Anna Woodruff of Francie, the label that embodies slow fashion

Anna, tell us a bit about yourself. Where are you from, where do you live and what did you study? Any travel or other experiences that stayed with you? What was life before Francie?

I am from a beach town called Ocean Grove in Victoria, Australia, but I've spent most of my adult life to date in Melbourne, and now I live in Tāmaki Makaurau!

Growing up, I went to art classes every weekend, where me and my friends would just paint and make and do. At school, we had a big focus on social justice, and there was a lot of compassion and volunteering woven into everything we did. As I've gotten older, I've realised that has definitely informed my innate feeling that my business success could never be at the expense of someone else's well-being.

I was also always tinkering with teaching myself every type of textile craft, and so for Uni, I did textile design at RMIT, majoring in weaving and knit. I was also lucky enough to travel to London and Japan a lot with one of my early jobs as a designer/buyer for another store, which has definitely informed Francie's design language.

Was there a lightning moment when you realised it was your calling to start Francie? How did it feel to create your own label?

I have always known I wanted to make and create, but it was a really slow journey from choosing the name and wanting to do "something" to finally deciding what that "something" should be. It was very daunting to create something that really felt worth putting out into the world when there is already so much out there.

What was your initial vision for Francie, and why knitwear?

When I was travelling as a fashion buyer, I got to see the work of beautiful designers all over the world. I realised that despite Australia's history with wool and knitting, there weren't many local brands designing more considered knitwear. Francie began humbly with just one design—the Doll's Jumper, which was based on the zero-waste Japanese method of designing around rectangular pattern pieces. I remember making the first prototype by cutting up and resewing a jumper from an opp shop. It took over a year of sampling to perfect that piece, but it is still a key part of the collection today.

Your label has an emphasis on quality and craft. How long does the creation of a garment take from start to finish?

From yarn to the finished garment that someone buys, honestly, years.

All of our designs start with a yarn we like the look of, and then we knit a swatch to see if it works and how it looks when knitted on our machine. We never really know how it will look until we start knitting, so the swatch usually "tells us" what garment it wants to be knitted into. For example, when we started knitting with the more textured wool, I knew I wanted to do a lovely nostalgic cable knit cardigan with it. After we have a swatch and a design in mind, it is a few months of working with our machine technicians who help us develop the garments on our Japanese zero-waste machines and, with each sample, make little adjustments to perfect the design. Sometimes, we have to make the hard decision that a particular design or yarn just isn't working and that it should just be abandoned.

Once we have a finished design, then unlike other brands that just apply a standard sizing rule, we customize the design for each size. We try the garments on different bodies, making sure each size is going to look and feel good on as many different people as possible. For the larger sizes, that may mean making extra tweaks that some brands ignore, like adding extra buttons or adding a bit more length in a particular spot—little things that make all the difference to the fit. Sometimes, even after a garment is "finished", we will come back to it a year later to improve it after customer feedback.

This process can take six months to a year before we show the collection to our stores. Then, based on their orders, we order our yarns to be spun (three months) and submit our order with our local factories for the pieces to be knitted (usually about four months lead time). Taking a bit longer means that we are only making what is needed and don't have the excess that other brands often have.

We met at the opening of your studio in Tāmaki Makaurau, Auckland, over a year ago. What prompted you to relocate from Naarm, Melbourne?

I love Naarm, it will always have a part of my heart, but I was ready for a bit more balance and nature in my life. Like Naarm, Tāmaki Makaurau has culture, design, and good coffee, but you can be out at the beach on your lunch break and in the forest on your weekend. For me, that was something I was really craving, particularly after a long lockdown in a one-bedroom apartment in Melbourne. I feel really lucky to have had such a warm welcome in Auckland, and I love that I can be back in Melbourne in just a few hours, too.

Your manufacturing is split between Tāmaki Makaurau, Auckland and Naarm, Melbourne. What are you looking for in a production partner?

Initially, our desire was just to make beautiful knitwear, and it was also just a given that it should be made ethically and sustainably. We looked into a few places to knit, but we found that making locally meant we could be more connected with our makers and our pieces. Making locally means we are able to knit more sustainably, know that we are paying our makers properly, and maintain the high quality of our pieces, too.

Reflecting on your growth during a complex economic climate, what has been the most challenging lesson learned? And the most rewarding?

The last few years, in particular, have meant that, truthfully, there are more challenging lessons than I can count! But the silver lining to that is we have learnt to problem solve at a very quick rate. COVID-related lockdowns have managed to cause problems at every step of the way for years, and we are still in it. Lockdowns have affected our yarn spinners, our knitters, and our stores. Even just trying to photograph our pieces was almost impossible at times! The main thing we have learnt throughout is that if you are transparent, honest, and kind—most people will understand and do the same for you. I think that this is something that applies whether you are in a pandemic or not.

