Ange, Jules & Rowena - the sisters behind High Tea with Mrs Woo
What does it take to make it as an independent, small, local, ethical business in a global world that favours big brands? How can we work together to ensure that our local businesses and creatives are literally sustainable - they thrive and stick around?
It's not just fashion this applies to, but all the beautiful, unique, heartfelt local businesses that make our neighbourhoods sing - the cafes and family-owned restaurants, the fruiters, newsagents, hairdressers and book stores. Don't forget the circular services (like the one we featured last week - Clare's local cobbler, Roger Shoe Repairs).
In the interview hot seat are Rowena and Angela Foong - two of the three sisters behind an ethically-driven, family fashion business called High Tea With Mrs Woo, based in Newcastle, Australia.
It’s a studio that offers many things - natural fibre fabrics, unique designs, and the craft of pattern-making and sewing in-house, but also mending workshops, community activations and collaborations with innovative textile upcyclers.
As the sisters say, you need to wear many hats to make it these days, but that's also part of the joy. Not that it's easy. In this frank interview they share their challenges and strategies - which include "co-retailing" (all those struggling alone with crazy rents - listen up!).
This Episode is a love letter to all the small sustainable businesses out there. We appreciate you. But it's also a provocation to customers: if you value it, you need to support it - otherwise one day you might turn around and find it gone. SMALL & LOCAL retail is precious, and we must not allow it to disappear on our watch.
ABOUT HIGH TEA WITH MRS WOO - the Australian indie clothing label by sisters Rowena, Juliana and Angela Foong. Founded 20 years ago, it “carefully crafts clothing and accessories for modern thoughtful living” with a focus on “enduring, sustainable styles that are inspired by longevity and materiality”.
They have two boutiques, one in Sydney’s Paddington and one on Wolfe St, Newcastle, with their atelier on site. In Sydney, they “co-retail” with hand-crafted jewellery brand STUDIO MELT (below). But online has changed the game. “These days we have to give much more than just the service of goods being traded…”
IMAGE CREDIT: Alex McIntyre Photography
Mrs Woo Lifecycle Marketplace is a brand-run private Facebook group for buying and selling their second-hand pieces.
The Six Seasons project, with researchers from the School of Creative Industries (SOCI) at the University of Newcastle, explores low waste pattern cutting and digital printing technique (below).
The studio also runs community mending projects and collaborates with a host of like-minded local and Aussie businesses and initiatives.
NOTES
Recorded at the Newcastle Writers’ Festival. More here.
The local circular businesses and organisations mentioned in the podcast include:
RENEWY LIVING is eco living social enterprise, on a mission to: “help our community live sustainably with a local perspective for a better positive impact by adopting a ‘start where we live, reduce & reuse’ approach.” Founder Mardi shares environmental tips and solutions, and runs workshops and events to encourage locals to make sustainable switches around everything from composting to opshopping. Discover here.
Image via Upcycle Newcastle
UPCYCLE NEWCASTLE is a community group focused on saving waste from landfill through creative re-use and repair. Part of the Transition network, their popular DIY classes regularly book out while they also run worskops for school kids, and sell unique upcycled designs (look out for great denim bags and homewares) online to help fund their programs. Love! Shop here.
PURPLE CARD PROJECT is another social enterprise, founded by environmental management consultant Bianca Bartlett, and Siobhan Dongés, a medical researcher with a PhD in neurophysiology. Initially, they made sustainable gift cards from 100% post consumer waste material, and featuring artworks by local artists. Today, they work with individuals, schools, organisations, and governments on a variety of sustainable initiatives, “so that communities can reclaim their power, reduce the environmental overwhelm, and make small changes that, when combined, make a big impact!” Think working with local councils to combat cigarette butt litter and creating community art projects to upcycle textile waste. Find them here.
