Monday, December 30, 2024

How Damson Madder Took Over The World With Frilly Collars And Leopard Vests

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New York City-based Chiru Mondo Murage Weinstein was, ironically, losing sleep over Damson Madder’s pajama drops. Ever since an Instagram ad introduced her to the British fashion label, she found herself setting alarms during the middle of the night in order to secure a pair. “I didn’t have anything that looked like that,” she remembers. (She eventually emailed to plead for more U.S.-friendly launch times. To the delight of Weinstein and her fellow Stateside fans, Damson Madder obliged.) 

You’ve likely come across its famed nightwear, too. Weinstein, 30, calls the assortment of frilly eye masks, bow-adorned button-downs, and boxer shorts the “gateway drug” to her new favorite brand, whose distinctive pieces are increasingly visible in the wild since the company set its sights on U.S. expansion this year. 

“I loved the idea of the limited quantities, and the fact that I had to wait and score them,” she says. “The drops would sell out Supreme-level fast — like, within minutes.”

Since joining the fan club, Weinstein, who works in tech and commutes to an office in downtown Manhattan, now spots people wearing Damson Madder all the time — the leopard Tilly gilet, which helped put the brand on the map across the pond, in particular. Like all of Damson Madder’s pieces, the vest is made from 100% organic cotton and recycled materials. And, with its bow closures, quilted fabric, and bold animal print, its conversation-starting design goes further than what shoppers had begun to settle for.     

Before starting Damson Madder, Emma Hill worked in fashion buying within the U.K. high-street category. For years, she got accustomed to making sure garments were as cost-effective as possible: no big pockets, no oversize collars, no interesting buttons. “I found that stressful because I wanted to have a dress or blouse with extra things that are exciting,” she recalls. “I wanted people to look and say, ‘Oh my God, where did you get that lovely piece?’ I felt like that wasn’t happening anymore. I was disappointed by the quality of the product and the lack of responsibility taken.”

That urge to create special, unique clothes — where shoppers could know where and from what they’re made —  led to Damson Madder. Timing was tricky, though: After spending 18 months on the debut collection, Hill revealed it to the world in April 2020, just as a pandemic-stricken U.K. went into lockdown. “There were absolutely no eyes on it at all,” she says. 

As stay-at-home measures continued, the brand got some nice press in traditional media thanks to its focus on slow fashion. Towards the end of the year, sales picked up, and Hill breathed easy again — but more challenges came when the brand’s factories in Turkey went into lockdown the following year. “I would say the first three years were really, really hard,” she says.

Weathering the storm has propelled the label to new heights, thanks largely to a bubbling interest from the U.S. Having noticed that the aforementioned leopard vest was going viral every time a handful of maximalist-leaning influencers posted it on Instagram (organically!), Damson Madder experimented with paid ads targeting shoppers in that market, to further capture curiosity. In March 2024, content creator Sofia M. Coelho posed in her Tilly to the tune of 45,000 likes, a moment the brand calls “really helpful” for both sales and interest. The following month, Hill started to seriously consider opening a pop-up store in New York.

For an environmentally-conscious brand, doing things slowly is the modus operandi, particularly when trying to break into a new market. “That was one of the main reasons we decided to do a pop-up — we were having conversations with some wholesale partners, And they wanted to book fairly big business. I was unsure because we’d never done anything like that before,” she recalls. “The pop-up allowed us to dip a toe in the water, trial a few things, and see what the appetite was like.”

At that point, Damson Madder had only done one pop-up — on its home turf, in London, in February 2024. The team planned for this one, its first one overseas, to coincide with New York Fashion Week in September (a convenient time to make the most of the energy in the city and to get in front of buyers, editors, and content creators hunting for a new discovery.) With her heart set on Soho, where the retail spaces tend to be on the larger side, Hill laughs that its test ground ended up being four times the size of the inaugural London one.

Social media proved paramount in evangelizing the brand once again, working with influencers whose personal style aligns with the brand’s joyful ethos especially. Hill name-checks Anna Barger, a sunny girl-next-door type with 416,000 followers: “She had been a fan of the brand for a while. It was really nice of her to come and her post was really helpful.”

Barger was one of many notable faces who attended a fun-filled cocktail party to usher in the pop-up ahead of its four-day run. On the night, some 200 people got better acquainted with Hill, her team, and the product, including Ella Emhoff (with her dog, Jerry) and Ilana Glazer.

