Hey, it's Anushka. Happy to see you here!
I founded this brand in the most me way possible: unplanned, organic, slightly chaotic and bursting with so much passion and love. I have always been surrounded by creativity, I feel unlike myself if I'm not creating things. I grew up in a house of art, fashion, great food (thanks mum), and freedom. My favourite demographics of people are babies and grandmas because of their unashamed realness. They also have the most wisdom, in the form of ancestral knowledge and tabula rasa innocence. I recently realised that life is a process of unlearning and going back to the source. For me, that source is connection to women who create things with their hands. There is something so intentional and beautiful about seeing ideas come to life through the hand's of women who have been taught their crafts from their mothers, and the mothers of their mothers. After quite an academic upbringing, my French teacher at my highschool told me to study languages, which went against my secret dream of being an actress in West End musicals. However the more I studied the inner worlds of Garcia Marquez, Isabel Allende, Camus and Assia Djebar I realised that books taught me more about culture and people than anything else. I ended up studying French and Spanish at Oxford University, while still nourishing my dreams of fashion and theatre by interning at Vogue Paris for 6 months, and performing at every opportunity I got. It wasn't until recently that I realised how perfect my degree was for me, it enabled me to connect with women in rural communities and speak their languages and form authentic friendships which flourish into business relationships, languages opened up the world for me. I wish I could learn all of them!
Clothes and the narratives around women’s fashion have always fascinated me, from the days of drawing dresses on napkins, to learning what a toile is, to watching the designers at Nina Ricci backstage at Paris Fashion week while I was a little intern. I've always been amazed with what makes an outfit work and what doesn't. I find the opacity in the fashion industry incredibly sad and heartbreaking, young women and girls (usually of colour) are relentlessly exploited and abused. Brands bypass their immorality by using WOC and plus size models to project a guise of a feminist agenda, when they are exploiting the very women and girls who make their garments. It's twisted. Fashion's truest stars and artists are and always have been female artisans. No kind of advanced machine will ever be as luxurious as clothes made with generations of history and culture and love. I had my first heartbreak when I was 24, and a few months later I was living in Morocco, soul searching, healing, learning and feeling really inspired by the naturalness and ease of creativity there. I made some samples there and did an impromptu photoshoot with a girl I met there, and I then posted the photos on instagram and people wanted to buy the outfits. I think the excitement and bubbling of something fabulous happening was palpable, I felt it in my bones. That trip to Morocco changed my entire life. I'm more than grateful to have refound myself in such a profound way. Read more about the beginnings here…
