Ruth Alice Rands Email & Phone Number

I am a creative entrepreneur, building brands and beautiful products on the basis of my deeply held values of soil, nature and community regeneration. In 2020 I founded HERD. HERD is a new luxury British fashion brand, seeking the finest materials to honour and preserve heritage methods and reconnect fashion with its rich geographical heritage. Materials are processed nearby their origin and rooted in a legacy of authenticity, sustainability and quality. The story began with wool. I hand-knit and became curious about breeds and where and how yarn was made. The journey took me in 2019 to the north of England where I met sheep farmers, visited factories and rebuilt the historic wool ecosystem of old around a single luxury British breed - the Bluefaced Leicester. With a low micron count and long staple, the BFL is a lustre breed with a gorgeous feel. In 2020 I developed the first luxury British machine knitting yarn with supply chain partners in Yorkshire, maintaining ownership of the material from soil to skin and taking all the toxic chemicals out, replacing them with organic detergents and plant dyes. We make the only luxury British machine knitting yarn, also the only British single breed yarn and are the only brand to own the fibre from source and process it in the natural way we do. Our yarn and knitwear is entirely biodegradable and rich in potassium for the soil. A/W24 for HERD sees the introduction of embroidered personalisation and custom-made knitwear pieces. Prior to that, I founded and ran hyper-local, certified organic seaweed brand Atlantic Kitchen for ten years, building the brand and sales across in wholesale and retail including Wholefoods, Planet Organic, Sainsburys, Ocado, Selfridges and more. Atlantic Kitchen was pivotal in the shift in consumer awareness around the health benefits, local provenance and critical role in marine ecosystems of this miracle plant. My first career was in events, working in creative, production and management teams in festivals, corporate and private events.

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  University Of Leeds

  English & French