Always on
This project successfully funded on 30th January 2026, you can still support them with a donation.
Help Save The Emperor's Old Clothes
Hove, Brighton and Hove, United Kingdom
Aim
The Emperor’s Old Clothes is a fully independent sustainable fashion social enterprise + UK living wage employer in grave danger of closing
Running a small business in the UK right now is harder than ever, with a further 330,000 potential small + medium business closures predicted in the next year (FSB, 2025).
Despite our tireless efforts The Emperor’s Old Clothes is now in danger of being next.
We have run a completely independent brand, with very limited funded support and no external shareholders, for over 13 years. We are reaching out to those who love inclusive fashion and enjoy being able to design their wardrobe whilst supporting a small female-, queer-, ND + chronically ill-owned business for your support… Without which we cannot continue to keep the Emperor’s unique approach to fashion alive.
If The Emperor’s Old Clothes is forced to close the loss will not only impact our tight-knit community but the large, diverse customer base that are grossly underserved and marginalised by most of the fast fashion + slow fashion industry.
We are now on the cusp of making the hideous decision of whether we have to cease trading of the unique services we offer at The Emperor’s Old Clothes.
THE SITUATION, WHAT WE NEED & WHY:
Since the beginning of the pandemic, then Brexit + the cost of living crisis in the UK sustaining a slow, inclusive fashion small brand continues to be incredibly challenging.
To make this information accessible we have provided a ‘short story’ version with the concise facts and a ‘long story’ version with lots of detail - please scroll down for the ‘long story’ version
The short story:
In summary, we have been struggling to deal with how the following events/issues have impacted The Emperor’s Old Clothes:
The effects of the last few years’ events including Covid lockdowns, Brexit, genocide
The cost of living crisis driving up the prices of materials and services
The cost of living crisis reducing customers’ buying capacity
Annual increases of the Real UK living wage without any government support for small/medium-sized businesses
Changing online environment: visibility competition driven by social media corporations through ad pricing hikes, algorithm changes, rise of AI + censorship including shadow-banning so even our followers can’t find us online
Increasingly hostile socio-political climate towards disabled, chronically ill, neurodivergent, LGBTQIA+, BIPOC and marginalised genders and those who cater to them
We have done as much as we can in order to protect our team and sustain our social enterprise including:
Over-halving our studio space
Reducing our own salaries dramatically to ensure we can pay the rest of the team
Cutting costs across every business activity
Operating on the leanest basis that we can
Being committed to paying real UK living wage salaries + working with sustainable materials means we were already operating with incredibly tight margins across the sector.
With a catastrophic drop-off in orders over the past six months (due to the above issues) we are now sitting in the red month-on-month and have had to let most of our team members go dropping from a team of nine to a team of three in the course of 2025.
We now seriously need funding support so we can keep our doors open to:
Continue to offer our unique approach to slow fashion
Regain a more sustainable financial footing
Rebuild our team
Reach new audiences during the ongoing recession
The long story:
After losing most of our custom overnight during covid, The Emperor’s Old Clothes wasn’t eligible for any government funding; we cut back + had to rely on our Covid recovery loans. Despite this we managed to captivate an online audience, enabling us to vastly increase our sales in late 2020. We grew very quickly, causing us to grow the team to keep our production capacity in line with the demand. Until 2025 we managed to retain our whole team despite taking a large hit from Brexit (which lost us many of our international customers whilst we found solutions to new barriers to export to the EU). A further drop-off of orders occurred as lockdowns decreased and more and more physical shops reopened.
Whilst this remained challenging we continued to innovate: designing and launching a stream of new designs and features including a range of adaptive garment designs and features. When the cost of living crisis hit all our suppliers introduced massive rises in price for their products and services. We reassessed all of our processes and logistics, cutting back everything we could and reluctantly raised our prices whilst witnessing customers’ spending capacities begin to fall. Regular customers were ordering far less frequently and with smaller more inexpensive purchases as the cost of living crisis implications on their personal job security etc continued. Over the past two years we have struggled to maintain our order threshold to support the increased costs of scaling the business to meet the demand capacity of that earlier stage.
