Starting your own business is not easy, especially if you want to offer something unique to brand out from the crowd without compromising your principles .

The fashion industry, besides being one of the most unethical and dubious businesses on the planet, is in reality a closed shop. Once you have designed your garment, in my case, the PBL, a made in England black legging and created it, you need to let the world know about it.

You would imagine it would be easy to get magazines and the media to rave about your new exciting product as much as you do. The reality, the fashion press are all about the money and not about sharing the love. Even if you manage to engage a journalist, they are in the most part reined in by Editors who have the final say.

Many High Street brands making inferior Made in China or other third world sweat shop black leggings come up with a cheap price by offering their customer disposable fashion that eventually ends up in landfill. And don't think manufacturing things locally in UK factories you automatically escape unsafe overcrowded working conditions for exploited staff because you don't.

Did you know "globally we produce 13 million tons of textile waste each year 95% of which could be reused or recycled"? The Pretty Planeteer And a shocking 50% of clothing produced goes to landfill before ever leaving the factory floor.

So for me it makes sense, especially in a booming active wear market to not only save the planet but to do something different, going against the grain to produce something better than the rubbish already out there. By offering my customers affordable luxury something no one else is doing and choosing to take less profit at the outset I knew I could build a sustainable model. As my volume increased my costs decreased, my RRP stayed the same and my customers return again and again for my quality.

If I wanted to get my PBL perfect black leggings onto the catwalk at New York , Paris or Milan Fashion Week I would have to either be best friends with Anna Wintour, the editor at Vogue Magazine or have a dream that I would wake up from disappointed because in reality it’s extremely difficult and extremely expensive to make happen.

I am not despondent though because I believe going to a smaller, less glamourous, less fake world of fashion is more likely to get my brand out to real customers who through word of mouth will eventually talk up a story, forcing those at the top of the fashion industry and media channels to talk about me.

Over the last 5 years Venus Cow staple black collection including the PBL, perfect black leggings has been shown at regional fashion shows and shopping events, raising eyebrows in the corridors at London fashion week. #lfw

I may not have a front row seat yet next to Kim Kardashian, Kanye West and Kendall Jenner but I always cheer on the amazing unknown, but never the less important organisers, models and stylists  everywhere I go because without a real fashion industry that supports good and caters to the consumer it’s all about the “Emperor’s New Clothes” for me, a load of unethical hype and dark factories, not about real life and the needs and wellbeing of real people.

Photo by: Pier Francesco Grizi Unsplash