Olivia’s the seamstress to the stars
(with a little help from Grandma Beryl’s sewing machine!)
SHE has become one of Scotland’s most in-demand designers, with her gorgeous dresses and tops modelled by TV’s Holly Willoughby, singer Dua Lipa, and a host of social media influencers and young Made In Chelsea stars. But Olivia Rose Havelock has disclosed that she draws her inspiration not from the famous names of fashion, but from her grandmother, Beryl.
Her company Olivia Rose The Label has featured in Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar and her outfits are on sale in prestigious outlets such as London department store Selfridges.
Her dedication to the principles of so-called ‘slow fashion’ – where items are handmade in her Edinburgh studio rather than mass produced, and where everything is made to order rather than stockpiled – has won her a legion of fans.
Yet, even as her brand becomes more and more popular, the 28-year-old remains eternally grateful to the grandmother who taught her to sew.
Miss Havelock said her grandmother had worked as a seamstress in a factory sewing blazers for Marks & Spencer.
After she died, Miss Havelock inherited her sewing machine, which she used to create the first design for her company.
She said: ‘It always makes me emotional when I talk about this. I used to sleep at my grandma’s house on a Friday night. It was our little thing and we were really close.
‘She always had a sewing machine in the living room, so we’d sew together and she would dress me up. It gave me the feeling that I knew what I wanted to do from quite a young age.’
After attending art college in Chelsea, Miss Havelock waitressed at a hotel but felt starved of a creative outlet.
She said: ‘I got my grandma’s sewing machine sent down, along with her sewing box, because she passed away and had left it to me. I just started sewing things in between shifts or on my days off and then started selling them online. Not much happened to begin with.’
The young designer then suffered an asthma attack at work, causing her to quit her job and move back home.
She said: ‘I carried on making things through the Christmas period and for some reason the designs just took off on [online websites] Depop and Etsy.
‘From then on I just didn’t stop. I carried on sewing and sewing and I was still thinking of it as a hobby. I didn’t think it was a business until I moved to Edinburgh.’
With figure-hugging silhouettes and waist-cinching bodices, Miss Havelock’s designs are flattering on any body type. Shirred tops in gorgeous prints and the best-selling Manon dress, with puffed sleeves and a square neckline, are a hit with her customers.
However, the moment that caused her brand to take off came when a prominent influencer wore two of her pieces and posted the pictures on Instagram.
Miss Havelock said: ‘I was working at Debenhams but quit after two months. I had to go full-time because the influencer posted my pieces – it went wild.’
It wasn’t long before Selfridges came knocking, at which point she didn’t even have her own website.
She said: ‘Selfridges reaching out to me took me off Etsy. They said, “If you want to be in Selfridges you can’t have Etsy, you need to have your own website”. So my friend and I created my website together, shot my first collection and it just went crazy.’
However, it has not always been smooth sailing for Miss Havelock – like every business owner she experiences highs and lows.
She said: ‘It can look easy. If you look on my Instagram it looks like I’m just sewing away, no hard work here. But it can be really hard, especially if you’re going through a sales slump. You’re freaking out thinking, “Oh my God, I’m paying for a studio and I’ve got all this stuff going on” rather than being creative.’
Miss Havelock was having one of those moments when she woke up one morning on June 8 last year to find that Holly Willoughby had tagged her on Instagram.
The TV presenter was wearing Olivia Rose The Label’s gingham Picnic dress for ITV’s This Morn
The whole day the website was wild. I had to close as I got so many orders
ing. Miss Havelock said: ‘I sent two dresses to Holly Willoughby’s stylist four months before she wore it and so much time passed I thought it wasn’t going to work out.
‘I remember the morning it happened because I was having a rotten time with my brand and I woke up feeling like I couldn’t be bothered. Then it got to 9am and Holly tagged me on Instagram for her outfit post before the show.’
She added: ‘The whole day the website was wild. It’s true what people say about Holly Willoughby, she really is a sellout person. I had to close as I got so many orders.’
Made In Chelsea stars Sophie Hermann, Georgia Toffolo and Louise Thompson all wear Olivia Rose The Label, and her designs have appeared in several episodes of the Channel 4 show.
The designer said: ‘I feel that TV show fits really well with my brand. I went to uni in Chelsea, so it’s the same environment I’m used to.’
Sophie Hermann also wore two of Miss Havelock’s romantic-wear dresses on Celebs Go Dating, the Ophelia dress in black floral brocade and the Ophelia dress in gold blush brocade.
Miss Havelock said: ‘That was really nice because I got really popular from that and I received a lot of orders.’ However, despite her success, she is not keen to expand. She refers to her brand as her ‘passion project’ and feels that if she began collaborating with London manufacturers and hiring extra staff she would not be true to what she loves – sewing.
Olivia Rose The Label receives up to 30 orders a week and Miss Havelock makes every item herself, with each one taking between four to six hours to create.
The painstaking process makes her clothes more expensive than high street alternatives, with dresses typically selling for £240£300 and tops for £120-£300.
She is also leading the way for more environmentally-friendly brands, working with ‘deadstock’ fabrics – which are left over from other designers or factories – to create one-of-a-kind pieces for a mini summer collection, which has not yet been released.
And whilst Miss Havelock believes that no brand can be 100 per cent sustainable, she tries her best to reduce wastage.
She said: ‘If you try to say everything you do is sustainable
I wish that she was here to see it, I think that she would be proud
then people are just going to dig and find things that you aren’t doing correctly. I’m just one person who’s not making and selling that much realistically anyway, you can only do the best you can.
‘I try to work with deadstock and make everything myself. It’s super small and limited quantities. That’s the best way because if I was to pre-make stock I don’t like to be stressed about having to sell it.’
Miss Havelock also said she hopes her Grandma Beryl would be proud of the brand she has built.
She said: ‘I wish she was here to see it. I think she’d be proud, I really do. She worked in factories making blazers for M&S before getting offered a seamstress job in London. Her father wouldn’t let her take it, so I can only imagine what she’d have achieved if she’d gone.
‘I feel like I’m holding the torch and I’m just trying to be creative for myself and for her.’