LFW

Hectic start to the day….the doors open to the public at 5pm and there’s so many bits and bobs to do before our stand is complete! Harriet jetted off to Paris to the Premiere Vision event at 3am, so I’m on my own for the day! First stop is the Cloth Shop on Berwick road for all the essentials that obviously I forgot! Needle, thread, buttons and scissors! Faffing aside, its time to head back to Somerset house, to attach the loose labels and finish setting up the stall.

By 4.30 we are finally set up and ready to go! All the other designers and boutiques look amazing! We are surrounded by other boutiques such as, KJs Laundry, Suzannah, and House of Holland. The dresses in “Suzannah” are amazing I want to buy them all, the gorgeous 1940s silhouettes and prints are really eye catching! By 5pm the public start to pour in! It’s SO busy!

As for our collection….its getting a lot of attention! The public are loving it, which is really nice to see the general feedback and reactions from people! It feels really weird to have people trying the dresses on!! We haven’t made any sales so far….but hopefully over the weekend! Fingers crossed!

After a very hectic 5 hours I make my LONG journey back to Birmingham.

Just the usual week

London Fashion Weekend, our very first exhibition as Still Small Voice. We arrived at Somerset House at 3.40 to set up with “Pipa Boutique London”.

The atmosphere is crazy, there are people running around with steamers, clothing rails and loading boxes! We didn’t really know what to expect but we were walking through thinking….how did we end up here, at LFW?! I think our jaws were on the floor!

Back down south

So….another trip to London is on the cards! Time to get organised again, but hopefully there will be a little less dragging luggage around and having sore feet this time!

Were off to go and meet the lovely people at Pipa boutique, with the potential of having some of our fabulous dresses in the store next year and the opportunity of exhibiting at London Fashion Week!!!! A-ma-zing.

Apart from that little bit of excitement over lunchtime, today’s been rather mundane, writing e-mails, calling boutiques and making my ‘to-do’ list grow.

The visit to London will be a longer visit this time, so hopefully I will get the chance to have a look at a few exhibitions and relax a little.

Lndn

What a busy week… Monday mornings mentoring session set us up for the week. After that we then realised how much work we had to do before our meeting in London! So we were up late Monday night finishing off all the little jobs that you underestimate how long they will take you to complete! Anyway, we finished attaching all the labels, packed our bags ready for our two day trip to London and headed off to bed.

We were up early the next day and at the printers by 9am to get our Look Book printed off, and then we headed over to the train station (after stocking up on food for the journey of course). Harriet finished sewing her scarf together on the train whilst I posted updates on twitter.

Once we were in London we were able to drop our dresses off at the baggage hold and head off to brick lane to check out The Laden Showroom. After walking all the way down brick lane and back again we finally found the boutique. There were some awesome pieces, labels such as ‘Laura Laura’, who uses second hand knit wear and hand embroiders the garments with her thoughts to create unique jumpers and cardigans! My favorite is the 'If you please' jumper. (http://www.lauralaura.net)

After we had a wander around some of the vintage shops we headed over to Islington to visit an AMAZING boutique, Labour of Love. Its quirky, fun and stylish this is exactly the kind of boutique we want to have our collection in! Some of the designers in Labour of Love include Eley Kishimoto, Dove Nuotano Gli Squali, and not forgetting their own label LOL.

Wednesday the 13^th of July: the day of our first meeting as Still Small Voice. We headed to St. Pancras to collect our dresses then we were off west, to Notting Hill for the meeting with Wolf and Badger. We don’t want to give away too much yet but fingers crossed when we go back to see them with the revised collection we will have our first stockist!!

You would think that by that time we had enough….but no we headed straight over to Warwick Avenue, to a lovely little boutique on Formosa Street, Pipa. The boutique had a great selection of different designers. We were able to speak to one of the assistant buyers, and we also got to try some Lebanese sweets….which were amazing.

London was overall a pretty successful trip. Even though my feet and shoulders are aching now, it was defiantly worth it. We will definitely keep you posted on the Wolf and Badger situation.

The Time is Now.

