EP 38: Amy Powney - All Rivers Lead To The Sea

0:04Amy Powney:My name's Larry Stafford and you're listening to Hell or High Water, the Finistead podcast exploring the depths of our oceans and the resilience of the human spirit.

0:16Amy Powney:Welcome back to the show. We trust you've had a good summer in, on or around the sea. It's seasons change outside the workshop window here, with the arrival of autumn swell via Storm Erin last week. subtle changes in the landscape around us, and autumn collections online and in-store to suit. This next episode is a special one as we called upon the design team here at Finistair, comprising of Finistair's Chief Product Officer Amelia Hornblow and Senior Design Manager Rose Savage, who sat down with the fantastic Amy Powney, Creative Director of Akin, and one of the most clued-up designers and vocal advocates for ethical and sustainable fashion.

0:57Amy Powney:Launching this week, this episode celebrates and delves into the beautiful detail of our latest product collaboration with Amy Powney. We've created an exclusive capsule that brings you close to the sea wherever you are. A collaboration that, in the words of our chief product officer, Amelia, feels like a big hug. The three of them got straight into the fabric and feel of the capsule, speaking on everything from circularity and regenerative thought, an unorthodox route into the fashion industry, being a mum and raising children with a respect for the outdoors, to the creativity and passion required to reverse engineer our way out of some of the problems the industry has created.

1:38Amy Powney:Throw in a couple of jellyfish anecdotes and a wealth of cumulative experience between these three incredible women of industry and we've got a great conversation lined up for you. So here's episode 38 of the Hella High Water podcast with Amy Powney. All rivers lead to the sea.

2:02Rose Savidge:Maybe we'll set the scene. We're here at Wheelkitty. Finistair HQ, Wheelkitty Workshops. Welcome back to Cornwall, Amy Powney. Thank you so much. So nice to have you here. For those of you who don't know Amy Powney, I'll do a quick bio for you on your behalf, if that's okay. In 2017, you won the British Fashion Council Vogue Fashion Fund. You used the proceeds to launch a traceable collection for Mother of Pearl called No Frills. That collection was the subject of the documentary Fashion Reimagined, which debuted in 2022. For those of you that haven't seen the film, I highly recommend it. It's an incredible and really important film highlighting the complexities and the struggle of making a fully traceable, I guess, quote unquote, sustainable range in a very established apparel supply chain.

2:58Rose Savidge:And it's what we know very closely at Finnecer, but it's an incredible documentary. You have spent 19 years at Mother of Pearl, 11 of those years at the helm, creative director and a leadership role. And then 2025, here we are today. You have since announced your departure from Mother of Pearl, the closure of Mother of Pearl and the launch of your new brand, Akin, which is incredibly exciting. Congratulations. Thank you. You are the mom of two young kids. You're an activist and a collaborator with Monica Venator, John Lewis, Papier, many others. Yeah. Finister. Finister. Yeah. What a CV.

3:41Amelia Hornblow:Yeah. I never think about it like that, but when someone reads it out to you, yeah, it resonates actually. Thank you for that.

3:49Rose Savidge:Well, we are so excited to have you here. Thanks for having me. We are discussing, among lots of other things today, but our recent collaboration that's been in the work for about 18 months. Amy Powney, ex-Finistair. And yeah, we're here to just chat through some of that process and get to know you a little bit better and talk all things fashion and activism, mom life, everything.

4:16Amelia Hornblow:Thank you for having me.

4:18Rose Savidge:I'm excited to be here. We have myself, Amelia, chief product officer here at Finistair. Been with the brand for three years. So very excited to be here chatting to Amy about Finistere and her work and our work and the collaboration experience. We have Rose Savage, our senior design manager, who's been with Finistere for a long time. But also I need to give her credit because she is our knitwear designer and does all the amazingness with our knitwear here at Finistere. So it's a privilege to work alongside Rose every day. Thank you very much. And Amy Powney, who we just intro'd. Yeah.