Sales and visibility in the U.S. increased thanks to the pop-up, and, at present, over 25% of total e-commerce sales are still coming from that market. The brand was also able to connect with retailers like Nordstrom and Saks, after buyers came to check out the buzz during the New York run. (Damson Madder has been working with Lisa Says Gah as a retail partner since 2023, and will continue to.) Hill has also been approached by several intriguing collaboration proposals, some of which she’s considering, for 2025.

The foray into U.S. brick-and-mortar gave the team real-time intel about who Damson Madder’s audience is and what that shopper wants. “I think everyone thought we were much bigger than we were,” Hill says. (“My core team came out and were working at the pop-up — my head of marketing was at the check out!”) Almost five years in, there tends to be a defined “Damson Madder girl” in the U.K. — “but in New York, we saw all these different types of people, all styling the product in a very different way. It was the best feeling.”

Damson Madder has seemingly struck gold with its approach, but in today’s ultra-saturated brand landscape, it wouldn’t be possible without a strong vision and defined direction. For its U.S. hard launch, Hill enlisted the help of MODEWORLD, the NYC-based PR agency known for emboldening then-early-stage labels including Eckhaus Latta, Maryam Nassir Zadeh, Sandy Liang, Collina Strada, and Maisie Willen. (It currently counts Agmes, Bevza, and Marina Moscone as clients.) Of course, a co-sign from a cool celebrity always helps too: While there’s no guarantee that an A-lister will post a gifted piece, let alone tag the brand, Emma Roberts and Barbie Ferreira recently did. 

In tandem with managing the growth, behind the scenes Hill is committed to constantly improving the offering, which expanded into homeware and lifestyle in October. “Our biggest thing is that we don’t want to over produce,” she says. “We constantly evaluate, move things around, change the shapes, or designs so that something doesn’t go into production that isn’t right. We stick to four key launches a year and we drop those in smaller batches each month.”

That isn’t lost on the fans either, who tend to turn into repeat customers. “The point of view is very clear,” Weinstein says, adding that she has now purchased everything offered in leopard print. “I love being able to find a vest, and I can get it in other colors because I love the fit. It does a really, really good job with patterns, too. I don’t find that same care or attention with a lot of U.S. brands right now.” 

Sarah Killeen, an associate vice president at a healthcare marketing agency in Manhattan, was also bit by the Damson Madder bug this year thanks to a sponsored Instagram post. “The distinctiveness of the clothes feels like an antidote to a lot of the homogenous high street fashion out there at the moment,” she says. “I love the uniqueness, the bold patterns, the interesting details, the unusual silhouettes, and the refreshing color schemes. And the small, thoughtful details, like embroidered logos.”

To date, Killeen has snapped up the Dion leopard pants, denim cargos, the white Kendall shirt, and an oversized shirt jacket. “Both the quality and fit completely surpassed my expectations, which has rarely happened for me with online purchases in recent years,” she raves. “I was drawn to the Dion’s pattern initially, but wasn’t expecting the fit to feel so flattering.” 

Hill says she felt compelled to start Damson Madder because she couldn’t afford luxury clothing, and what she found in the sustainability category lacked originality and flair. Fast-forward to now, and her label has bridged the gap between all three. Killeen agrees: “In terms of quality and durability, these feel like investment pieces I will have for years… even though I would have expected to pay a much higher price point for that feeling!”

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Was 2024 The Year Of The Personal Style Crisis?

At the beginning of the year, fashion was swinging from extremes: “Mob wives” embraced big fur coats and maximalist accessories, while “quiet luxury” made the case for neutrals and rich but plain basics. It set the tone for what would be a discordant, sometimes even contradictory time for trends  — leopard print became a neutral (again), girly-girls prevailed, partywear went “brat” — while fast fashion only got faster to meet demand. The noise left many of us confused about what we actually wanted to wear, and personal style got harder to pin down. 

Some may have brushed it off as a standard style rut, but this felt different. A common, underlying predicament was aesthetic burnout: feeling exhausted amid a relentless trend cycle and overconsumption narratives, partnered with the pressure to post it all online. At one point, even the content on our feeds began to reflect this self-expression panic, as evidenced by all the fashion challenges, drastic closet cleanouts, and “how to find your personal style” videos flooding TikTok, as well as the emergence of AI solutions, including closet organization apps, personal shoppers, and virtual dressing rooms. 

