MY LIGHT BULB MOMENT
Harriet Vine MBe co-founded jewellery brand tatty Devine with rosie Wolfenden MBe in 1999. they are 42 and live in London. Harriet is single, with a daughter, 11. rosie has two children, aged three and five, with husband tony. I’VE always loved being different. I grew up in Rochester, but felt too big for a small town. My mum was a dressmaker, so I loved making things. I’d go out in crazy outfits and, if I wasn’t shouted at, I would feel like I had utterly failed.
So I went to Chelsea College of Arts for my degree — and it was here that I met Rosie. We were inseparable, both off on a different planet, but it was the same planet.
We’d make our own outfits for nights out, and they’d come back in tatters because we’d been rolling around on the dancefloor until 4am.
After graduating in 1999, we got part-time jobs. In our free time, we were still making stuff out of anything we could find. But starting a jewellery brand wasn’t the plan.
Then, one Friday, Rosie wore a weird headband we’d made out of a cummerbund, to work. A customer asked where she got it. She had the gumption to say, ‘Oh, my business makes it’. It turned out this woman was a stylist for Vogue’s Mario Testino millennium cover issue.
She invited us to showcase ‘our collection’ — we had two days to make it. My mum drove over with a sewing machine, I got every bit of fabric, gem or sequin I’d ever had and we made these flashy leather belts.
They put them on celebrities at a crazy millennium party. We began a love affair with Vogue. The magazine would ring us and we’d make anything, from neon raccoon tails to a paper watch for Kate Moss.
By Christmas 1999, we were stocked in Harvey Nichols and Whistles. In 2000, we got a spot at London Fashion Week and opened our first studio, before pioneering a range of handmade acrylic jewellery.
It was mad. We were so naive, but it gave us confidence. We just thought we were great and didn’t know any different!
Twenty years on, our designs have been worn by celebrities from Kylie Minogue to Amal Clooney, Lena Dunham and Kelly Osbourne.
Everything we do is an expression of who we are. I think some people don’t understand me, but I can tell Rosie a concept and she just gets it. We’re two sides of the same coin.
tHe exhibition Misshapes: the Making Of tatty Devine is on at Central Saint Martins Lethaby Gallery, London, until august 11, before a UK-wide tour.