4:56Amy Powney:Oh, well, Amy, I absolutely love the film Fashion Reimagined so much so I actually watched it three times. It really resonated with me on quite a few levels, actually. So the first one was that I also grew up on a farm and lived in a caravan, which I thought was amazing. And then I just loved the way that you were pushing the fashion industry. I left London in 2008 after the recession because I just hated the way everything was working felt passionately that I wanted to find a different and better way of doing things and I sat down handed in my notice and I was told that that my boss at the time felt I had more ambition than to try and do that anyway I forged my own path and then I watched this film And it was just like, wow, thank God someone is doing this.

5:49Amy Powney:This is what it's all about. And thank God someone at your level is doing this, you know, in the high fashion industry and really trying to change things with huge amount of integrity. So I just wondered if you could talk to us a little bit about that journey from when you grew up on the farm in the caravan, which is amazing. And how that inspired what you're doing now. Yeah.

6:11Amelia Hornblow:I mean, I think people often think that because I grew up in a caravan, that therefore that's why I'm sustainable. Like they kind of like connect the two. And actually the irony is it's a lot of a it's a longer path walked than that. And actually growing up in that way, I didn't enjoy it when I was a kid. You know, it's like we lived in the north. It rained all the time. You know, we lived in the middle of nowhere. Like I was different from everybody else at school. We didn't have electricity. We didn't have water. And actually, my introduction into fashion, ironically, was because I couldn't afford all the other things that kids had at school.

6:45Amelia Hornblow:And so I set myself this ambition that I was going to have my, you know, Adidas tracksuit and needed to fit in. And, you know, I got obsessed with I was always very creative, but it moved into fashion because I got sort of obsessed essentially with subcultures and what your clothes did for you and who you were and how you belonged and what you portrayed by what you wore. and actually it was almost a rebellion against how I was growing up and so that's how I got into fashion but then sort of as you get older and you know I moved into my 20s and at that point you're just kind of thinking about your career but those kind of beginnings start creeping back in because they're always there and the rebellion sort of subsides and you know you start living your life through, you know, your kind of more adult vision.

7:29And I think living off grid in that

7:33Amelia Hornblow:way is just the relationship I have and the respect that I have for electricity or the respect I have for the land comes from not having it and seeing the hardities of that. So, you know, we couldn't just switch on a light switch and our lights would come on. Like I couldn't watch TV unless it was windy like the only way to have a shower is if we went to our well pumped water heated it up on a gas stove and like basically essentially threw a bucket over our heads I mean you know so I had a deep respect and then also we worked on farms my parents worked on the local farms you know we were really kind of very very working class family and I knew and I had been working on the farm since I was 11 and I knew how hard it was so I always had respect for workers you know because I'd been that my whole life too so I think like as I got into the industry but back in my kind of um university days the conversation was very much around fair trade in the kind of like activist space and it was at a time when like Chris Martin you know Coldplay was coming up and he used to wear the two bands I don't know if you remember like the green you know and fair trade was conversation it was in coffee and chocolate and I read the book No Logo by Naomi Klein and it was all about kind of the sweatshop world and so with my respect for workers having worked in factories and farms and you know on a supply chain essentially I thought well I can't get into this industry like that so I sort of started off with this fair trade knowledge and that's how I ended up working for an independent like mother of pearl because I was like well we're small we're not having a big impact we're not we're manufacturing most of it in the UK you know I kind of and from that you know all those beginnings just start to intertwine into your life and your career and then I learned more and more about kind of the impact on the planet that fashion was having which wasn't really a conversation you know 19 years ago it sort of was coming to the picture a bit later and then I think it's twofold in that there's a lot of all that respect and those kind of in that part of my upbringing is always there my creativity and passion is always there so they were the combinations to create and make but then I think I'm just a human that's like deeply filled with empathy so I see a problem I immediately want to fix it if it's my company I feel you know a huge amount of responsibility if it's my company then it's my problem and actually ironically Mother of Pearl wasn't totally my company but I was running it and therefore I felt responsible for it and I thought if we're having an impact on the planet then I need to do something about it And so No Frills, which was the subject of the documentary, was nothing more than me seeing a wrong that I wanted to write.

10:12Amelia Hornblow:Yeah. And I'd had no understanding at that point, like what ricochet effect that was then going to have on the industry and what impact it was going to have. I just did it out of humanity.

