won us an MBE!
Find out how Harriet and Rosie transformed their simple market stall into
a world-renowned brand with over 300 stockists. By Karen DunnI
f you take a walk down East London’s
famous Brick Lane, past all the curry
houses, vintage shops and cool cafés,
right at the end you’ll find Tatty Devine.
As craft success stories go you don’t get
much bigger than Tatty Devine. From
setting up their stall (hungover!) at Camden
Market 15 years ago, Harriet Vine and Rosie
Wolfenden have transformed their business
into one of the biggest handmade brands in
Britain, not to mention earning themselves
an MBE each from the Queen along the
way! Just around the corner from their
flagship store, Harriet is sitting in her office
surrounded by busy staff working on their
next collection. As we get a sneak peek at
all the new designs we chat with Harriet
about how working with her best friend
helped her create the career of her dreams...
“I met Rosie at Chelsea Art College
back in 1996. Rosie had been living at her
sister’s place in North London, sleeping in
the bath, but when the roof collapsed she
moved into my house. From then on in we
were pretty much inseparable. I got her a
part-time job waitressing with me at The
V&A museum and we organised the end
of year party at uni and soon realised that
we not only had the same work ethic, but
together we could make things happen.
We had always been interested in finding
old stuff that we could turn into something
new – way before the term upcycling was
coined. One day I found 18 bin bags of oldleather samples being thrown away outside
a posh upholstery shop. I didn’t know
what I was going to do with it but I knew
it was special, so we dragged it into the flat
and stashed it under my bed, where it was
forgotten until I had finished my degree!
After uni our plan was to become artists,
drink lots of wine and go to lots of parties.
We had no plan to get proper jobs. I was
wearing a cuff at the time that I’d madefrom a strip of old leather and I kept getting
compliments on it, so we decided to turn
our leather stash into cuffs and sell them at
Camden Market so we could pay our rent.
The first market we ever did earned us £50,
so we did some more at Portobello and then
Spitalfields. I knew very little about making
and knew none of the terminology. My
mum actually phoned up a radio station to
ask for help and a man in Kent who worked
as a saddler invited me over and taught me
how to work with leather properly.
As the leather stash started to run out
we invested some of our money into somepony skin and started gathering together
all the odd objects we’d collected over the
years and worked them into the jewellery
too. Our first break came in October 1999
when a woman was admiring a headband
covered in gems that Rosie was wearing.
It turned out the woman was a stylist
for Vogue and she snapped up the whole
collection for her shoot with Mario Testino
for the millennium issue! By Christmas we
had orders from Harvey Nicholls, Whistles
and Urban Outfitters. We hit the scene
at just the right time and while we were
never bothered about celebrities, it was
pretty special when we spotted Kate Moss
wearing one of our designs!
We quit the markets and in 2001 got
ourselves our little shop in Brick Lane- we’d have buyers from Hong Kong
knocking on the door of my flat to be
greeted by knickers hanging on the
radiators, so we knew it was time to get a
proper space! We also thought it would be
great fun to put on exhibitions by all our
friends – another excuse to have parties!
Around this time we took a trip to
New York and found a place called Canal
Street Plastics where we discovered laser
cutting. The found objects were starting
to run low and we thought this could be
the perfect solution. When we got back
we found a local laser cutter and soon we
were spending £1,000 a week getting items
cut, so finally took the plunge and got a
“Our craft business
”
PHOTOS: Joel Chant/UPNREAL LIFE
22 Craftseller“We realised that we had
the same work ethic and
that together we could
make things happen”