merchantspotlightneverfullydressed-banner.jpg:uk

A bold womenswear company prises sustainability and accessibility

Never Fully Dressed is helping the planet while connecting with customers in new ways

Founder Lucy Aylen was born in the East End, the child of market traders. As a child, she learned to follow in their footsteps, experimenting with fabric to design her own chiccreations. Eventually, she began selling up stalls at Portobello, Spitalfields, and other London marketsto peddle her wares. Even at a young age, Aylen was determined to enter the business of sewing and selling women’s clothing on her own terms.

Her resourceful spirit resulted in the founding of Never Fully Dressed, a womenswear brand, which opened its brick-and-mortar store in Buckhurst Hill in 2014. The company based its business around staying true to its local roots, with most fabrics designed in-house or in collaboration with local print studios.

But despite the neighborhood focus, Aylen’s vision for NFD was much wider than a boutique shop from the very beginning. Since 2014, the company has expanded its international profile greatly, working with a wide variety of stockists and creating pop-up shops across the worlds, from the UK and the United States, to Spain, Australia, the Middle East, and more.

How? Well, business is good enough to warrant it. During the past five years—as Ayler told Drapers in February—the company’s turnover has grown by more than 100% every year.

In addition to producing uniquely bold dresses, skirts, loungewear, handbags, and more, Aylen and the Never Fully Dressed team view running an environmentally sustainable business as key to their work. Never Full Dressed’s garments and accessories are largely produced in the UK to reduce carbon emissions. More recently. the company has also committed to moving fully towards natural and biodegradable fabrics.

“All processes in our chain are ethical. We are continuously exploring the use of more sustainable fabrics, with the first viscose range launching this year,” Ayler writes on the company site.

Never Fully Dressed also aims to extend the life cycle of customers’ wardrobe items with their Pre-Loved program, which allows consumers to return old NFD designs that no longer work for them to the store for resale.

Another priority for Never Fully Dressed marketing strategy is delivering top-of-the-line social media content. To Aylen, a strong Instagram presence helps foster a feeling of community among NFD’s loyal customers. In addition to the company’s popular styling videos, Aylen lets Never Fully Dressed’s customers in on her life by sharing playful videos of her daily routines, telling unfiltered stories about the history of the company, and more.

Never Fully Dressed is one of many great British brandswho have integrated Amazon Pay in their catalogue. Discover their latest collection and find out more about them on their website.