There is so much noise online, and we noticed far more last year around Black Friday and Cyber Monday. This time of the year is challenging for smaller brands, but what we loved was that you used this as an opportunity to provide advice around knitwear repair and maintenance. How was this received?

Yes! I cannot count how many small businesses have expressed how stressful the Black Friday period is for them. Although we do have the odd sale, we decided that we wanted to redirect the narrative a little and show people that they can save money by repairing something they already own rather than buying something new. The response was overwhelmingly positive, and we still get people mentioning how helpful it was to us. I think so many people genuinely want to know how to look after their knits, but these skills around washing, storing, and repairing are slowly getting lost with each generation. So, knitwear care and repair is definitely something we are going to continue focusing on.

With few exceptions, little progress has been made in regard to sustainability within the fashion industry. Australia is yet to fully enforce Seamless, the stewardship programme and nothing in Aotearoa, New Zealand. What would you like to see, what kind of government interventions, and how can we all do better with our closets?

I would love to see a tax on plastics! As long as it is the cheapest option, brands are still going to lean on using it in their materials and packaging. As long as clothing is made cheaply, people are going to feel like it is an option to just quickly purchase and dispose of clothing regularly. There also needs to be more regulation around greenwashing and brand’s responsibility when it comes to the full lifecycle of the garments. When brands feel like they have to actually back up their words with action, that is when the action happens.

In this cost of living crisis, it sounds odd to me to be saying that clothing should cost more, but that is also something that we need to accept if we want to say goodbye to $5 polyester t-shirts. To clarify, I think clothing should cost more per piece, but we should buy less of it, which, overall, can definitely mean spending less money.

When something is made properly and is an investment, there is a natural inclination to also invest in taking the time to keep that piece in good condition. Are you going to mend a $5 t-shirt? Or just buy another? And on the other hand, are you going to mend a $450 cardigan that you saved up for? Of course, you are.

As brands, we need to give our customers all of the information and the tools to help them look after their pieces. This can certainly be incentivised by governments. We are at a point where the brands and consumers doing the right thing just for that reason are already doing it, so to bring everyone else along requires regulation and financial incentives. Money talks!

Your production runs are small and considered. You spoke to the costs involved in setting up machines to produce a specific style and that this is only possible because of the longevity of your pieces. How do you feel this reflects a much more holistic view of the industry?

Yes, the zero-waste machinery we use isn't very popular in fast fashion industries because there is an initial investment of time and money to create a new design. If you want to make a quick run of trend-based cardigans, this initial investment is too slow and costly. It's cheaper and easier for them to lean on knitting methods that exploit underpaid workers instead.

For us, we can justify that investment in developing a design on these machines, not just because we want to make them sustainably but because we are always designing pieces that we intend to work with for a number of years.

At first, this felt like a big financial hurdle, but now I see it as a way of setting a standard of quality and longevity that I am trying to reach with each design. Before I start developing something, I need to think, "Can I see this design being in someone's wardrobe in five years' time?". This helps us justify that initial cost and also helps us feel confident that we are designing something that is actually going to be worn for a long time.

What advice would you give to someone eager to start their label?

First, listen to knowledgeable people in your industry and take their advice.

Everything that is worth doing is also worth doing imperfectly. I have sometimes found it really hard to stick to all of my values at once, and I have seen brands flop because they try so hard to do everything perfectly. So, sometimes, you have to stick to most of your key values at first so that you can get started, and then, as you get bigger, you can improve the little things. We are always finding new ways to be more sustainable and more ethical.

Take. A. Deposit. In Aotearoa, in particular, there is a culture around small labels not taking a deposit when accepting an order from a store. Brands in Australia take a 30% deposit, and in Europe, it is often 50%. I’m not sure if it has to do with being humble and trying to get their foot in the door, but it is a great way to go broke.

When deciding to start a brand or make something, make sure it is something that is actually needed in the world. From a sustainability point of view and from a business point of view, there is no point in making something that is already out there.

Outside of Francie, in your free time, what do you do? What are your passions? How do you balance work and leisure? Do you have any practice that ground you?

I love gardening! I’m not very good at it, but that is almost part of the appeal. Being in the dirt and away from a screen is so good for me.

Finally, what is next for Francie? Are there any projects coming up that you would like to share about?

We are so excited about having more in-person workshops and events. I think we are all so saturated by social media that connecting and sharing in person is something we are all craving.

Thank you, Anna! If you’d like to discover Anna’s collections, dive into her online shop and connect on Instagram @___francie___. You can also visit Francie’s studio at 407a Richmond Road in Grey Lynn, Tāmaki Makaurau, Auckland.