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So many moving parts go into bringing the concept for a fashion line together. The general public generally wouldn’t realise that more than 20 businesses could be involved in bringing one sweater to life.
Clothe Creative and Ela were such a key part to ensuring the fit and quality of our locally made sweaters was second to none. We were privileged to sit down with Ela to discuss how her business has been affected in the past two years and to learn more about the staying competitive in the fashion industry…
I'm Ela and I run a business called Clothe Creative Pattern Making, which is a freelance pattern making service for the fashion industry.
CLOTHE Creative is a Melbourne based CAD pattern-making service that assists all types of fashion companies & individuals to achieve high quality results for their bespoke designs.
Clothe Creative's work for Sportsgirl.
Initially, I lost a fair amount of work because of the closures.
It didn’t take me long to loo for alternatives and because I'm working remotely already, it was fairly easy for people to give me work digital, and for us to socially distance. We did it all via email and video, it was kind of okay but faced some contextual challenges and steep learning curves.
A lot of customer facing businesses have had to adapt to the new way or working. Even now.
I've had to remain flexible and it just has meant that I've been working... or I was working on the weekends rather than during the week because we didn't have daycare.
It’s the same work, just juggled in a different way.
We decided to move Clothe into a studio space. It has really helped to be out of the house, because I've been working at home for four years.
During lockdown, it got really full-on with all of us at home, and it's helped to just start fresh in a new space that's my own. Something to escape to and pour my creativity into.
It's about supporting the businesses that you're surrounded by, keeping the wealth in your community, in your local community.
I think it's permanently shifted. And I almost hope it has so that the work-life balance is a bit more even, and a bit more accepted within society, as well.
It’s hard our there to juggle all the things, the pandemic has really exposed the gaps in work-life balance that needed to be adjusted. I’d hate to return to the old way of working.
Creative problem solving and resilience. They really go hand in hand.
Flexibility, having control over what I do and what I choose to do.
I've been working on some sewing patterns for people who sew at home. I was keen to figure out what I could contribute to the fashion industry that would be a bit more sustainable and just go away from this sort of fast fashion model that's starting to become a little bit too much.
I felt like that would be a really nice contribution, so I'm excited to be working on that project at the moment.
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Phil and Vicky from CGT Manufacturing were instrumental in bringing our 100% Australian-made cotton sweatshirts to life, generously opening their contact list and hearts to Kate and the She Lion team.
We sat down with Phil to chat about the pandemic's impact on their business and how the Australian fashion industry has changed in his decades of experience…
Support Local: Meet Kate Johansson – Founder of KOJA.
We’re busy enough without having to spend hours trying to make decisions about what we should eat when we're craving a snack!
Lucky for us, KOJA (and Kate J) has done the hard work for us and designed a range of nutritious, satisfying and oh so delicious healthy snack bars.
Learn more about Kate's business journey, experience through the pandemic to date, and how she support's local.
