I'm a Believer

Jo & Jo Our Fashion Fix

It's been a while since we properly introduced ourselves here at Our Fashion Fix. So, here goes.

Fashion runs in our veins

Jo and I love fashion. We always have. It's been part of our lives for as long as either of us can remember. For Jo W, it started in her family's sock factory in Leicester at the turn of the century- its always been in her family’s blood. For me, it was designing womenswear collections on the lounge floor with my brother when we were growing up.

We love this industry. We love clothes. We love how a great outfit can make you feel. You can become confident. You can belong. You can lead. You can even hide, if that's what the day calls for. Clothes have always been an extension of who we are, and they always will be.

When the numbers stopped adding up

Back in 2023, after successful careers in fashion retail, things started to feel a little off. The same questions kept coming up, season after season. And while we all enjoy a little "girl maths", the reality was that the commercial value of what we were doing just didn't make sense when we looked at the profit number at the end of the season.

So we got curious. Like Alice, we went down a few rabbit holes. But this time, rather than drinking the little potions, we reviewed the numbers with clear heads. And quite frankly, the fashion industry didn't look like it was in great shape.

Facts, not fiction

We knew we needed to know more. There is a LOT of misinformation out there, and we were sick of drinking the Kool-Aid. So off we went to the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL) to study Sustainable Business Management. We wanted to learn facts, not a version of fiction.

One of those facts has stayed with us ever since. When researcher James Powell reviewed 13,950 peer-reviewed climate articles published between 1991 and 2012, just 24 of them rejected global warming.

Now imagine this. If 13,950 highway engineers told you a bridge wasn't safe to cross, and 24 told you it was fine, would you still cross that bridge?

We wouldn't. And we certainly wouldn't bet a business, or an industry, on those odds. That's why we don't think climate change can be denied. The science isn't a matter of opinion, and pretending otherwise is just another version of girl maths.

Fixing it from the inside

Having learnt the facts, we set out to fix the industry the only way we knew how: from the inside.

We wanted to give our colleagues the tools to make commercial decisions that made sense from a profit point of view and from an impact point of view. Because we believe you can have both. Don't tell middle-aged women they can't have it all. We know better. You can have it all, but it's all about balance.

So we set about creating an Impact Margin Calculator. Life cycle assessments (LCAs) were simply too slow. We wanted to understand the impact of products before we bought them, because we simply don't have the time to keep correcting mistakes. We need to stop making them.

"Too ambitious"

Together with our business partners at Brand Conscience, we went for funding from The UK’s National Innovation Agency with our Impact Margin Calculator. We were unsuccessful.

The feedback line that really got to us? "We think the project is too ambitious."

Let us be clear: we will never apologise for being ambitious, and we will not stop being so.

From the farm. Not the gin. The farm.

So off we went to solve another problem that, to us, was obvious. What if we could trace cotton right from the farm? Not the gin. The actual farm. And what if this was verifiable, not hearsay or a piece of paper.

Cotton Conscious was born, and we won funding from the European Space Agency's Business Applications and Space Solutions (BASS) programme. We've now completed our MVP, using satellite Earth observation (SatEO) alongside a unique DNA protocol we developed with the world’s leading cotton DNA experts.

Meet Ask Miranda®

And now we're ready to pilot the Ask Miranda® platform.

We are finally ready to give retailers the complex data they need, directly in the buyer's workflow, so we can make it simpler to buy great product for their customers and reduce their impact. So we can forget about girl maths and start focusing on the actual maths: the maths that makes sense, builds resilience, and secures a future for your brand and the industry we love.

Are you a believer?

You see, Jo and I never turned our backs on the industry we love. We loved it so much that we desperately wanted to fix it.

Because we are believers. Yes, we live in a time of climate change. Yes, we need to evolve. And yes, we do have the tools to change, and it does make commercial sense.

So, are you a believer?

Jo & Jo, Our Fashion Fix