Hoping to change the future of fashion with new clothing brand

A CLONDALKIN Woman hopes to change the future of fashion with her clothing brand ‘The Suss Edit’ – a collection of sustainable wardrobe essentials.

With the company’s ethos “timeless, classic essentials”, Jenny Johnston wanted to develop a clothing brand that embodied sustainability, ethical fashion and provided people with wardrobe staples that they could wear day to day.

“We are a sustainable fashion brand. The products are very much what would be considered as wardrobe staples,” Jenny tells The Echo.

“The whole idea and concept of the business is it is not going to be super trendy- they are items that you will have in your wardrobe that you would return to time and time again.

“Everything is designed from sustainable material – whether that is recycled or 100% organic cotton, so very much from the beginning the design of the product starts with deconstruction in mind.”

Jenny says that when creating and designing a product, she looks at how it will look at the end of its life cycle and ensure that it can be recycled.

“Our T-shirts are 100% organic cotton it is not a mix of material because what we discovered in the process is if we had for example 90% cotton and 10% another material it cannot be deconstructed back to the raw material.”

With a strong background and experience in retail and fashion marketing coupled with a new interest in sustainability, Jenny says she was prompted to think outside the box when the first Covid-19 lockdown hit in March 2020.

“I have found it really exciting because I am so passionate about it, so I have really enjoyed it. Obviously, it is not easy, but I have loved sourcing the product, the branding, designing side of things and with my marketing background I have really enjoyed the photoshoots, the press and starting the social media campaigns – that has all been really exciting.”

When starting up the business, Jenny sought help from LEO for funding and mentorship to guide her through the process.

“The Local Enterprise Office has been an amazing support for me personally and for the business. I had a lot of experience on the sales and marketing side, but I lacked experience in other aspects. My mentor, Ruth Larkin is from a fashion background, and she has been an amazing support for me.

Jenny added: “I also got a priming grant which has really helped. It is expensive starting any business, but with fashion there is a lot of investment in stock and product so that funding has really helped me on things such as the sales and marketing side.”

Speaking about the future of sustainable fashion and the brand, Jenny says that one of the important elements of The Suss Edit is the ‘Buy back’ offering – drawing on the statement “when you’re done, we will make another one”.

“What we are doing when we launch is – obviously the clothes are designed to last and they need to have a long-life cycle, but when the customer decides that they don’t want it anymore or it has reached the end of its life cycle, we will take it back and make sure those materials get reused and we give the customer a discount of a future purchase.”

The website is due to launch on August 26 and will begin selling the sustainable clothing range online with hopes to move into stores in early next year.

“It will be very much an E-commerce brand being predominantly online and shipping directly to customers. We are also looking at things like pop-up stores and pop-ups in other department stores also.”

To find out more about the brand you can go to thesuss_edit on Instagram or find the products on www.thesussedit.com after the launch on August 26.