC Distinction and then just kept working, applying for more senior accounting jobs that were well beyond my experience and abilities at the time and when landing those jobs I would overcome steep learning curves and operate well outside of my comfort zone until I gained the skills I needed.
It was only when I got much older that I started to study at weekends to become a Chartered Accountant. Having spent my entire career in accounting, I’d also spent 22 years serving other people’s agendas, some of which didn’t align with my own values or my want to do something that mattered, even if that something was small.
Fast forward to early 2020 and thanks to social media I started to follow eco brands and ethical influencers on Instagram and quickly heard stories of forced labour, extreme capitalism, inequality, irrevocable environmental damage and the inhumane treatment of other living organisms and animals…ALL FOR FASHION.
When I looked into the brands driving this bad behaviour, I felt sick to my stomach. Brands that I’d bought from for years, brands and e-commerce sites that had constantly pumped discounts and more into my Inbox encouraging me to buy more. At the same time, I had also noticed the deterioration of good tailoring of the garments I was buying. I noticed the ill fit. I noticed the cheaper textiles and the lack of shape or design consideration.
I began researching the brands I’d been loyal to for years and their sustainability metrics and general practices. There were almost no details about traceability, ethical supply chains, sustainability or recycling processes on their websites. So, I began going into stores and looking at the labels. 100% polyester, viscose, made in China, made in Indonesia.
It was at that point the dots connected and the realisation that the entire High Street had been offshored and that the majority of items were made from oil based and synthetic materials. I felt uneasy, had I been complicit in the ill-gotten gains of their Shareholders!
Instead of complaining about it, I decided to do something about it.
I’d become quite good at foreseeing things in business. Accounting and business processes had conditioned my brain to spot patterns and events, shifts and potential risks naturally from viewing many angles, numbers and information feeds. So I looked at all of the clothes I had bought and had kept since I was in my 20’s along with the hand me downs from friends and family and wondered what I could do with all of these clothes to get them into my community as a vehicle to get people to switch from buying new to wearing my wardrobe out instead.
And just like that…. WearMyWardrobeOut was born! Or WMWO for short.
Now I had a brand name and a boat load of clothes, but now what! There were already lots of vintage resellers and people selling on Depop, Etsy and eBay and some of my clothes had real sentimental value to them and were treasured items. But at the same time, I couldn’t exactly wear 600 dresses and 80 jackets all at one time. So what could I do to share them but not say goodbye to them forever. I could loan them out, friends always borrowed my clothes for nights out and holidays – it wasn’t beyond the realms of possibility that others might like to borrow my clothes too if I could reach them and create a platform for anyone in the UK to borrow from me.
Fast forward to 4th January 2021 when WMWO was incorporated, and I began to build the UK’s first ever Vintage and Pre-loved Fashion Rental and Repair e-commerce site where anyone in the UK could rent a garment or an accessory from me for 4 days at a time at an affordable flat fee. A fee which incorporated a cleaning fee and a wear and tear service fee so that it was at a price point that it covered my costs and that didn’t rip off my community.
Next, I had to look into the cost to bring my proposition and idea to market. I asked several Web developers, digital design businesses and tapped up some people I knew in the graphic design industry. All of them voiced that adding a booking function into an e-commerce site could not be done. The only developer who agreed it could be done, quoted £25,000 as a cost to develop and API for me. AS IF I had £25,000 WTH.
Not one to give up easily and someone who is fuelled by obstacles, I set to learning how to bring this to market myself.
It took 4 months of me working 6pm to 10pm Mon to Fri every week night and every weekend to create the e-commerce booking platform, develop the brand assets, photograph and create the 1102 individual website products, trademark the brand, generate copy for the website, and to officially launch on 20th May 2021. I also worked for BT at the time in their Commercial Finance Team where I had a very stressful job and a team of 12 people that I was responsible for.
It was a real challenge and having pushed the GO button on my website and Instagram, I waited, I worried, I sweated, and I dreamt about what next. I categorically felt in my gut that I was destined to be right here launching a sustainable and disruptive way of consuming fashion and that my community of like-minded people would adopt and try renting.