10:21Amy Powney:Yeah. And that really jumped out to me, actually. You talk a lot in a film and I know from working with you as well, you talk about the system being broken. and I again watching that film it really resonated with me um because often here at Finistere we talk we'll be in meetings we'll be like why is this so difficult now other people don't find this so difficult why is it so difficult and I really felt like watching the film I was sat in front of a mirror it's like this is why it's so difficult because we are genuinely trying to do business better and often even not just the standard but above and beyond and very best that we can yeah And the system doesn't work like that.

10:58Amy Powney:The system doesn't work like that. And it makes it so things that other businesses do very quickly and easily. If you want to do them properly and with integrity, it's just so much harder to achieve. So, yeah.

11:10Amelia Hornblow:And the film essentially was somebody was Becky, the director, was filming me on my learning curve. Actually, I just sent a problem, decided to fix it. She was an independent filmmaker. Like she actually filmed me winning the Vogue Award, which is how she met me. I told her what I was about to do. And she was at odds herself with the world and what was going on and her own industry. And she was like, that was her calling in life. She was just got to fill me on this mission. And that's how she was going to right her wrongs as working in her industry that had loads of problems too. And, you know, so it was her journey and my journey all at the same time.

11:45Amelia Hornblow:But really that film was me just trying to fix what essentially is a broken system. but I was recreating the same steps but just trying to do it better. So I was like, okay, how do we use better fibers? How do we use... But what I was doing in that film, which I've since realized is also not correct, is I was just retracing my steps and trying to make those steps better. But I hadn't had the kind of... At that point, I hadn't had the epiphany that actually, well, all that is just broken and I'm just trying to make the best of what's already broken. And actually we need to like... You need new steps.

12:16Amelia Hornblow:Reinvention. But it took me going through that process to get to the other end and go, well, that's great because I just made it better. But basically, I was just making something broken. I was sticking it back together, but realizing what I was trying to fix was like impossible to like, you know, the linear business model and capitalism and growth and, you know, all of that, you know, you just end up coming out the other side going, oh, right, so I can make it better. But actually, what we need is a complete overhaul. And that was quite a poignant moment too because I was like okay I've just done five years trying to make it better but actually my realization is that's not good enough and we need so much more than that.

13:00Rose Savidge:What are some of the I guess now you've had there's time and space since Fashion Reimagined and now that you've launched Akin this year what are some of the key learnings or takeaways or some of the really tangible learnings that you're bringing to Akin that you've built up on this

13:18Amelia Hornblow:journey yeah there's i'm going to split it into two i'm going to talk about there's the part there's the supply chain part and the system and circularity versus linear etc there's there's that but there's also another one that i sort of feel is almost more important in a way which is narrative and communication and i think the truth is i went from being the girl pre-fashion reimagined win the award, see a problem, got to fix it, feel responsible for this. What am I going to do? Very naive, just, you know, set out on this journey. And then I get to the girl that is then thrown into the public eye because of the film.

13:56Amelia Hornblow:The film makes cinema, the film makes, you know, Sky TV, it's streamed across the world. And suddenly I'm thrown into all these different scenarios of public facing things, not to mention the TED talk, which was unbelievably stressful friend all the time um and assumed because the narrative of the film for anybody that watches it is part supply chain but it's almost the story of my upbringing and my you know to where i got to and there's a sort of a cinderella approach to it in it not rags to riches because i'm absolutely not rich but it's the idea of like if this girl this caravan kid can make a change like this so can you and that's really a very important message that's in the film and the director did that beautifully so then I just assumed that I would be the girl that then inspired other people to do it so I was the girl being rolled out and everyone would follow and everybody would follow that was my vision in my head and I'd watch the film like before it was launched I was like great she's told this brilliant story and this is gonna you know ends on really like it's emotional and it's quite positive and I said this is it this is what's gonna make everyone else watch it realize that the industry was the way it was think I must also do something about this use their empathy and their humanity and make the same path I made and then after about a year of being kind of this like you know show pony what happened is I realized people just wheeling me out to tell everybody this was the girl that was going to fix it and I don't even remember here when I was here and someone asked me the question of what were you going to do next to fix the industry and I burst into tears because that was one of my low points where I'm like that terminology of like the weight of the world on your shoulders was so real to me because I was going to bed every night not to mention being a mother of two very small children running a company but literally with the weight of the world and the climate impact on my shoulders thinking everybody's looking to me to to fix this.

