Named for a girl and her camper van, Lucy and yak is fashion with a soul, an unusual business model for whom integrity may actually trump profit margins. Lucy and Chris have gone to great lengths to ensure both their product and practices are as ethical and sustainable as they possibly can be. With their no nonsense values and “friendly” brand ethos laid out for all to see on their website, transparency is the name of the game. In terms of their British operation, the packaging is biodegradable and they pay their Barnsley based team a living wage, not the woefully inadequate and slightly confusing government dictated minimum favoured by high street retailers. In India, where many of the garments are produced they painstakingly selected a manufacturer based on ethical working practices and have worked hard to improve conditions for the family run tailor who makes their clothes.
Ethics aside for a moment, to run a successful fashion brand you must first make something people want to wear. Lucy and yak have hit upon something of a zeitgeist. Beautifully designed, supremely comfortable and available in a rainbow of colours, fabrics and limited edition prints the trousers, pinafores and dungarees are as appealing as their strong set of brand values.
A dungaree addict, I am understandably obsessed with the easy, wearable needlecord variety. Queen procrastinator that I am, it took me a while to settle on a colour, so when I finally got round to ordering a pair in the blush pink I was disappointed to find them out of stock in my size and then devastated to learn they were actually discontinuing that line. So unfortunately I am still waiting to join the Lucy and Yak Dungaree appreciation society, but hopefully not for long. I did learn that Lucy and Yak are as good at customer service as they are at social media, ethics and designing dungarees! Fast, friendly and efficient Jenna was super apologetic, polite and quick to let me know there would be an exciting new pink arriving in the future. I am of course waiting patiently for an ash pink stock drop… although I just noticed a limited edition tartan that I may have fallen a little bit in love with…
Harri Golightly is a contemporary British illustrator with a particular fondness for colour and a distinctive “paint by numbers” aesthetic. She works with a variety of mediums (though the mac book pro is her current tool of choice) and has previously drawn on walls, clothes and skin as well as the more conventional canvases. A graduate in printed textiles Harri has a strong interest in fashion, this is reflected throughout her work, in which she often explores themes of social justice, feminism and sexuality… she also draws cute dogs and apparently talks about herself in the third person. Check out her blog and wesbite by clicking here