Rachel Wilson - Fashion, Family & Finance
Posted on: 21/03/2011
Whoever said fashion and finance don’t mix hadn’t counted on Rachel Wilson coming along. The tax accountant who has just launched a high fashion brand for businesswomen reveals the high and lows of this journey so far, and why her feet have hardly touched the ground.
It’s a good thing Rachel Wilson relishes the challenge of ‘things being turned upside down’. Because, when it comes to business, that’s how much of the last few years have been spent.
Director of tax company MSquared in Perth, Australia, Wilson also launched her own fashion brand in London recently, aimed at high-end businesswomen. Producing stylish, quality clothing that work from office to evening, it’s a career move that has seen her achieve a lifelong ambition, but also turned her life upside down at the same time.
Take last year. Having launched Peridot in 2009, initially creating bespoke pieces for her top clientele, last year Wilson took things further. Presenting their spring/summer 2011 collection in November, getting there involved Wilson being on an aeroplane for 28 days last year.
“That’s 28 days physically in the air, without my feet on the ground,” laughs the 30-year-old who hails from New Zealand, but has a British father. “Let’s just say I’m not going to Google the effects of long-haul travel on the body.”
“I’ve been 28 days in the air, without my feet on the ground. Let’s just say I’m not going to Google the effects of long-haul travel on the body”
Wilson is laughing about this today – but only after she’s had a double Espresso. When I first meet her at The Soho hotel, the place she now calls her ‘second home’, she is clearly struggling. On day three of her ten-day visit to London, a trip she does every four to six weeks, the effect of ‘trekking through’ her jetlag is clearly catching up. But then sleep has been a luxury for years.
When she’s not in London meeting with clients to talk clothes, or with her designer and two staff going through strategy, sales, PR and marketing, she’s in Perth looking after her tax clients by day and then online with her Peridot London team by night.
It’s not exactly how she pictured things in the beginning. Putting together a ‘cheeky’ proposal for a fashion business to her investment contacts, Wilson admits being nervous when it was suddenly given the go-ahead. “I thought ‘Oh god, now I have to really do this’.”
Her core market has always been businesswomen – people like her looking for stylish, quality but durable clothing, given it spends so much time in a suitcase or in hotel laundry. Today, the collection also includes a range of LBDs and separates that are sold online and at The Shop at The Bluebird in London.
Not bad for a tax accountant with no fashion background. But then Wilson has fashion in her blood. Great granddaughter of Ernest Asser, co-founder Turnbull & Asser, whose legendary shirts have adorned the Prince of Wales, Sir Winston Churchill and James Bond, Wilson always had a passion for fashion.
Brought up in New Zealand by her teacher parents, she moved to Singapore with her two brothers at age five. On trips home to the UK, she remembers passing Turnbull and Asser, and wondering why her father could have given up his chance to work in the industry.
After returning to New Zealand at age 12 and moving to Australia to pursue her accountancy career at 24, she rediscovered her love of European fashion once again on her frequent business trips back to the UK. This was when her idea for Peridot was formed - a British brand like her great grandfather’s, with the British-made clothing - but for today’s businesswomen.
Contrary to popular opinion, she says tax and fashion have more in common than people think, insisting: “The core of business is always the same.” Co-founding MSquared with three other directors, she learnt about brand, USPs and winning clients there, then applied it all to Peridot. As for the subject matter, she likens both to colours - with tax more grey in detail while fashion is more primary.
But Peridot hasn’t been without its problems. While Wilson might have been lucky to access that all-important funding early on, the fashion industry has delivered knocks elsewhere. She knows now, for example, which fabrics will deliver the best quality while still ensuring the clothing can be competitively priced. She also gives her designer, Esther Franklin, who previously worked at MaxMara and Versace, creative freedom. “Designers have to have one or two pieces in the collection that show off their creativity,” she acknowledges, “it’s can’t be all commercial.”
“The temptation is to go ‘Let’s just do the whole thing now!’ because you’ve got funds to allocate to it. You could blow it all straight away”
She’s learnt these lessons by growing Peridot slowly and carefully, listening to feedback from fashion editors and buyers, and then reacting to it. But the future is equally nerve-wracking. “The temptation is to go ‘Let’s just do the whole thing now!’ because you’ve got funds to allocate to it, and you could go ‘I’ll do this, this and this, and basically blow it all,” she admits. “That’s the scary part.”
More likely, Wilson will continue to grow things in a slow and sustained way, increasing its collections steadily. If anything is scary, it’s how Wilson will continue to keep everything up in the air. Working on both sides of the world all the continuously don’t exactly bode well for personal relationships or even motherhood in future.
Wilson wholeheartedly agrees, while insisting that’s not her focus right now. Her priority is executing Peridot’s five year plan, keeping her tax career ticking along, and being in Perth for a hen party, wedding and christening this year. And, with that, she orders another Espresso.
Visit Peridot to see this season’s collection and for online sales.
By Barbara Walshe.
(This article was featured in the Coutts website. Click here to view their website.)