15:52Amelia Hornblow:I wasn't the inspiration. I'm the answer. And I'm overwhelmed. And then I fell quite deeply into anger for about a year. I felt very angry. And I've also been on my own other journey in the industry, which has been quite difficult for other reasons. And I went, I was angry. I was going into rooms. There was a moment I actually went into a meeting with some very senior people from Vogue, YNAP, Royalty. And I just let it out, you know, because everybody wants to do these token gestures. And I was bloody furious. I was like, this is the planet. What are you talking about? You know, needed to say, I wasn't invited back to that room for a while, but I was angry, you know, I really was.

16:44Amelia Hornblow:I was like, why is nobody doing anything about this? And, you know, and so what I think I have gone through is all the kind of emotions of what is happening in our industry and to our planet. And I've gone from hopeful. I've gone from positive. I've gone from activists like superhero, like flying in to like, actually, come on, guys, you need to do this to then bitterness. You know, I've kind of felt every and also I've communicated that on my own channels. I have talked like that in public I've cried openly on panels I've gone from happy to sad you know and so the launch of the kin and going back to your question about communication and why I've just sort of waffled on about that for a while is because I my learnings and my teachings have also realized that communication of negativity and communication of problems and and living in a world of clickbait where catastrophe headlines is basically what makes traction and therefore is like going into our brains all the time I have decided that hope love positivity taking advice from wisdom keepers and talking about love and you know and compassion and talking about creativity craftsmanship quality is actually more powerful leading by example still interweaving sustainable messages within there and explanations of things because we also have to educate as we go but Actually, I am approaching akin with only leading by example and talking to people about the wonderful things we do rather than the problems that are out there.

18:19Amelia Hornblow:Because I think that is what humans need in a very depressing world. I think they want to feel part of the solution. And I think they get absolutely sort of blinded in the face of problems. And I think as a business owner, it's our duty to do the right thing. They shouldn't have to think about that. a customer shouldn't have to think about what are they buying and what's the tragedy behind it they should just you know so and actually the title of my new collection for a kin is run to the rescue with love and peaceful follow and that's a river phoenix quote and it's essentially how i feel like we should be addressing everything that's going on in the world right now and so that's a bit about how i feel like we need to approach a brand um and then from a sustainability point of view um it's very complicated and fibers are a huge story and we probably don't need to cover all of them right now because um it's you know it's it's a lot of tech and or a lot of data and you know but um i think that regenerative thinking is the best way forward and people talk about circularity it has a relatively similar concept but circularity sometimes to me still feels quite corporate you're talking about a circle and for me the visualization is very much like a circular line still and it feels quite still like data whereas regenerative has the same approach because regeneration obviously is circular because we grow and we we we die and we grow and we die um but the regenerative practice is very much thinking about your entire business so like how do you grow your fibers how do you have circularity within your project how do you run your office how do you manage your team and essentially just bear the question well what would nature do at every single point and that forms my decision making and what fibers we use which supplies we use you know how to regenerate at every single step and my ultimate vision is to essentially a bit like wild camping you know where the whole concept is to leave no trace like can you create something that you've taken a natural resource because we're all taking natural resources we do finister does that i do that fuel companies do that every industry does that we're taking a natural resource from mother earth but can we do it in such a light touch way that we grow that fiber let's say in such a way that we actually improve the soil health can we cultivate it and produce it in a way which is so renewable and regenerative that we're using as many different you know renewable energies and communities that basically can flourish but also give back and almost by the time you've created that garment so actually we did take from mother nature but we did it in such a regenerative way she was able to re-regenerate yeah and actually the touch that we had in doing that was so light touch we haven't taken more than she can't give back so essentially you're making a product in business people talk about carbon neutrality and it's kind of got a similar meaning but i'd like to think about it more holistically um but yeah that is where i think we all need to go and it's so i can't i mean i could sit here and talk to you about all the different fibers and supply chains, but it's too much.

21:25Amelia Hornblow:We need about five hours and it might be boring. But that's why I like to talk about as a holistic approach and kind of how we should all be running our businesses. Yeah.

