Fashion Angel is a fashion industry support service offering business consultancy, business mentoring, events and access to start-up funding. We work with both fashion start-ups and established fashion businesses, as well as delivering business consultancy services for the corporate and education sectors.
Fashion Angel is a fashion industry support service offering business consultancy, business mentoring, events and access to start-up funding. We work with both fashion start-ups and established fashion businesses, as well as delivering business consultancy services for the corporate and education sectors.
Our mission is to give fashion designers and entrepreneurs the tools they need to connect creativity with the necessary entrepreneurial skills to enable them to start up and grow a sustainable & successful fashion business.
With our proven track record, we’re also engaged by prestigious organisations to manage and deliver their creative industry programmes. Clients include the RCA Innovate Accelerator, Fashion and Textile Museum, British Library BIPC, UK Fashion and Textile Association, Department of International Trade, Enterprise Nation, Fashion District, Cockpit Arts, and many FE & HE education providers.
Background
Fashion Angel was founded in 2012 by Alison Lewy MBE, respected fashion industry expert and author of Design Create Sell – a guide to starting and running a fashion business. It sprang from her time as Commercial Director of the Fashion and Textile Museum, where she encountered a constant demand from graduates wanting to know how to start up a fashion business and established fashion brands wanting to grow and needing fashion industry specific support.
A natural and instinctive entrepreneur herself, Alison brings extensive industry knowledge to challenge the high failure rate of fashion businesses, often due as much to lack of business expertise and financial control, as to lack of funding. Alison has handpicked a team of mentors and advisors whose different strengths together create a formidable creative, financial and strategic planning resource.
Our handpicked team of mentors are fashion industry entrepreneurs passionate about supporting the next generation of fashion entrepreneurs.
Alison founded Fashion Angel in 2012. Previously Alison ran her own fashion brand for over 15 years producing under her own eponymous label, as well as being engaged as a consultant on sourcing and production for luxury designers including Matthew Williamson and Preen.
Whilst running her fashion brand she worked with Newham College to create and deliver business support programmes to assist creative businesses in developing business skills to become more sustainable. She set up innovative business mentoring schemes that are now established models adopted by other organisations.
Alison became the Commercial Director of the Fashion and Textile Museum in 2006 which she positioned as a hub for the fashion and textile sector, and continued to run mentoring and business support programmes as part of the museum’s offer, as well as setting up the Shop@FTM to showcase new designers.
Seeing the constant demand from fashion designers in need of sector specific support, prompted her to set up Fashion Angel in 2012, to help challenge the high failure rate of fashion businesses.
In 2016 Alison was awarded an MBE for founding Fashion Angel and in recognition of her services to the fashion industry.
She was also selected as one of the inaugural The Maserati 100 – a definitive list celebrating Britain’s most successful business leaders actively supporting the next generation of entrepreneurs – in recognition of the continuing support she gives to fashion start-ups.
She is one of Fashion Angel’s lead mentors, hosts popular workshops & events, and speaks regularly at business events and appears in the media commenting on fashion industry issues.
In addition, Alison is the best-selling author of Design Create Sell – a guide to starting and running a successful fashion business.
Fashion Industry Mentor & Business Advisor
Sue has worked in fashion retail for over 30 years, including 10 years at board level. Her experience spans global businesses such as Marks & Spencer, Asda, New Look, Hunkemoller & as Womenswear Director at Sweaty Betty, covering all aspects of product strategy. As one of Fashion Angel’s Business Advisors for the Start Up Loan scheme she has provided invaluable support to many aspiring fashion entrepreneurs
Fashion Buying Expert/ Lecturer / Consultant and Mentor
Sasha is a successful Senior Buyer with over 20 years of industry experience working for a number of large high street retailers. Her career has resulted in extensive product development knowledge covering a number of categories including Womenswear, and Accessories and she has specialist knowledge in Swimwear and Lingerie.
Sasha has bought and developed market-leading ranges for some of the largest departments in the industry including diffusion collections for designers such as Matthew Williamson and Jasper Conran.
Aside from supporting Fashion Angel’s Start Up Loan applicants she Sasha runs her own consultancy carrying out project work for manufacturers and working to support start-up businesses across a number of projects spanning a variety of categories including luxury womenswear, handbags, shoes, and of course Lingerie. Sasha also lectures for the London College of Fashion lecturing courses on Fashion Business Planning and Buying Swimwear and Lingerie.
She offers mentoring support with all aspects of the fashion business from planning strategies, brand building, product development, and taking collections to market
Fashion Designer, Mentor and Lecturer
Vivienne has extensive fashion industry experience as a designer, lecturer and mentor. She is currently founder of luxury sustainable accessory brand Scarlet Destiny, UK
She has been head designer at several ready-to-wear and sportswear companies in the UK and USA creating swimwear/active wear collections for established companies such as Sara Lee and Liz Claiborne in the USA, to exclusive high-end labels including Liberty. She has also worked as a design consultant for Courtaulds, a major supplier to Marks and Spencer, and developed the first swimwear collection for the iconic brand ‘Biba’ for House Of Fraser.
Vivienne graduated from Central St. Martins, and has taught at the Royal College of Art (MA Course), Southampton University; Winchester School of Art, (BA Course) where she mentored students developing their final collections for graduate fashion week (GFW), as well as a visiting lecturer at The London Centre for Fashion Studies in Hanoi, Viet-Nam and Regents College in London.
With an MA in Fashion Futures awarded by The London College of Fashion, she is particularly interested in the interface between design, science, technology and the environment.
She supports Fashion Angel clients with their start up loan applications and has mentored a number of graduates and start-up fashion businesses assisting them with either portfolio presentation to secure work in the industry, or business advice to launch their own brand.
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