As business owners we have done everything we can to try to mitigate these challenges including but not limited to: shrinking the team this year, over-halving our studio space in 2024, running the business incredibly leanly and the two of us taking massive wage-cuts in order to try to preserve our team members’ jobs. The continuous rise of the Real UK Living Wage every year (which we support!) but without any provision or financial support for small businesses from the government has intensified the financial pressure on the business year-on-year.
The toll of long-term burnout, intensification of chronic illness and everyday challenges of being neurodivergent in an ableist world has come close to depleting us both of our creativity and purpose. But we know what we have built here at The Emperor’s Old Clothes is an incredibly unique, special and needed service, and sacred community space for people to engage with exploring their sense of self-expression, their role within building a more sustainable society and with keeping creativity, craft + ethical manufacturing alive.
For a small ethical brand with an anti-genocide stance global events of violence have massively affected the social media environment and online marketplaces for consumers. The battle for visibility online has reached insurmountable heights: competing against the saturation of companies using low-cost AI marketing and social media platforms actively shadowbanning accounts posting any content considered either ‘anti-genocide’ or showing support for marginalised communities. Our customers, as well as potential customers, either don’t see us or can’t find us in their feeds and many are leaving social media altogether as part of the current societal push back against capitalist systems.
In summary, such dramatic social, technological and economic changes in the online marketplace and lack of government support for small businesses are squeezing us towards the point of no return. Being a social enterprise committed to paying real UK living wage salaries + working with sustainable materials meant we were already operating with incredibly tight margins across the sector. With a catastrophic drop-off in orders over the past six months we are now sitting in the red month on month and have had to let most of our team members go, dropping from a team of nine to a team of three in the course of 2025.
Every penny we have had has always been ploughed back into overheads + the team however the perfect storm of keeping up with debt repayments incurred in the last two years, the next fast approaching Real UK living wage increase in the Spring and ever-increasing supplier costs has caused a lack of profitability has caused the immediate, urgent financial situation for The Emperor’s Old Clothes
We have always been a rare breed of independent, self-sustaining fashion brand that centres our ethics and caters to those who need + deserve clothing that meets their individual needs and self-expression. We now seriously need funding support so that we can keep our doors open: continue to offer our unique approach to slow fashion, regain a solid financial position to sustainably rebuild our team and reach new audiences during the ongoing recession.
YOUR SUPPORT WILL GO INTO:
We urgently need £45k so that we can:
Continue to provide accessible + sustainable clothing options to under-served communities including disabled customers, customers in larger bodies + LGBTQIA+ community
Get into a financial position where we don’t have to constantly rely on discounts and promotions which undercut the value of our work, bring less money into the business + encourage over-consumption
Be able to provide secure UK living wage jobs + traineeships again
Continue to keep craft + manufacturing alive in our local community
Breakdown:
£15k to cover freelancer hours until we can afford rehire permanently
£10k marketing budget to invest in marketing activities, SEO + our e-commerce website so we can reach a far wider customer base
£12k to pay off existing debt so we can get back to reinvesting our revenue into the business + team
£8k to pay off the backlog of rent accrued in the past few months
PLEASE WILL YOU HELP?
Please forward this on to the great and good: colleagues, associates and friends who love craft + fashion and are passionate about social + environmental sustainability, accessibility + inclusivity
ABOUT THE EMPEROR’S OLD CLOTHES:
The Emperor’s Old Clothes is a small slow fashion social enterprise which has been operating in Brighton+Hove in the UK since 2012. Co-owned by best friends Cecily Blondel and Louisa Wild who run the brand as a social enterprise centring ethics around accessibility, sustainability and inclusion.
'Design Your Own' service
We offer a design your own service where customers can design their own dream garments with us online. They can pick their favourites from our wide range of garment styles, garment features and our vast digital library of vintage and deadstock fabrics. Our small team then creates the garment from scratch in our Brighton+Hove studio for a UK living wage.