21:34Rose Savidge:I think that's really lovely as well, because I like that you touch on leadership too in there and how, and leading a team and leading the industry. And, you know, as mums, we do that. We're leading, you know, we're leading families, we're raising kids, we show up at business, we show up for the planet. It's all of these different ways that we show up and I really like the way you've you've made it messages of hope and hopeful and optimism and people actually ask me if like you could do one thing

22:02Amelia Hornblow:what would it be and people think my natural response would be okay well everybody switch to organic cotton over conventional or everybody stop using synthetics which we should all be doing but it's not that it's I actually would change a law to ensure that c-suites which are the chief offices and companies so ceos coos cfos etc that that had to have diversity and inclusion on all levels from age race class people don't talk about that in diversity enough because i think it's fundamentally so many of the other problems that are actually behind the other diversity issues is class or your financial position i think i would pass a law to say that it had to be fully diverse in those rooms because the trickle-down effect would be so huge and so powerful you would probably have to stop trying to implement smaller things to fix so many problems because you just need to change the thought process at the top it stops at the top yeah yeah should we talk about our collab

23:02Rose Savidge:yes yes um so we rose and i first met you in london about 18 months ago of course um we were introduced. And I mean, I, from our perspective, it just felt so natural from the beginning. The team have absolutely adored working with you. It's been such a, such a pleasure. And I wonder if, yeah, can you touch on the experience from your side or what excited you about collabing with Finistere and perhaps what you thought of Finistere initially before we started collabing and maybe how that's formed or changed over the last 18 months? Yeah.

23:39Amelia Hornblow:So I already knew about Finisterre. It's obviously an established brand and in the sustainability world, you are one of the leaders and pioneers. So I already knew who Finisterre was. But if I'm honest, I didn't really kind of relate myself to being an outdoorsy girl, even though I grew up that way. You know, I've been an urban girl for quite a long time. And even though it's in my heart and soul, I think it's more a visual realisation of me. I mean, I literally wear black jeans and black T-shirts all day, every day and have a very, very minimal wardrobe that's very urban. So Finistair always had a place in my heart.

24:13Amelia Hornblow:You know, I loved the brand. I just didn't necessarily feel that I was a Finistair girl because of my, I guess, my location, my geography, where I lived and kind of the lifestyle I led. led and so when we talked um essentially we're running the same organizations but just with a very different visualization of it and I think that's where we found so much unity um and actually from who I thought you all were to who you are today has is actually everything that I wanted you to be and everything that I thought it would be and it's been an utter pleasure too um I think the only thing that's changed in my mind is almost me I think you've helped inspire me to be more outdoorsy as in like she's always been in there but you know sometimes you just don't have the opportunity to do that so that's been a really powerful thing for me um and then in terms of our collaboration I think you know as all females in this room who all you know enjoy the way we dress it's powerful you know I always say that designing for women I mean and anyone but I specifically design for women I just want to create their the best last skin of their body like they are everything they are who they are and their confidence is from within and everything that they are is already there I just want to give them the last little bit to just help them through their day to feel everything they are and that you know give them the confidence and so I think as all the females in this room we all have the same vision we all want to have the same thing and actually I think we all felt like well hold on a minute why do we have to feel separated visually just on geography you know and actually I want a technically a jacket that performs technically and well in weathers we have the same weather in London as you do here yeah yeah true fair enough yeah we are protected and we have a pollution bubble um but um yeah I think I was not necessarily aesthetically connecting with finister because I didn't associate myself as being that person yeah and like for instance if you bought a kin you'd be like well that's actually not really relevant for us here and I think we all just felt well actually hold on a minute why is there not a common ground here aesthetic because we have common ground on on ethics and we have same common ground on belief but we're not quite aligning visually here and then I think we all just felt there's this real magic to create in making something that actually just transented urban to you know coastal or and everything in between and so the vision I think from all of us and obviously I've creatively tried to bring that out is yeah I think the magic between us was you know how we could actually use our beliefs and the values that we're both creating and actually create a product that does transcend urban to coastal and everything in between and that's where the narrative of the collaboration comes from which is all rivers lead to the sea and and the concept behind that is is two layers there's one that's kind of emotional and narrative led and then there's one that's actually quite um uh kind of just physical and the narrative one is well just because we're here and just because you're there can we not actually create this product that you know we can wear in both environments it still has technical performance I can you know actually I speak to people that like Sophie Hellyer for instance she lives here she says to me when she leaves Cornwall she puts her Cornwall clothes there and then she puts her London clothes in her bag and she comes to London and then she does vice versa when she comes back and I said but why can't you have clothes that you can put the same jacket on and that was really this this idea right of creating something that's performance lead but actually can transcend kind of aesthetics and create this product because i think it's a missed opportunity yeah and then the kind of physical element of all rivers lead to the sea was the fact that you know finisteria is all about saving the sea you know you do so much work and you know you work with um service against sewage and and trying to protect the seas and trying to get everybody to connect to them but actually every single river that runs through the country ends up in the sea yeah so all the problems you have here they start from where i live yeah and any sewage issues that we have come via a river and into the sea and we're all connected and so physically we have a problem but yeah i guess emotionally the idea is that we're all connected we're all human and we all have the same needs and wants and beliefs and yeah how can we unite that together i don't think i described that very well i think it's really lovely beautiful said yeah i

