It is estimated that fashion is the second most polluting industry in the world, with 85% of all textiles produced each year going to landfills.

What am I thinking about?

We were a small team, with only me and the founder being full-time employees. This meant that I had to be very considerate and efficient with my time. It also meant I was constantly switching between thinking about design details as well as the big business objectives.

  • Lead designer

  • Research, Interaction & Branding

  • May 2017 - Sep 2018

Introduction

The Nu Wardrobe is an online platform that facilitates people swapping & sharing their clothes with their peers. This is all to reduce the environmental impact of fast fashion.

I was brought onto the small startup team as lead designer to develop the business plan and launch the platform in London.

This involved understanding and defining our unique selling points, pitching our story to investors, developing our platform with our scrappy team and creating a distinctive brand that could translate to the website and promotional materials.

Research

Surveys

Having a large Brand Ambassadors community facilitated survey sharing, aiding in understanding user groups. We segmented our users into under 18, 18-25, and 25+. The surveys focused on fast fashion impact, shopping habits, and clothes-sharing behaviours and allowed us to gather information quickly and from a large sample size.

Desk research

There aren't many services that allow for straight swapping and sharing, although this has been identified as the most effective way to reduce the environmental impact of fast fashion.

There are many successful clothes renting and selling platforms, so we spent a lot time understanding their business models and how their approach worked.

From listening and understanding The Nu Wardrobe users, we were able to segment them into different personas. This allowed for everyone on the team to understand who we were catering to in our design and business decisions.

Focus groups

When analyzing new user segments, we led focus groups to discuss their motives and quickly determine our focus. This allowed us to understand, for instance, that women over 40-year-old were not ideal for early adoption.

Interviews

To obtain a comprehensive understanding of our customers, we carried out in-person interviews with the aim of comprehending individuals' clothing shopping motivations and the emotional significance attached to certain garments. Additionally, we had participants provide insight into the contents of their wardrobe to gauge the proportion of clothing items that are actively worn.

Personas

Brand Guidelines

One place this branding was applied was through the design of our website, which was an important resource for the business to share the story of the Nu Wardrobe.

It was important to establish a defined brand, which could be used throughout the application, website, promotional materials, investor presentations and social media.

I created guidelines so that these initiatives were scalable without losing the tone that we had established,

During my time there and subsequently, we successfully raised $2 million in investor funding and achieved over 100,000 downloads of the application.

What was the impact?

What came next?

After I transitioned to new ventures, the company continued to expand, championing the message of sustainable design. I believe this work played a crucial role in raising awareness and fostering the ongoing dialogue more widely about our consumption of fast fashion.