And they did. In June 2021 I had my very first Customer in Bristol. I was incredibly lucky that a community of Customers, fellow creatives, ethical influencers and collaborators joined me to spread the message about renting Vintage and Pre-loved fashion instead of buying new.
Why stop there!! Next, I could see that buying second-hand online was becoming mainstream and that Vinted was gaining subscribers. I could foresee waste issues with subscribers buying from Vinted not being able to return items on peer-to-peer reseller sites and I worried these items wouldn’t recirculate if they didn’t fit. I decided to learn some amateur sewing skills so that I could offer Customers alterations and repairs for their own clothes along side renting.
My customers and local community began donating unwanted material and damaged items to me asking if I could reuse them for something. I had no dress making or tailoring skills, so I was at a bit of a loss.
I remembered that my Auntie Margaret had left my mum her collection of vintage sewing patterns from the 60’s and 70s from when she used to make clothes for the factory girls she worked with. I decided to have a go at reading a pattern of hers and attempted to make a dress on her old sewing machine. The terminology of her pattern was a challenge, instructions such as ‘basting the seams’ cropped up. Isn’t that what you do to a Christmas Turkey!
As someone who is a visual learner, I got straight onto YouTube to see if I could decrypt the dress making process. I realised that I didn’t really need to read these pattern instructions and that I had a more practical aptitude for piecing the garment together.
The finished dress didn’t look much like my Auntie Margarets dress, but it was somehow a better fit and more interesting than her MOD dress pattern. The more that people donated the more I pushed myself to learn more techniques, soon I was upcycling jackets, jeans and blazers. And before I knew it, I was creating jackets and trench coats from scratch.
Looking back, I never really just bought clothes over the years, I collected them. From a young age I would seek out one-of-a-kind garments which were almost always in a bold print and were tailored. I was never trendy; I had an odd body shape and a much older look than my friends, so I never suited trendy clothes. Most of my buys were vintage looking and timeless. This is why my design aesthetic has a strong nostalgic undertone to it.
On 16th December 2022, I was restless, I knew I could be doing more! And since I’d already began to teach myself how to dressmake and tailor at a beginner’s level, I knew that I should use these skills for good to help solve another problem in the fashion industry. That problem being the destruction of unwanted textiles, the throwaway of poorly fitting mass-produced synthetic garments and the over production of animal skins that were destroying the plant!
I thought what if I could create the UK’s first ever Super Brand that creates fashion pieces ONLY from items already in existence. The first ever Net Neutral fashion brand. As I played through the concept, I worried about the fit issues people have today, because today’s body, just like society is ever changing. How could items be customised to the end Customer so that they can express exactly what they want aesthetically and in their exact size. How could I bring this to market and to my community online and bring them closer to the design process. Couture, but self-served online and delivered to your door...
CoutureToYourDoor was born, or CTYD for short. It took me 12 months to build the brand proposition, trademark, create the infrastructure, create the sample pieces for the e-commerce platform to bring to market the UK’s first ever net neutral couture fashion, made to measure business from scratch.
Back to life as it is today, I’ve always remained working four days per week in accounting. Doing dual roles and working 7 days per week across both. Every penny I’ve earned in my employed job, I’ve repurposed to grow and fund CoutureToYourDoor and to maintain WearMyWardrobeOut, two collective sister brands that are centred around circularity and problem solving.
To get here today, I’ve sacrificed every minute of my spare time away from friends, family and loved ones to pursue a dream, a dream that not only brings me happiness but that gives me purpose and the ability to disrupt today’s industry whilst trying to solve an enormous problem. A problem which is getting worse by the minute.
The unanswered question is, is it worth the tears, the stress, the unrelenting level of graft and grit put into this, the brain ache and the constant adversity faced since January 2021?......
Fast forward to September 2024, we are on the cusp of London Fashion Week 2024, the Luxury Conglomerates are sighting profit warnings, the UK government and influential institutions have opened their doors to entertain the possibility of allowing an ULTRA fast fashion company to list on the London Stock Exchange and to buy their way into the UK fashion industry….well I’d say the fight against Ill-gotten gains and protection of the UK’s fashion economy and it's emerging designers has never been more urgent and important.
Tune in to read my next Chapter...hopefully not in another four year's time!
Thanks for reading, Maria Loria xxx