Introducing Saywood Studio
We caught up with Harriet Saywood-Bellisario, founder of our newest brand arrival, Saywood Studio, to delve into what this brilliant British sustainable brand is all about.
Please kindly introduce yourself?
I’m Harriet, the founder of Saywood, a luxury London based womenswear label creating beautiful edits of wardrobe essentials, elevated with bold colour and unexpected detail to make each piece unique.
Tell us what inspired you to start Saywood?
I was inspired to start Saywood, because I really struggled to find a good fitting shirt that felt fresh and cool, with a little bit of interest, but wasn’t too overtly high fashion; good everyday pieces you can layer up and put a jumper over, and still feel special in. I’ve always wanted to create my own label, but it was partly born from something that I couldn’t find out there, and so, wardrobe essentials, with the fundamentals of shirting, just felt like the right direction to create in. The other side of it, having worked in the fashion industry for 15 years now, when I started working on the brand some four years prior to launch, the fashion industry was still so behind in terms of ethics and sustainability. These are not new things, but it’s something that the industry has really struggled to get to grips with, so I wanted to be a part of that change and drive forward sustainability within the industry.
Where does your design inspiration come from?
My design inspiration really starts with colour and fabrics; I love interesting textures, even on clean base materials. Colour is a really prominent feature in my life, so finding those soft tones of colour that really work with everything, but bring a lot of joy when you wear them, has always been super important to me. I love details, interesting features, so that’s something that really inspires me, and with that, very much how people wear their clothes. I love seeing how people style things, what colours they put together, and the surrounding environment they move in, so I’m very inspired by the world around me when it comes to design.
Can you tell us a bit about the production process - where are your pieces made?
Everything is now made in the UK. Saywood was previously manufacturing in the UK and Europe, but our European factory grew so big, they could no longer accommodate the smaller production runs, so it was the opportune time to onshore everything and make solely in the UK. I really love being able to do this as, not only does it support the return of UK manufacturing and localised production, but it means I can build stronger relationships with the manufacturers. It’s much easier to go and see the clothes being made throughout the whole process, and to me that’s really important, because that is the story behind what we wear.
Why is it important to you to produce your pieces ethically and sustainably?
We all wear clothes everyday. But right now, our planet is suffering, and the people working in the fashion industry are treated poorly. The air is heavily polluted, the rivers are killing wildlife, waste is extensive, and people are being poisoned from making fashion. I believe producing anything has to be done sustainably, now more than ever, and producing ethically is essential. Why should other people, especially in the Global South, be made to suffer, so that we can wear the latest trends, which are, more often than not, only to be discarded not much longer after buying?! The current fashion system is rotten, and it’s having such a damaging impact on people and the planet. We need to respect the people making our clothes, paying them fairly, so that they can actually live and have a good life, just as we would expect, and so that they are treated well, not oppressed by our fashion system.
And when it comes to sourcing and producing sustainably, we can’t continue to take from the Earth at the rate we are now; we will have no Earth left to wear nice clothes on. Natural fibres are always softer, more luxurious, more beautiful to wear, than synthetic fibres made from fossil fuels. If we slow down the rate of global production, we will be able to grow these resources without extensive use of toxic pesticides, fertilisers and water. Water that we actually need to drink as humans to stay alive, and to stop poisoning the farmers growing the crop, and destroying the health of the soil. The more we destroy the health of the soil, the more difficult it becomes to grow a usable crop; it becomes a vicious cycle. We don’t need all the overproduced products, so to me, this is common sense to slow down.
There’s also the importance of stopping the use of synthetic fossil fuel based materials; materials such as polyester that, once turned into cloth, are extremely difficult to recycle back into new cloth, or any product. And it’s not the most pleasant fabric to wear on our bodies; essentially plastic, it’s also slowly transferring toxins into our bodies. The dyes and chemicals used for these materials are so much more damaging to ourselves and our planet. Not to mention, it takes hundreds of years to break down; we will be living surrounded by mounds of polyester clothing, or killing our sea life with the micro plastics as it floods into our oceans.
For the sake of cheapness, it just isn’t worth it. We all share this planet, and we have to start being responsible for taking care of it, or it will be too late. Brands are the ones producing these clothes, it has to start with them.
How has your experience working for well known brands, including Paul Smith and Richard Nichol, influenced your work at Saywood?
I think working for designers like Paul Smith and Richard Nichol have influenced me for sure, certainly in terms of the tailoring, and again very much in styling. I learnt so much through working for these brands, from refining the product, to the manufacturing and fabric knowledge. But as I’ve developed my own handwriting over the years, it’s evolved into my own signature style, and that’s what comes through at Saywood.
Any challenges in running a small sustainable brand? And equally, what is the best bit about it?
There are a lot of challenges to running a sustainable brand, but I think this is a really good space for creativity at the same time. One of the challenges is finding the fabrics you love in sustainable fabric bases, with an order quantity that’s viable for you. Often, the fabric mills require higher order quantities for these sustainable bases because it is more efficient for them to produce more, which may not yet be achievable. So using deadstock and surplus is a great way to find what you need, but it comes with its own challenges; you might not be able to get the ideal colour that you want, or fabric base, for example, but that’s why you have to be a bit creative.
I think another challenge really is cash flow, and that is a general challenge in the fashion industry across the board; upfront costs are so big, but for a lot of brands, sales come in at a slower pace than the cash goes out; it’s the nature of retail. When you are making in small batches, a lot of factories, again for efficiency, want higher unit order quantities, so it’s balancing that small order quantity that you ideally want as a brand, and the high order quantities that the factories want to make it efficient for them; it’s all a bit of a balancing act.
The best bit about it really for me is meeting the customers. I really love understanding how they wear their pieces, their clothes in general, who they are, what they love about dressing. I think that’s really important to meet your customers first hand. And, ultimately, I get to do the thing that I love everyday. It doesn’t mean that it’s not hard, and that there aren’t challenges, but I love it.
Finally, any hopes and dreams for the brand you'd like to share?
There’s definitely lots of hopes and dreams for Saywood. Right now, I want to keep growing as a brand that stands for fashion done better; that doesn’t mean grow to the size of a high street conglomerate, far from it, but I want to grow it so that the brand is comfortably sustainable as a business, to be able to support a small team to live well, and continue to do good beyond the product, that’s all really important to me. There’s lots of things that I really want to do with the brand beyond the fashion side of it; within nature, community, workshops, so watch this space because there’s a lot more to come.