Photo: Courtesy of Never Fully Dressed
Watch the full conversation between Lucy Aylen and Deputy Editor Ana Colón on The Fashionista Network.
Some aspiring actors spend their livelihoods chasing their dreams. Lucy Aylen wasn’t one of them.
“As a failed actress who wasn’t in that small percentage that makes it, my mom was like ‘You need to get a proper job,” she told Ana Colón live on The Fashionista Network. (Watch it here!)
As someone who’s always been creative and grew up on a store floor, Aylen set her sights on fashion — and, in 2009, launched Never Fully Dressed. The UK-based label began in street fairs, with Aylen running the business out of her mom’s attic until she opened a storefront in 2014. When it came to social media, there wasn’t a real strategy, only a desire to connect with the people.
“There were no paid posts, there were no videos — you had Vine for that — and the old-school influencers would just want to wear your stuff. It was real collaboration, creativity and had that community sense,” she said.
When the pandemic hit, the brand’s investment in being community-oriented paid off: Never Fully Dressed came out the other side with increased buzz and shoppers. (In the full interview, she spoke further about the brand’s growth during this time.)
Nowadays, Never Fully Dressed is perhaps best known for its size range, carrying U.S. sizes 2 through 24 both online and in its stores. This became more of a priority for Aylen during the pandemic — in the full interview, she talked more deeply about what it took for the brand to get there, how she overcame the challenges that come with producing extensive sizing and the biggest takeaways of running a business.
For aspiring entrepreneurs, the designer left The Fashionista Network audience with some advice: “Make sure you stay true to why you’re doing it.”
Watch the full interview here.
This conversation was hosted on The Fashionista Network powered by interactive media platform Fireside, where viewers get the chance to participate and speak directly with industry figures. Learn more about The Fashionista Network here.
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Source: Fashionista.com
