The owner of a fashion brand popular with Liverpool's Glastonbury pack told of her pride at seeing festival-goers wearing her clothes.
Sophie Ackers set up Secret Garden in 2019 with the business going "through the roof" and proving a huge hit with girls in the city, especially in the run-up to the Glastonbury Festival next month. The 32-year-old has 49.7k followers on Instagram and is currently juggling her fashion label with a full-time job.
The company was inspired by Sophie's obsession with colours, fabrics and her love of learning about new cultures. She began travelling when she was 16 and said she was always obsessed with visiting local markets to see traditional fabrics and understand how they are made.
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Sophie told the Echo: “It started as a hobby when you go to markets and just pick up things. I literally started the company with five hand bags and now we have over 500 products.”
The Secret Garden designs are all hand-made, even down, to the stitching of individual sequins, meaning no two pieces are the same and are, in fact, unique. Suppliers and artisans come from Bali, Pakistan, India, Afghanistan and Thailand and the methods used have been around for hundreds and hundreds of years.
Sophie said: “The majority of the artisans we work with are all families. They've become my friends over the years as we've been working with them for such a long time now. As soon as you go over there the hospitality is next level. It’s amazing. They welcome you as part of their family.
“We co-create with them depending on what fabrics are available. But the majority of the businesses we work with have vintage textiles and fabrics. What we do is we invent, upcycle and create new styles so this could be out of dead stock fabric or vintage fabrics but we have a responsible approach to the collections.
“We know who makes our pieces. We know where they're made and I think that's so important to show to my customers and our followers. I think they've got a genuine interest in wanting to know where the fabrics are from. My goal is to show people the process and that’s what makes Secret Garden that extra little bit special because we have that insight into the artisans.”
Sophie said it’s so surreal to see so many people at Glastonbury wearing Secret Garden adding: “It was so mad. I thought I’ll see a few people wearing Secret Garden back packs and then last year everyone we looked at had Secret Garden on. And, if you can compare how many people go to Glasto and to see how many people wear Secret Garden, it’s just surreal.”
Sophie would love to see Secret Garden have more of an online presence, go global and hold pop-up shops across the UK as well as at festivals. The next Secret Garden pop up takes place on Saturday, June 3 and Sunday, June 4 at Ten Streets Social, 8 Regent Rd, Liverpool, L3 7BX from 10am to 3pm.
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