Founded and helmed by two female entrepreneurs with supplementary backgrounds, Madara Freimane and Ance Rusova, What’s Your Legacy is a London-based creative agency and curated online platform bringing sustainable fashion to the forefront. Their agency is set to push sustainable brands forward through a range of services – from brand development and creative direction to marketing campaigns and service design – helping them showcase their work and promote their business. When they are not busy building brands, Freimane and Rusova write articles, interview designers, and curate editorial shoots, so everyone can see how sustainable fashion is making a positive difference. We sat down with co-founder Madara Freimane to discuss sustainable fashion, building brands and ultimate goal for their agency.
What were you doing before What’s Your Legacy?
We were mostly just experimenting and playing around with ideas. I grew up doing orienteering sport, which meant spending a lot of time in nature. Later on, I went on studying Fashion Styling and Photography at London College of Fashion for my BA degree. Ance did her BA in Magazine Publishing at London College of Communication, and she is currently doing her masters in Innovation Management at Central Saint Martins alongside working with different startups. This wide specter of knowledge felt like a good team to start What’s Your Legacy.
Was there a particular experience that made you sensitive in sustainable fashion?
There definitely were many different moments that lead me to this.
Years ago, my sister brought back home a “sustainable pair of jeans” after spending her summer in Stockholm, Sweden, and a Swedish magazine called Eco Queen (which is not published anymore). At that time, I had no clue what sustainability really meant. I tried to read it with my very poor knowledge of Swedish, and, looking back, this definitely made me aware of what sustainable fashion is. But, at that time, I would have never thought that I would be working with sustainable fashion all these years later.
I think a major factor is that I have always been very close to nature, and it has been a big part of my identity. When I moved to London, the lack of it struck me.
However, fashion-wise moving to London was very overwhelming because there were so much clothes available through high-street stores, but nothing gave that satisfaction or quality that I wished for, so I naturally begun to buy less. I felt like everyone was wearing the same few brands, and the magic of dressing up and looking unique was somehow fading away. Later on, through one of my university projects, I begun to research fashion production, and then it really struck me. The way industry treats its garment workers and the detrimental impact it had on the environment made me question whether I want to be a part of it. I asked myself what I could do. The first thing that came to my mind was simply curate my wardrobe sustainably, so I began to look for sustainable brands online. But the results you can find when googling “sustainable fashion” are for sure repelling. The other thing that was never clear to me was what it actually meant for clothing to be sustainable. At that moment, I knew that for sustainable fashion to be more mainstream, it had to break those stereotypes of being ugly, expensive and difficult to buy. I spent hours discussing this subject with my friend Ance who was looking for innovation and entrepreneurial opportunities. We bounced ideas back and forth in terms of feasibility and ways of reaching out the people who would be interested in this, and thats how What’s Your Legacy was founded.
I know your agency is all about building young brands, but how are you building your brand? How did you come down to the mediums (interviews, editorials, etc) to promote your mission?
The thing that we figured out early on was that sustainable fashion brands are not exposed to the global fashion industry. Therefore, we knew that we should present them in the way people are used to seeing fashion. First of all, it meant that we had to invest in high-quality imagery which is a very engaging medium. We knew that engaging imagery would be the way to promote sustainability. If you see an outfit you love on Instagram, the first thing you know is that you like it, and not that it is sustainable, which is what we were aiming for. Sustainability would then just come as a pleasant surprise, as an extra value. In addition to that, we had realized that people have increasingly reducing attention span. We get bombarded with facts and figures, and tend to stop only if something is really catching our attention. This is the main reason why we are increasingly investing in producing video content.
Interviews are something we have always loved to read. We know there are intelligent and driven people behind these brands, and we have always been fascinated by their stories. It’s not just about the garment, but about the story and personality behind that particular brand. We also know that our readers are smart and conscious. It is great to connect them with these stories, and there is nothing more wonderful than seeing likeminded people out there. We aim to inspire readers to pursue their passions through reading one of our articles.
Of all the services you provide, is there one that has been the most popular, and why do you think that is?
I think that really depends. We are diverse in terms of the things we do. Behind the scenes of our platform, there is so much more happening, like sustainable brand development and consulting, organizing events, etc. But I think for the readers the most exciting is the imagery. We consciously made the decision to invest in design and aesthetics.
With all-the-more sustainable fashion brands cropping up, do you think that sustainability in fashion is becoming mainstream?
I believe it is. Just like buying organic smoothies is “cool,” I think buying sustainable fashion is also becoming more and more trendy. We think that is great. People are more aware of their individual impact on planet, especially the young generation. Having grown up with the information overload, people are searching for value and meaning, starting to question things. We have definitely seen the shift towards a more conscious living that we find very inspiring. Even high-street brands have to implement sustainable measurements to sustain their business model, and that creates an increasing awareness around this subject. We have also seen that there are many amazing sustainable brands out there producing elegant and high-quality garments that can appeal to the mainstream customer. Of course, there are still many things that have to be improved, such as accessing to the stores that meets the user demands and change in people’s behaviors. We simply function on old systems; we have very little understanding on how much a garment should cost or how long should it last. But any industry needs time in order to thrive, and with the right investments in this sector it will become bigger and more mainstream. It is wonderful to see the positive trend that this generation is moving towards.
Sustainability has a broad definition. How do you define it? What would you do in case a designer with a different view on sustainability reaches out to work with you? (For instance, they care about the environment but are not sensitive to the workers producing their products)
From a consumers’ perspective, sustainability is buying less, better quality, great design and seeing the value in it. It is a long-term way of thinking. This would mean unique personal style for the individual. It is quite a difficult subject because we understand that there is no “one size fits all” solution in terms of sustainability. As a company, we have identified five areas that we look for: ethics towards garment workers, environmental impact, ethics towards animals (we don’t use leather or fur on our platform), quality of garment, quality of design. We review each brand upon these values and inform our readers in an article.
How do you bring new brands into your agency?
For most part, we do the research ourselves, and then reach out to the brands that we would like to work with. There are also brands that reach out to us, and if the fit is right we move on from there. Sometimes, we get some great suggestions from friends or people we have worked with previously, which is always the most trustworthy source.
What is your ultimate goal for What’s Your Legacy?
Ultimate goal is quite a brave question. We really believe in experimentation and uncertainty, and that is part of our growth process. We want to build a meaningful brand that makes an impact in the long-run. I guess then the ultimate goal is to make an impact in the fashion industry, build value for consumers and our readers, and as a result have a more sustainable world for all of us. In terms of readership, we would like to show that sustainability is a choice of lifestyle bringing positivity, connectedness and meaning.
www.whatsyourlegacy.co.uk
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