Even celebrities were going through it. In British Vogue’s September Issue, Kylie Jenner said she was “finally finding [her] fashion feet,” after having two children in her early twenties and needing to figure out her style again. (This year, she’s been seen in various draped silhouettes, archival couture gowns, and simple black ‘fits.) Emma Chamberlain, who has been posting shopping hauls for almost a decade, shared in a Youtube video that she got rid of 95% of her wardrobe. “Part of the reason why I ended up with such a ridiculous amount of clothing was because I wanted to keep up with the internet,” she said. “There was so much in my closet that I couldn’t even grasp what I owned. Ironically, what would end up happening is I would just wear the same thing every day.”

I, too, felt disillusioned with my personal style this year. I realised how, as a fashion editor, I’d curated a wardrobe based on the trends I reported on, filled with items brands sent me, rather than what actually felt like me. I had far too many statement items and not enough basics, so my outfits looked and felt indecisive. 

This month, I asked my Instagram community whether anyone else shared similar struggles. Almost forty people replied, from new mothers admitting to crying in fitting rooms because nothing seemed to fit, to people feeling sartorially adrift amid the recent loss of a loved one.  

“2024 has been a bleak year for the world, and while I’ve always been good at powering through and dusting myself off, something about this year didn’t allow that to happen,” Lucy Harbron, 26, told me. “I had a few months where I couldn’t engage with style beyond comfort, then suddenly I felt like the trends all moved on without me.” 

Cate Bell, 29, who’s in her second trimester of pregnancy, pointed out how such life changes can lead to a style limbo: “I don’t even know how to describe my style now. Obviously, being pregnant, this isn’t the biggest thing going on in my head, but it’s difficult because your life is about to change beyond recognition, and losing your sense of style is disorienting.” 

Charlotte Madolell, 29, said that, “with the aesthetic jump on TikTok this year — clean girl, quiet luxury, mob wife — I felt like I had so many conflicting messages and started to buy pieces based on that. When it came to getting dressed, I would have a meltdown and associate it with the negative emotions I was feeling about myself.”

@morenikeajayi Less social media = more authentic style #personalstyle #stylecommentary #personalstyleadvice #fashioncommentary ♬ original sound – Morenike Ajayi

“Algorithms are great because you can be fed things that you’re interested in, but then you end up in this kind of echo chamber,” fashion creator Morenike Ajayi tells Refinery29. On TikTok, she often talks about social media’s impact on style, encouraging people to step back from their screens, hone in on their personal taste, and wear clothes they already own. “We’re in this place where people are constantly looking for trends to get dressed, whereas this should really be driven by your own internal compass.”

Following that compass might require a tried-and-true closet clean-out. The first step, though, is figuring out how you want to feel IRL, rather than how you want to look online.

Kay Barron, Net-A-Porter’s fashion director and author of How to Wear Everything, suggests evaluating the clothes and accessories you wear for specific occasions. “Work is good because we spend so much of our time there and we have to make a bit more of an effort. Figure out why there are certain things you always go for that make you feel good, like color, shape and fit,” she tells Refinery29. “Also, look at the people in your friendship group and the ones whose style that you really admire. It’s not about celebrities or people on Instagram — sometimes, you just need to look much closer to home.”

Look at the people in your friendship group and the ones whose style that you really admire. It’s not about celebrities or people on Instagram — sometimes you just need to look much closer to home.

Kay Barron

Even amid the most commiserating replies to my Instagram questions, there were a handful of people who ecstatically shared that this was the year they discovered their style. 

“​​2024 was the year I embraced a smaller, decluttered wardrobe and became more experimental,” Minori Iwahashi, 26, told me. “My style has always been a mix of tomboy, sporty, and girly, never been confined to one aesthetic or color. But I will admit that l’d buy into trends. This year, I expanded my style by incorporating layering and rotating a few bags that are cute but also functional.”

Rylé Tuvierra, a fashion creator and trans activist, told me she embraced more feminine silhouettes with pops of color, which coincided with her own personal shifts: “This past year brought a significant transition, not only in how I see myself, but also in how I curate my wardrobe. My style evolved into something more intentional and is a reflection of my confidence.” 

Others spoke about successfully removing themselves from social media to make way for their own preferences. “I’m blissfully unaware of the micro trends that pervade TikTok by not being on that platform at all,” Constance Beswick, 27, said. “Taking a step back is a relief. I know what works for me and I know what to invest in.” 

I’ve gone through major style changes in the past myself — chopping off my hair caused a significant one — but, this year, I donated more clothes than ever, and focused on intentionally adding pieces that I knew I could wear every week. Entering 2025 offers an opportunity to approach our wardrobes with even more intention. By turning a critical eye to what we already own and embracing the pieces we truly love, we can redefine what it means to dress authentically in an ever-changing landscape.

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