Each garment is quite literally tailored to each customer’s individual wants and needs with a large range of adaptive garment features and a made to measure fit. As co-owners who are neurodiverse/AuDHD, chronically ill and part of the LGBTQIA+ community Cecily and Louisa have personal experience of some of the barriers to getting dressed + feeling comfortable in conventional high-street clothing. The Emperor’s Old Clothes, with the input of our team and community, we are constantly using our collective experiences and insights to fuel the creative design process so we can each express who we are in clothing that’s also comfortable
Our e-commerce design your own service enables customers all over the world to collaborate in the creation of the clothing they wear every day and maintains the tradition of craft and localised ethical manufacturing in the UK
Ethos
At Emperors’ we work hard to live by our core values: we believe that the fashion industry should be transparent, sustainably produced and inclusive in its representation of every part of society.
We are always striving to do better to lessen the environmental impact of our clothing production. We provide a safe + supportive working environment for our employees as well as offering a real UK living wage instead of ‘paying by piece’ - the unethical but widespread fashion industry standard.
The Emperor’s Old Clothes’s social enterprise practices + the responsible clothing we produce are all designed to be as sustainable, inclusive and as accessible as possible. We always try our best but don’t claim to be perfect on any of these fronts and value constructive feedback from our customers, followers + peers, working in community with others.
Inclusion
Every person should feel comfortable, accommodated + able to express themselves via their wardrobes… And be able to know that every person that has had a hand in creating those clothes is treated with respect, able to work safely + have their unique identity be celebrated in their place of work.
Until very recently our team members have reflected lots of the different intersections of our diverse customer base: including (but not limited to) queer, non-binary, ace, fat, BIPOC, immigrant, disabled, neurodiverse + chronically ill people, usually in their late 20s to late 60s.
We love our community and are so honoured to use our skills to collaborate with and help people explore their individual identities through their wardrobes
Environmental impact
Running a business sustainably is at the heart of what we do and that means working in a radical way to minimise our environmental impact.
We work with limited amounts of vintage + deadstock fabrics because we are dedicated to using up what already exists rather than adding to new textile production.
We are working to make our entire supply chain including haberdashery + packaging materials as transparent as possible, working with local manufacturers where we can to lessen the overall carbon footprint of all our products.
We have a strict zero fabric waste policy in our Brighton studio. All our garments are made from end of roll fabrics, the remnants created during the cutting of our garments go to making our accessories and the tiny leftover scraps are either donated to local craft projects, textile recycled or made into scrap kits so you can take part in the handmade joy and get crafty at home.
We also offer an ‘Emperor’s Resale’ service where customers can buy + sell their pre-loved Emperor’s garments as well as our sample garments for a reduced rate. It is important to us to help take responsibility for as much of the lifecycle of our garments as possible – it's called ethical fashion for a reason!
Accessibility
We work alongside our customers + community to develop adaptive garment features. When designing your garment with us you can choose your preferred combination of garment features in order to make sure your clothing is as comfortable, accessible + adaptable to your individual needs as possible. Examples include ‘crotch reinforcement’ to lessen chafing, elasticated waistbands and straps, a ‘seated’ for customers who use wheelchairs and pocket gaps for port-access/tubes.
As a small brand with many neurodiverse team members + a large neurodiverse community base we know how inaccessible + overwhelming new processes + activities can feel. Our customer service team is used to adapting the way they communicate with customers and provide 1-2-1 assistance on designing a garment wherever we can depending on the customer’s individual needs
We have also worked to make our corner of sustainable fashion as financially accessible as possible for our customers without compromising on our living wage ethos or the quality of our products. We have long offered interest-free in-house payment plans so customers can spread the cost of their ‘design your own’ garments across 2-6 months rather than having to pay in full up front.
We strongly believe that sustainable fashion is for everyone!
Please help us to get back on our feet, provide high quality UK living wage jobs and continue to make a difference in peoples’ everyday comfort, joy and self-expression through their wardrobes
Funding method
Keep what you raise – this project will receive all pledges made