Lilly is a 21 year old born in Germany yet deeply connected to London, UK, where she lived and worked for three years. As a freelance writer she discusses topics such as consciousness and sustainable development in the fashion and creative industries and is parallely completing a trainee position at a PR Agency in Berlin. To Lilly, sustainability is a way of thinking, living, consuming and interacting. Being a creative working in the fashion industries, the fact that she would support a materialistic driven industry, where profit dominates progress, made her think of founding a concept, which would unite creativity and consciousness – Pillar 5 was born. Together with her friend and co-founder Aïda, they have been working on the project outline for a year now.
“I am confident that we will be able to shed a light onto the depth of opportunities and talent the industry holds, turning consumption into a justifiable action and fashion into an enjoyable, progressive niche again”. – Lilly
Aïda is an Afro-European 24 year old multi-faceted creative who grew up in Washington DC and Luxembourg. Her interests lay in music, visual storytelling and creating safe spaces for communities. She is currently completing her 2nd Masters, in Digital Marketing at King’s Business School in London and working full-time as a Creative in fashion and media. She champions creativity and accessibility within the mindful fashion industry, empowering her peers to be sustainable in a way that feels authentic to them and hopes to see that translated into Pillar 5.
“The aim of this platform is to open the conversation of slow fashion by championing ethical designers who upcycle, source sustainably with deadstock or other sources and by highlighting voices who share the same mission. Interviews, workshops, tips, and a curated marketplace all in one space.” – Aïda
How did the Creative Matterz Fund help you realize your project?
The funding allowed us to focus our energies towards outsourcing a 3D Designer to re-design our logo. We worked closely with him to bring our vision to life; a typeface that was round like earth and its organic lines, made up of water to reflect the essence of pillar 5 and its ties to sustainability – afterall, earth is mainly made up of this element and so are we!
The rest of the funding will contribute to the domain of our website and contribute to the future development of our ambitious website.
Who were your mentors?
We worked with Maxwell Kangkolo who was an amazing presence and guide for us. Thanks to his time, we have been able to discuss and refine some launching strategies, have gained some networking tools, done further research into how marketplaces operate and highlighted financial implications we must consider. Mostly, we had a great exchange of ideas flowing between us and leave this program with a huge smile on our faces for the experiences and knowledge we gained.
What learnings did you have?
Over the last several months of this program, we have learned so much about ourselves and what we want to build. As Pillar 5 is a multi-layered business idea, we realised that we should start prioritising and finding out about the core principle and characteristic of our business, in order to focus the concept.
Pillar 5 mainly focuses on the ethical marketplace and champions stories of the makers. In the mentoring sessions with Maxwell Kingkolo, we commenced discussing steps, through which we could build the concept, setting ourselves apart from already existing marketplaces, whilst engaging with an educated, diverse community on a more personal level. For that purpose, we dived into questions such as: What is the simple definition of Pillar5 and how can we make the concept evolve around it? Who do we want to reach/ customer wise and what is our leading goal? What do we want to achieve with the business? This really helped us to filter our ambitions and see the vision clearer.
What is your vision for the future?
Our vision is to make sustainable and mindful fashion and concepts accessible to everyone – those with smaller to big budgets, those who are educated on the matter and want to purchase consciously, as well as those who are keen to learn and willing to grow, without fully having to change their habits.
We are excited for the next milestones for Pillar 5, over the next 6 months we will continually engage our audience by holding interviews, hosting giveaways and use our social media platforms to open up the conversation of slow fashion by championing ethical designers who upcycle, source sustainably w/ deadstock or other sources and by highlighting voices who share the same mission. Over the next few months we are furthermore planning to start our outreach to speak to a web developer who can help us bring our marketplace vision to life
As we grow, Pillar 5 will become *the* community-based marketplace and destination for mindful shoppers, offering accessible essential clothing collections, as well as exclusive drops and high fashion pieces from a diverse range of mindful creators. In order to align the consumption-based concept with our slow-fashion values, we are currently thinking about ways to incorporate the factor of circularity at the end of a pieces’ wear-cycle – One idea we are evaluating right now is, if styles purchased from Pillar 5 that are not being worn anymore, could be returned, then repaired, altered, exchanged or upcycled.
Furthermore, we will be continuously sharing visual stories and the day-to-day studio routines of designers and makers in our series #PillarTalks, to give our growing community an insight into the makers research processes, beliefs and concepts. To engage with you, not only on a digital level, we will furthermore conceptualise workshops and panel talks with industry insiders, through which our audience and shoppers can understand and learn about mindfulness in fashion on a more personal, sometimes hand-on level.
In the long run, we see interviews, workshops, tips, and a curated marketplace all in one space – we are dreaming big and hope you’ll join our journey.
How can one best support you?
We want to change the way people think about consumption in the fashion sphere and who is there better to teach consumers, than voices already experienced within the niche of slow-fashion? We want to include industry leaders in our series PillarTalks, and interview them on the matter of their own businesses as well as their thoughts of slow fashion. Secondly, we would be happy to have the support of these voices when our actual platform is being launched, as we would directly love to give the brands on our marketplace a push and engage with our community. Lastly, we are happy to hear from you,if you have any ways in mind through which you could help us grow – financially, contact- and creative wise!