28:49Amy Powney:think that was that was beautiful yeah I also just wanted to add um that one of the lovely things about the collaboration is the styles that we've picked and the materials that we've picked to make them in as well so um it was when we started talking um there were things that you really items that you really loved within the Finistere range but you just wanted to give them that slightly more urban push and um yeah a little bit more of a fashion feel I suppose so the way that we've worked on some of our bestsellers, like the Mora. Mora, yeah, that's our. Mora jumper. And it's looking epic. Yeah.

29:26Amy Powney:It's amazing. And we've taken our outerwear silhouettes, like our rainwear and things, and you know we've got this incredible oversized parka. You're an ambassador for Tencel, and we've introduced Tencel into the range. And our lap wing, we've taken one step further and we've done oversized and put it into the net plus. plastic fabric as well so I think like the unity of the the everything that you've just said but actually of the pieces that we've used and the way that as brands we've come together and it's got and we've used your um Amy Poundy trouser block um as well and it's just the way that we've kind of taken pieces from both and it really does not just on paper sound like a great collaboration but visually aesthetically it's just sort of married together so natural it's felt so natural

30:14Amelia Hornblow:Totally. And actually the Moral Jumper is a really good example of, I actually bought the Moral Jumper myself. So even though I sort of would go onto Finisterre and think, oh, but I'm not a surf girl. So like, this isn't the brand for me in a way, even though like emotionally it was, I did buy the Moral Jumper. And then I started it my way and I was like, well, actually I can take the pieces out of this and I can wear it and style it the way I want to wear it. And so actually it was about sort of actually products that you already have in there, but how can we kind of, you know, just twist them.

30:41Amelia Hornblow:And yeah, and kind of, yeah, I guess some of the main key things we've done is design detailing, oversizing things a little bit more, kind of making things have that kind of slightly more oversized feel. And I think one of the pieces that I'm really passionate about is the changing robe, because there are changing robes on the market. And they just, again, feel like, well, you can only be a cold water swimmer, like a diehard cold water swimmer to be able to buy one. You know, it's sort of almost like it's only for that subculture. And actually, if you want to try it or do it a couple of times, that you're not really allowed to be in that gang sort of thing, that there is really a bit.

31:21Amelia Hornblow:So the change around we've made really has this feel of like, it's quite understated. And so the idea is, you know, you can go cold water swimming, but you can also leave that on for the rest of the day. And it's actually quite practical because you don't have to take, you know, like you're changing stuff and then your change of clothes and your new coat and your jacket, you can actually continue wearing it. um it's not exclusively a piece of kit exactly and I think yeah and that's and that's the same with the outerwear too you know it's very much like sometimes in the outdoors world the outerwear jacket feels like but you can only wear this if you're going on a walk in a non-urban environment you know and again it's sort of I think it almost frightens people in some ways because if I'm not that person I shouldn't be dressing like that because I'm not being true to who I am in a way and so there's something so beautiful about this collection that actually you can be all of those

32:11Rose Savidge:people yeah yeah I love that um so in addition to the changing robe any favorite pieces from