Did you see us at London Fashion Week?
When we entered 2022, we had a plan in place. We’d just upped both of our hours, we were going for a startup incubator (more on that in a later article), and we were at the beginning of commissioning a marketing agency. 2022 was set to be HUGE for us, and then, suddenly, we were in a call with Victoria Jenkins from Unhidden Clothing with a fairly irresistible offer.
In a matter of just a few weeks, Victoria was hosting her first solo show at London Fashion Week and did we want to be involved? It took me and Rachael about 5 seconds to decide that yes, we absolutely did and despite our weeks being planned already, it was time to pivot and shift our workloads, put in some long days, and make it happen.
Supporting Unhidden’s event
Victoria is a disabled entrepreneur who creates universal fashion designs that solve a lot of different issues for different disabled people. As a disabled woman, the thing she needed most from us was support and time. So I started pinging previous marketing contacts asking about sponsorship and we lent our pretty fabulous executive assistant (who’d joined us a week before) to Victoria for the 2 weeks prior to the event and for event wrap up. Annie, our EA, even put herself out there as guestlist extraordinaire at the event, and looked incredibly stylish doing so!
So two weeks after our call, me and Rachael were in London for our second ever real-life meeting.
A quick note on that: you may find it strange that Rachael and I have built a business together for a year, meeting once for a short lunch last summer, but for us, it makes total sense. Our health has been prohibitive to one-day business trips, and we have been able to adapt and work well together online - and we’ve established a great friendship too!
London Fashion Week here we come
But back to the fashion show. We were reunited on our way to the Istituto Marangoni for the Unhidden show and we were both incredibly excited.
Through my pre-existing contacts, we’d helped Victoria secure an epic goody bag for all the attendees and Annie had been a brilliant point of contact for all guestlist enquiries. We had designed and created interactive postcards and business cards to encourage attendees to “interrupt the conversation” about disability and had even been provided with free printing from Moo.
Collaborating with awesome companies in the lead up to the event was one of the most rewarding things that came out of the two weeks between agreeing to get involved and the show.
Lights, camera action
Never in my life did I think I’d be involved in a fashion event. I’d describe my own personal style as the fashion sense of a toddler (hello dungarees) who occasionally looks vaguely put together. It’s safe to say, I had nothing to compare the event to.
Clearly, though, no other fashion show had so many people with hidden and unhidden disabilities in one room and it was inspiring. Meeting so many incredible, capable, successful, forward-thinking individuals in one place was one of the best experiences of my life.
From incredible influencers, fashion designers, and disabled seamstresses, to changemakers, the room was buzzing.
If you didn’t follow London Fashion Week this year, you wouldn’t have realized that this event was also during a brutal storm. Our taxi ride was interrupted by many moments where things flew in front of the car, it was all very opening scenes of Wizard of Oz. So to see a room filled with so many people who had braved the storm to be there, especially when London transport is inaccessible at the best of times, is a true testament to the creative genius of Victoria.
Have you met Victoria yet?
Rachael and Victoria had met previously, outside for a lunch mid-Pandemic, but I’d only been lucky enough to meet Victoria on video call previously. She is an incredibly capable designer, who has designed a capsule collection that is timeless and usable by disabled and non-disabled people alike.
The ethos of the brand goes far beyond universal fashion, it’s sustainable too. Everything is created ethically and to last rather than be thrown away.
Building Annie’s professional experience
We see Annie as having a long-term role here at SIC, and she showcased how incredibly capable she is throughout this entire experience.
Victoria reflected that, “having support from Annie / SIC allowed me to focus my time better and react to changes as they occurred before, during and after London Fashion Week. I simply could not have pulled it all off without her (Annie’s) help and she was so quick and so on the ball, I really did have my time saved and my stress levels reduced.”
Annie too was able to grow within the experience. She shared, “Victoria has been such a supportive and positive person to work for throughout this experience. The variety of tasks that I've done has greatly increased my professional skills in so many ways, and working for such an awesome company is just a ridiculously cool bonus - I'm really grateful to Victoria for having trusted me with her visions and ideas. My professional confidence has shot up.”
Creating connections, building our team, and supporting fellow disabled entrepreneurs are all really key parts of our company ethos. It was great that we could see all of this happen within a short project.
So, what did we learn from our foray into fashion?
More than anything, this entire episode was a fantastic lesson into how when we put our mind to something we can achieve it.
I love the word collaboration but worry that sometimes it sounds a bit twee. But this event was all about collaboration. We helped each other, supported Victoria, worked alongside some incredible brands and were able to pivot and adapt.
I hope next season, we’ll be able to support Unhidden again and can’t wait to see how we can make it bigger and better next year.