Things are hotting up at Still Small Voice as we have been preparing to launch! The Marketing packs and look books were sent out to the buyers last week and we are preparing to call the buyers to get sales appointments (fingers crossed)!!

Harriet has been busy working with the manufacturers, making sure our dresses are perfect and ready to take down to London next month! We’ve had the labels and swing tickets printed and it’s all starting to look very professional.

We have already managed to secure a meeting with Wolf and Badger, an amazing boutique in Notting Hill, London. It is surrounded by other high end boutiques such as Matches and Toast.  Wolf and Badger provide a platform to showcase the best design talent from the UK. Wish us luck as the meeting is next month!! So exciting yet SO scary!!!

Check out ‘Wolf and Badgers’ website: www.wolfandbadger.com

Behind the Scenes

The photo shoot has been done...…phew!

Cutting the deadlines fine! Today we were shooting the debut collection for spring/summer‘12. We had 14 pieces in total to photograph and once we got going, we absolutely sailed through the shoot.

Keeping things simple definitely paid off, simple hair and make up, natural lighting and a beautiful model all worked really well! The garments looked fantastic on Harriet and we would like to think of her as ‘the face’ of still Small Voice. We have uploaded some photos taken from behind the scenes of the photo shoot. Please enjoy them.

Photographer, Jono Renton did an amazing job and we are SO happy with the results!!! The photo shoot took place at Jono’s home studio, which was perfect for what we wanted.

We finished the day off by going for a pub lunch to fill our bellies! I would say that the first photo shoot for Still Small Voice has been a success. Now all that’s left to do is put together the look book, print out the marketing material and were good to go!

Finally we just want to say a massive thank you to both the model, Harriet and the photographer, Jono (http://www.jono-renton.co.uk/) for helping us, you’ve been amazing!

To view the rest of the photos in the album, please go to our facebook page http://www.facebook.com/login/setashome.php?ref=home#!/pages/Still-Small-Voice/100526720027373.

Busy Bee’s

Not long left now until the launch of Still Small Voice. We’ve had one minor blip which has held us back a week, but we are back on track and ready for the photo shoot. The dresses are finished, the t-shirts are printed we’ve even got the little swing tickets ready and waiting to be put onto their garments!

Oh how organised we are! To keep you nosey people entertained in the meantime we’ve put up a few sneaky shots of the dresses. But watch this space as we will be uploading some amazing photographs of our beautiful garments in the next week or so!

I am actually in LOVE with the second one in!





The Printing of the Fabrics.



Here they are! We've given you four of our favorite designs, fresh out of the printer! The collection comprises of twelve unique pieces, digitally printed using the highest quality crepe de chine and silk twills. Produced entirely in the UK, Still Small Voice works with artisan manufacturers to ensure the highest quality products. 

The Moose Has Been Let Loose fabric design





Do You Think They've Spotted Me



Don't Step on the Grass



Do You Think They've Spotted Me

The Rhinos are Coming!

Time is passing so quickly now!! The weeks are absolutely flying by. Our fabric has just been printed and we have been back and forth to the manufacturers to get things going there. It literally feels like were racing against time.

The fabrics look amazing and we’ve come up with all the quirky little name tags for each dress: “My pod is better than yours” and “Six legs are better than two”. At the moment six legs would definately be better than two…at least then I could walk faster!

In 3 weeks time we will both be overseeing the photo shoot for our look book!! So you can expect to see the photos from the shoot by the middle of May.

We’ve left you with a sneak preview of what you can expect of the debut collection from Still Small Voice.

The moose has been let loose

The drawing's are done......the designs have been finalised.... and the sample range is on its way!


Over the last few months STILL SMALL VOICE has been out and about gathering the ingredients for the debut collection "Out of a Hat".


Our approach to the design process takes an unusual slant. At random a subject matter is picked out of a hat, which then becomes our focus for the season, keeping the collections personal and design led.

Eccentric and unconventional subjects have led to our quest for something unique. Taking inspiration from ever evolving surroundings, such as old taxidermied animal heads at Wollaton Hall. Our collections epitomise an unexpected, yet completely wearable look!