CONSCIOUS EXCHANGE (pictured above) is Newy’s coolest preloved fashion spot, with a carefully curated selection of high quality, wearable pieces to buy or exchange. Owner Emma Simcox studied fashion but decided the unsustainable churn wasn’t for her, fell in love with American vintage stores while travelling, then as a young mum decided to open her own preloved offering back home. Find them at 86 Maitland Rd, Islington, 2297, or online here.
GO CIRCULAR is a collaborative local network determined to catalyse circular systems in the region. They work with local government and businesses across projects in the energy, food, tourism, water and textiles sectors. Get in touch here.
NEWCASTLE, NSW is Australia’s 5th largest city, known for its steel production and as the largest coal port in the world. Clare mentioned a story that’s in her Rise & Resist book of Lock the Gate and the Warkworth Mine nearby in the Hunter Valley. Last year a major climate action protest sought to blockade the port - for more, listen to Episode 200 with Gregory Andrews. But there’s also a thriving arts and music scene here, plus the area has some of the most incredible beaches.
FAMILY BUSINESS Much of the discussion on the podcast centres around the pleasures, and challenges, of family business, and staying small and local on purpose. How do we define all this? Clare says HTWMW is in the business of fashion change-making. Ange & Ro say: “We’re a design practice. We’re designing very thoughtfully and always thinking about our processes and how we can improve.” They’re retailers, they’re small and local, it’s fashion yes but it’s also a TRADE - we talk about the idea of an honest trade, skill, working with your hands.
In the UK, and Australia, fashion industry used to be colloquially referred to as the RAG TRADE, which simply meant “the business of designing, making, and selling clothes.” In Sydney it was concentrated around Surry Hills, and consisted of fabric traders, sample makers, garment factories. Most of this hive of activity has now disappeared, and the area is now dominated by media companies, warehouse conversions and expensive bars and cafes - although a few cheap fashion wholesalers, mostly selling imports, cling on.
THE LANGUAGE OF FASHION is ever evolving. HTWMW uses the term “rarestock” over “deadstock” and “cuttings” over “offcuts.” Extending the analogy, cuttings can be propagated, “and grown into new things”! The power of the positive!
RESOURCEFULNESS Rowena says her grandmother role modelled resourcefulness with her beautiful cabinet of fabric remnants - it still inspires them today.
KINTSUGI is a traditional Japanese ceramics mending techniqu, highlighting rarher than hiding the mend in gold. Extending the concept, it refers to an aesthetic or world view characterised by embracing imperfection and treating healing as an essential part of human experience.
The sisters developed a “Kintsugi for Clothing” mending practice based on this idea, and employing a “Modified Eyelet Stitch” for mending small, round-ish holes such as moth holes. The stitch is related to the Blanket Stitch, Buttonhole Stitch and the Scotch Darning technique…
Watch the video below:
GOLD in Asian culture, says Angela, is not thought of the same way as gold jewellery might be in western culture. “That piece of jewellery is money. It holds value. It’s a form of currency and form of relationship.” Before they came to Australia, the Foong sisters grew up in a TRADITIONAL MALAYSIAN SHOP-HOUSE - first built around the 18th or 19th century with the arrival of immigrants from China, their distinct architecture combines business with residence, often with multiple families. These days they’re disappearing… MAYALSIA was a British colony from the 1860s until formal independence in 1957. More here.
Mrs Woo “cuttings” ready to be “propagated” by Dempstah’s material-to-material recycling innovation.
Recently, HTWMW collaborated with Aussie upcycled yarn innovator DEMPSTAH to turn their cotton and cotton/linen blend cuttings into new yarn in a circular first. The BILLIE SYSTEM tech in Hong Kong that Dempstah uses is waterless and the colours come out as you put them in. The resulting yarn was a beautiful silver. Read about the project here.
THANK YOU FOR LISTENING. Please do get in touch if you like the show, and help us continue to make it by growing our audience. Sharing it on social media, or just with your friends, rating, reviewing or simply recommending it, makes a huge difference.
Find Clare on Instagram @mrspress (& rarely these days, but anyway, X @mrspress).