The Scottish Mail on Sunday - You
THE CHAMPION OF AGELESS STYLE
With no design experience, Marielle Wyse began Wyse London seven years ago, starting with bright cashmere knits and growing from there. While Wyse came about very much from the desire to design – selfishly! – for myself, I also wanted to cater to women who don’t want to be dictated to by fashion; who want to wear clothes that don’t wear them.
I started out making cashmere jumpers, but decided to branch out, first with print, then denim, partly because my work was being copied, but also I realised just doing cashmere was limiting. There are four of us on the design team now – we’re still a small business, but growing confidently.
Funnily enough, for a mainly cashmere brand, scallop dungarees are our hero piece. They’re comfy, but also have the advantage of dressing-up your top half, so if you’re on a Zoom call, you have this lovely scallop thing going on. The age range of women who have bought them is wide. We posted a picture of a 75-year-old customer in them on Instagram, and have never had such a positive reaction.
Over this past year we’ve grown like never before. When lockdown began, we took bags of clothes home and went on to Instagram, holding things up, asking: ‘Do you like this?’ We realised we could get customer feedback just by talking to people. It’s been a game-changer. And I’ve discovered we serve a much wider age range than I thought: lots of women messaged me saying they bought something their daughter has now nicked. Actually, the number of messages I’ve had from older women saying they’ve re-found their love of fashion because of us is wonderful. Real style is ageless. wyselondon.co.uk