Every business starts with a dream. And my dream as I sat down at my kitchen table back in 2003 was to create a brilliant brand that was a reflection of all the things that were – and still are – really important to me.
I was an Aussie, newly moved to London to live with my then boyfriend, now husband. I was working for a mobile phone company, commuting three hours a day to and from a job I didn’t enjoy in a climate that was – and still is! – quite foreign to me.​
I wanted to return to working in fashion (after seven very happy years at Adidas, first in Australia and then in Hong Kong); I wanted something to change into when I returned home on those long dark winter evenings; and I wanted to create a community of like-minded people to share my experiences with.
First of all, we design clothes to be worn. A lot. Over many seasons. And hopefully by more than one person.
The business plan was written on the train on those long commutes between London and Maidenhead, but it was only when I was made redundant in January 2003 that I had the money (and time) to pursue it.
And so hush was born. A friend of a friend in Australia helped me get our first products made – six pairs of pyjamas and a cross between a cardigan and a dressing gown that my journalist boyfriend christened a ‘cardigown’.
I imported sheepskin boots from a market near my parents’ home in Melbourne; I bought a few alpaca throws from Peru; and I found the same hot chocolate from Spain that I had fallen in love with on my first visit to Europe as a 21-year-old.
I had 10,000 12-page catalogues printed, filled not just with the products but also my favourite books and films, as well as all the things I loved about a northern hemisphere winter. (That was quite a short list!) And I sent an email out to all my friends. (That was an even shorter list!)
The first orders trickled in, mainly from family, friends and friends of friends – but the press picked up on it and one day I got my first order from someone whose name I didn’t recognise. I paid for a tiny stall at a couple of shows; I left some catalogues in the reception of our local gym; I posted a few through letterboxes in what I thought were promising parts of London. (They weren’t!)
And amazingly by the end of the season I had not only run out of catalogues, but I had sold almost all of the pyjamas, I’d had to call my Mum and Dad to get some more sheepskin boots and the customers had clearly found the hot chocolate every bit as delicious as I had remembered it. So, that was how it all started…
Two years later I got pregnant, so I persuaded my soon-to-be husband to help look after this embryonic business while we adjusted to life as new parents. (He said he’d do it for two years, but he’s still running the business with me all these years later.) Roll forward to now and we have a son (who’s already taller than me), a daughter (who’s not, much to her annoyance), and a business that has grown far beyond anything we could ever have imagined.
I used to know all our customers by name – now I’m not sure I can name everyone in the office. We have more collections a year than we had products in that first season, and I’m not allowed to look at the quantities we order because I find it too terrifying… But it’s been – and continues to be – an amazing experience.