Our Founder Isobel Ridley Speaks at Swinton Park

Posted on October 15 2021

Yesterday, our founder Isobel Ridley spoke at Swinton Park Hotel for Cundall Manor School's ladies lunch. Scroll below to see some pictures of the beautiful estate and to read her speech. 

Hello and thank you for inviting me to speak to you, it’s a great honour and if you have any queries or questions, please do not hesitate to ask.

When Hannah kindly asked me to come and speak, I sat down and mapped out what I was going to talk about and what you would be interested in hearing. I decided the best place to start is to take you back to the beginning and talk to you about why I set up the company and take it from there.   

After leaving Durham university I was fortunate to be offered a job at Burberry where I spent a few years gaining experience and learning a few tricks of the trade, it was a fascinating time which I thoroughly enjoyed.

However, I was forever on the hunt for flattering t-shirts which I could pair with patterned skirts, trousers or even be smart enough to wear under a suit jacket.

I started to research the market and discovered there was a gap for quality t-shirts that were flattering to wear, smart, not see through, washed well and did not cost the earth both in a monetary sense and environmentally. 

So back in 2013, I handed in my notice and told my boss I was going to France to learn French.

My attempt to learn French lasted a sum of three weeks, I got itchy feet and I thought I should crack on to make my idea into a reality. I remember very vividly going for a walk with my dad and he asking me: what I was going to do as I didn’t have a job and my learning French really was not going very well..  my response being that I am going to set up a clothing company, he turned to me and said ‘but Isobel you must have a business plan, you can’t be serious if you haven’t’. Low and behold I walked off, sat down wrote a business plan and filed the incorporation documents at companies house and Lavender Hill came to life.

That was nearly eight years ago today.

On reflection, I was a little crazy, I was 24, had few connections and there was no way I was going to be offered a loan or investment from a third party. However, I had a few savings from when I worked as a cook in my university holidays, a love for the product I was producing and the will to make the business work.

Lavender Hill began with seven styles of t-shirts in black and white in varying necklines, sleeve lengths and fits. Today the range covers nightwear, loungewear, socks, cashmere accessories and still quite a few t-shirts. We sell directly to consumers across the world, The Times newspaper considers us as one of the top 30 sustainable brands and we’re very lucky to have some high profile customers: men and women including politicians and British Royalty, old and young.

From day one, Lavender Hill has been about producing a product that is not only super soft to wear, flattering, easy to care for but produced in a thoughtful and mindful way.

When researching fabrics I was amazed to find that there were all these new fabrics on the market that I had never heard of, that had better properties functionally and environmentally than traditional fabrics like cotton and polyester.  These properties include being antibacterial, breathable, having a natural stretch, being crease resistant but most importantly are all incredibly soft and use half the amount of water than traditional fabrics when there being made.  I have bought a few along so please do have a look and feel later on.

But what is amazing is that these fabrics are made from trees, the fabric Tencel modal which we use in our core t-shirt range derives from beech trees and we have a licence with a German/Austrian company who responsibly grows and processes the trees in a carbon neutral environment. We have also started using a new fabric this year called Lyocell that derives from Eucalyptus trees which is prefect for our nightwear and base layers as it is moisture wicking, anti-bacterial and heat regulating. I’ve also bought some of the wood chips and fibres along so you can see the process and in the back of the brochure there is a page that explains more about the fabrics we use.

I have forever been passionate about how and where we produce our clothes and for seven years we manufactured over 90% of our products here in the UK and we have always shown where and how we manufacture our items on our website. However, last year we had to completely change our production as when covid hit nearly all our UK factories shut down and we were seeing an increase in demand for our products. I had to make a commercial decision to start producing more of our goods in Portugal and thank goodness we did as last year was quite a ride!

We were in about week three of the first lockdown when there was a lot of press circulating about the lack of hospital gowns and PPE in the country and there were people sitting at home making it themselves for their local hospitals, I thought that this was ridiculous as quite simply not enough would be made. I set about chatting to my suppliers about how we could source some fabric and see if our factories or contacts could help, I was quickly told that there was one roll of PPE fabric in the UK and it was not going to be coming to us. I didn’t give up and spoke to our German raw material supplier to see if they had an alternative fabric as the fibres they produce can also be turned into medical grade and fire retardant fabrics so I thought there might be a possibility that they could help. It was from these conversations I started to think about making comfortable masks for everyday use.

I pondered the idea for a while as we still needed to find a fabric that could prevent the spread, be breathable and not take away from the NHS while being environmentally friendly.

The turning point was when I had a customer call, who said that she had not left the house in six weeks for fear of catching covid and I started to think about what we could do to help and get people out and about.

It was at this point I contacted my garment manufacturers in Portugal and asked them to start developing some different styles of cotton reusable facemasks with an antibacterial finish.

I was living with my sister and her family at this point and when I received the first batch and tried them on, my two year nephew burst into tears and I quickly realised that if we were going to produce masks we needed to make them as fun and as friendly as possible, which is why produced them in lots of different patterns.