What’s Important? Beautiful Soul

The best part of writing N4 Mummy is meeting some extraordinary people. Nicola from Beautiful Soul London was no exception. Hers is a modern-day fairy tale. Insurance Broker has a moment of revelation beneath a cherry blossom tree in Japan: there are more important things in life than just the accumulation of money. It’s a truth we all subscribe to, in theory, but how many of us actually make decisions or run a business by it?

Fed up of the daily grind, Nicola took a 6 month break with her best friend to travel the world. Instead of returning to a lucrative job in the city, she moved back home, became a student and started a fashion design degree at the London College of Fashion. It was tough. Several years older than many of her contemporaries, Nicola wanted to learn to design and create clothes to last. Slow fashion, timeless wardrobe staples. In an environment that celebrates newness and cutting edge fashion, it was a tricky path for Nicola to tread. But her single-minded determination helped see her through.

Whilst at university she developed a bespoke collection of tailored one-of a-kind pieces, created from upcycled Japanese kimonos, which the V&A stocked after she graduated. Whilst the idea of creating new garments from old fitted with Nicola’s ethos, the reality of making it a business was challenging. Wholesalers struggled to understand that each item was unique, and that they couldn’t order multiple garments. Also, it took 4 painstaking hours to unpick and prepare each vinatge kimono, before work could start on creating the new item. The labour vs. time just wasn’t workable, though a beautiful idea it was never going to be sustainable as a business.

So Beautiful Soul London was born. Nicola’s aim? To dress real women in real clothes that can be cherished for a lifetime. You can see this from the quality of the fabrics she uses, silks, laces and jacquards. But also the fact she spurns the traditional idea of seasons and producing continual newness to make the customer buy. She has run her Poppy print for the past 3 years, and it still sells as well today. All Beautiful Soul’s prints are designed by Nicola, and are “inspired by the quaint simplicity of happy childhood memories; in the hope they will make others smile.” For example the Viola print, pictured below, was designed for her Dad when he had back surgery. Nicola said, “the Viola flower, a firm Woods’ family favourite and a flower that guarantees to bring ‘sunshine’ and positivity to the gloomiet of days.”

It is paramount to Nicola that they manufacture mindfully. A transparent supply chain is key; so all Beautiful Soul’s garments are proudly British made. This passion for reinvigorating British Manufacturing has seen a Nottingham based lace factory come back to life and flourish.

Key to the ethos of the brand is the desire to reconcile style and sustainability, and where possible adhere to a zero-waste policy. The fabrics used are either fairtrade, organic, local, or end-of-line fabrics which would otherwise have been sent to landfill. If she finds a few meters of fabric, the design challenge is to find a way to use it. The Chika Shirt Dresses’ (pictured below) collar and cuffs are made from a fairtrade jacquard fabric that there was a limited supply of.

She has certainly succeeded in producing a range of clothing for real women. Last year unable to afford a glitzy catwalk show at London Fashion Week, Nicola paid friends in dresses to do a street style shoot. Pictures appeared in every key newspaper and fashion magazine. Celebrities such as Taylor Swift, Pippa Middleton and Livia Firth have all been photographed wearing her garments. But producing sustainably is expensive and costly for the customer. At £360+ a dress, it’s not an everyday purchase. She’d love to start using the Newlife Fabric made from recycled bottles in addition to silk, to offer a lower price point.  But, the process getting a new fabric into production is costly. So now the challenge is to expand and grow sustainably, for which Nicola is currently looking for a strategic business partner and investor. She needs someone who shares a similar ethos of treating people planet and profit with equal importance. Someone with a strong business of fashion acumen, but also a Beautiful Soul.

Beautiful Soul has a Flash Sale 50% off until 31^st January, enter FLASH50 at the checkout.

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N4 Mummy is wearing:

Chika Shirt Dress, Viola Peppermint, £360

Takara Dress, White British Lace, £395