There are three different styles of artisan face mask available at Raine, the new Peasedown St John-based business.
Each one is unique and customisable. But there’s one aspect that ties them all together. They’re all made from organic fabric and can be thrown on the compost heap when no longer in use.
Ella Macgregor, Raine’s founder, tells the Bath Echo that sustainability is the business’ binding factor. “Raine is going to be more than just making pieces of clothing for people. It’s going to be about teaching people about fashion too. I want it to change how people buy it, wear it, and discard it.”
But Ella confesses that she wasn’t always so ethically-minded. “I’ve always been a bit of a shopaholic,” she says with a chuckle. “Don’t write that down!”
At 15, Ella’s first tailoring experience at Xó Tailoring Services on the corner of Wood Street came as a welcome opportunity.
Studying at Hayesfield Girls’ School, she had been feeling a “massive push” to apply to university and recalls feeling under pressure.
“In the back of my head I knew that I wasn’t going to go,” Ella says. “My mother always taught me to follow my heart and university was always just this big ‘no’ for me.”
Ella stuck to her guns and stayed in Bath where she worked as a waitress at Green Park Station’s Beyond The Kale.
It was here that Xó Tailoring Service’s owner Luca Marchesini paid her an unexpected visit. He offered her a job on the spot. And she agreed.
To Ella’s dismay, the opportunity wasn’t all that it had lived up to. “I was adamant that I wanted to be sewing,” she says. “But I was mostly put on till duty or pinning clothes on the customers.” And as her restlessness grew, Ella started looking further afield to develop her talent.
She saved money by balancing her job at Xó, waitressing at AQUA on Walcot Street, and freelancing as a seamstress on the side. She even had a fourth job at a juice bar for a while.
During this time, Ella researched the different ways she could develop her skills. She was looking for “something different”, and found something she hadn’t expected, a plant-dye course in Bali. “Dyes used for clothes produce so much toxic waste,” she says. “It made me wonder why we can’t do it naturally.” And before long, Ella was across the world in Bali on the three-week programme.
With an enthused interest in sustainable clothing production, Ella moved to Melbourne where she began to reflect on the way we produce and dispose of clothes. She describes experiencing a “moment of realisation”.
“That was when I started to look up which companies followed this ethos. That was when I found A.BCH,” Ella says.
A.BCH, a circular ethical fashion brand based in Melbourne, swiftly became the object of Ella’s dreams. But with a lack of funds and her boyfriend, Ash, living back home in Bath, she returned to the UK in 2018.
A year later, after a period of freelancing and honing her craft, Ella and Ash decided to return to Melbourne together. As if to compound the moment, A.BCH was looking for a new hire. Ella’s chance was ripe. She had never done an interview before, but Courtney Holm, A.BCH’s Founder, offered her the job and Ella became Head Machinist.
A.BCH was a refreshing new experience for Ella. “When I was there we displayed at two fashion shows and I knew that all the clothes had been made by my hands,” Ella says. “My boss, Courtney, trusted and believed in me. And I really do believe that that’s the most fundamental ingredient to realising you’re good enough.”
After five months of working in her dream job, the pandemic forced Ella and Ash to return to the UK. With no job, she wasn’t eligible for the furlough scheme and found herself at a loss for income. Enter Raine.
Raine is the title of Ella’s new tailoring business. It’s also Ella’s grandmother’s name. “Every time I tell my grandma she forgets! She’s always wonderfully surprised.”
Ella’s level of perseverance becomes clear as she explains the challenges she’s faced working on zero budget.
Supply chain has also been an issue with lockdown restrictions causing disruption. There have been times when she couldn’t obtain elastic for a week. To top this, Ella had to deal with an unexpected period of downtime when her website service provider locked her website in a blanket attempt to combat ‘pandemic profiteering’. But she says that she’s enjoying the challenge..
“I’m a big dreamer,” she says, looking to the future.
“I have big plans for Raine. I want to give people more access to what they actually want in a garment: something that’s timeless, made of organic fabric, produced without causing harm to land, people, or animals.”
One day, Ella says, she hopes that Raine will be a dressmaker’s. But for now, she wants to help people make intelligent, ethical purchasing decisions.
To Bath’s younger generations, she says: “Don’t compare yourself. Take inspiration.”
To find out more about Raine, visit www.rainefacemasks.com.
Charlie Metcalfe