CAREER CHANGE CHATS

With Jessica Purdie, Founder and Creative Director of Prikli Pear

PHOTOS: JESSICA PURDIE

Q1: Where are you located? I’m originally from the Scottish Highlands, but I’ve lived in England for 7 years now.

Q2: How did Prikli Pear come about? When I left university, I fell into PR. After years of working in fashion and music PR, I felt the rat race was a bit fake at times. There’s a class divide feeling if you’re not wearing the next best thing, and it’s not right. We need to value any designer, and we have to remember that clothing is art. So, I realised I needed to create a brand that does what I want to achieve – a traceable, authentic, completely transparent company that shows where the fibres are from, who made my clothes and how long it took to make them.

Q3: What made you change careers? I felt I had a 360, in my head I was working towards being independent and having enough skills to set up to go off on my own at some point, but I felt like I could never fit with the fashion industry as it stands. But from a very young age, I’ve always wanted my own brand.

‘I wanted to speak some truth, as the fashion industry can often be quite false.’

Q4: What is the inspiration behind Prikli Pear? My farming upbringing has had a real impact in everything I do, I want to source as local as possible. My inspiration always lies within colour, the bigger, the brighter, the bolder, the better. I’m quite tongue in cheek myself, with my personality, and my brand is totally me. Prikli Pear shows my best bits and my worst bits, that’s what I want to come across, we can’t be perfect all the time.

Q5: What materials are your products made out of? Being a start-up business, my products at the moment, aren’t all sourced from the fibres that I would like them to be. Most of the products are sourced from deadstock fabrics or local shops nearby, but eventually I’d like to be able to say who my supplier is and what sheep or farm the fabric came from.

Q6: What are your goals for Prikli Pear? My goal is to be totally traceable and transparent when sourcing every single fibre, it’s the hardest goal for Prikli Pear but it’s a part of my values. I have recently set up a female creative networking group called ‘Stitch & Bitch’, and the aim is to bring likeminded women from the community together, to be able to share ideas and make friends. I would like that networking group to become nationwide eventually.

Q7: Have you faced any challenges setting up your own business? The financial challenge is the biggest one for me. Having lived in London paying my way through rent, I didn’t really have a lot to start up with. I have been trying to do this alongside work for so long and it just didn’t work. Trying to come out of a fulltime manager role and set up on my own, I had to move out of London and move in with my mum. That’s given me financial relief in a way, and by not living in such an expensive area helped me massively. My main challenges are money and time, there’s not enough time in the day.

Q8: Have you got anything exciting coming up? I’ve got some festival wear coming out this month. We also have more accessory pieces and smaller pieces for people to buy at creative markets - homeware, cushions, stickers for your laptop, keyrings, charms. We also have summer dresses in development at the moment!

Q9: What advice would you have to someone wanting to set up their own fashion business? You don’t know unless you do it, if you keep telling yourself you’re not ready then you never will be ready. Keep going and always believe in the path that you have in your head. If it feels right, then it will be right.

BY SENNEN PRICKETT