2019 has been a huge year for us at Riley Studio! We want to thank everyone for their continuous support, without our community and our global team we wouldn’t be where we are today.

We began the year by expanding our internal team from 3 to 5 people and we moved to a WeWork office in Shoreditch, which set us up for an exciting and incredibly busy year. We revamped our website and worked on providing our community with as much information as possible about sustainability. We also made our supply chain as transparent as we could, listing all of our suppliers on each product page. 

A year on from launching, we were awarded the Eco-Age Brandmark, a very proud and happy highlight of the year! The Brandmark is awarded to companies in recognition of sustainable excellence, according to stringent principles. We were awarded it in recognition of championing gender neutrality through unisex garments, promoting circularity through garment take-back schemes and education, upholding material traceability through extensive sustainability reporting and longstanding relationships with suppliers, and designing with recycled, regenerated and organic fibres. We’re so happy to be part of the Eco-Age family, working together for a better future.

We launched Collection 03, our favourite one so far. We brought craftsmanship and eco-innovation to the forefront by creating recycled cashmere pieces in Scotland, recycled wool trousers in London and long sleeve t-shirts made from textile waste in Portugal. We’re excited to experiment with more eco-innovative materials in 2020, and can't wait to show you what we have been working on.

With 10 stockists and 12 pop ups under our belts, we moved onto our 13th and opened the doors to the very first RS Concept Store on Ledbury Road in Notting Hill. We worked tirelessly behind the scenes to make our dream store a reality, and wow was all that work worth it! Don't think we will forget seeing 'Riley Studio' on the front of a shop! We hosted 5 events with changemakers across the industry and partnered with a range of like minded brands. We challenged ourselves with furnishing it as sustainably as possible, with huge thanks to Found Pop, Lipley and Parker and Great Hire for helping us achieve this, and to Appear Here for helping us find the perfect space.  Meeting our community in person was one of the most rewarding experiences, and we can’t wait to plan our next one - watch this space!

Following this, we were honoured to have been awarded Fashion Brand of the Year 2019 at the inaugural Sustainable Lifestyle Awards. The first awards of its kind to verify sustainable businesses, and judged by an expert panel that included industry professionals and sustainability experts from Harvey Nichols, Rêve En Vert, TRAID, The Maiyet Collective, Feelunique, Anthropologie, The Restory and many more.

In the wider picture, sustainability finally broke through into the mainstream media and we could not be more grateful for the support we have received while continuing to challenge the status quo to make conscious consumerism the norm. We were featured in over 45 press pieces, including The Financial Times, Evening Standard, Forbes, GQ, Stylist, The Independent, The Guardian and The Telegraph. We have loved collaborating with other brands, activists, our community and businesses to all reach our common goal of a sustainable future.  

We can’t wait for what 2020 holds, wishing you a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from all of us at Riley Studio!