Girl power

W2-based childrenswear designer Lucy Enfield's I Love Gorgeous collection is a sudden sell-out. Pendle Harte meets the mother turned businesswoman

Above: Spotty skirt from I Love Gorgeous's Autumn/Winter 07 collection

Small businesses can emerge amazingly quickly. It is only two years since Lucy Enfield and Sophie Worthington devised a collection of girls’ clothes in Lucy’s W2 kitchen, and now their I Love Gorgeous range is Selfridges’ second biggest seller. How did they do it?
Lucy and Sophie have three children each and always enjoyed dressing them, though they weren’t keen on the excess of pink in the world of girls. Sophie was thinking of doing some children’s nightwear and Lucy thought, why not try a collection? So they researched producers in the UK, found them prohibitively expensive and moved their sights to Bulgaria and India, and suddenly they were selling their own designs under the name I Love Gorgeous. First there were home sales for friends and local mums, and then feedback was so positive that they started wholesaling. And now they are overloaded with orders and stocked at The Cross in Holland Park, Honeyjam on Portobello Road and Iris in Queens Park as well as boutiques all over the country and, most significantly, Selfridges.
“We wanted everything to be wearable and fun,” says Lucy. “And to use lovely fabrics in unusual ways – like maybe a traditional style dress in an Indian hippy print, and without lots of pink. We like olive, mushroom and brown for girls, but pink does sell, especially the further outside London you go, so sometimes we have to remind ourselves to throw in some pink.” Unlike most children’s clothes, their range prides itself on being unsporty and full of dresses, chiffon and pretty shapes, but not in a formal way. “I’ve always thought that girls’ dresses shouldn’t be reserved for parties; they should just be thrown on every day.” So everything is easily washable and though it may look special, it’s not too special to be exposed to the rough and tumble of children’s lives.
Lucy and Sophie were careful to find socially compliant factories and their trips to India, away from the demands of their families, are where they really manage to work on the label. Lucy spent a lot of her 20s in India and loves it but still “it’s not the simplest process” to get things done there, and now the business has huge production costs and is expanding faster than they can think, along with plans for a new boys’ collection.
It’s all been a very local, family thing. Although Sophie now lives in Yorkshire, she grew up on the King’s Road and seizes every opportunity to return. Lucy is married to comedian Harry Enfield and though she’s not into the celebrity thing, she does have the contacts to ensure that Claudia Schiffer comes to her house sales and that Kate Moss’s daughter has become an I Love Gorgeous fan. Check their website for the full range and get in touch online to find out about future local sales. l

www.ilovegorgeous.co.uk