Eco-conscious material girl

I am very inspired by her go getter attitude.

By Janice Blackburn

Published: June 8 2007

As a girl, Jenny White decided that her conservative, traditional school needed shaking up, so she launched a student radio station, a newspaper and a gossip magazine and painted murals all over the walls.

After studying graphics at Central Saint Martins, ­London, she spent four years working as a junior art director but soon tired of the “somewhat safe lifestyle”. So she quit her job to become an environmentally friendly textile designer.


“I wanted to create something new,” she says. “I had become very eco-conscious, eating organic food and using Dr Hauschka’s cosmetics. I also knew that textiles was a horrendously polluting industry and I wanted to find a way to make products that were created with care for the environment. I have always been ambitious and wanted to do something exciting and work for myself.”

She returned to Central Saint Martins, enrolling in a two-year masters course in “textile futures” and her final project involved creating a luxury brand focused on sustain­ability. Her tutors were supportive but “they didn’t have any business skills or manufacturing experience themselves”, she says. “They were all researchers and artists.”

Undeterred, White signed up for a series of talks called Create A Living, which focused on the importance of writing a business plan and, by the end of her course, she had one. Her brand, Eco-Boudoir – Luxury with a Conscience, would sell textiles and homewares that were not only eco-friendly but also “very personal, very sensual and sexy”.

“I thought: ‘Great. I have the brand concept, I’ve done some research and there is a gap in the market. It’s time to make some products and see if I can sell them’.” She now realises that was beginner’s naivety. Her business plan was passable but it didn’t have the essential “three Ps – product, place and price” right.

So she spent another tough year mastering more skills: pattern cutting, garment costing, manufacturing, price negotiation, accounts, VAT, customs and shipping. At the same time she was also designing a full range of throws and cushions, lingerie and a selection of feminine incidentals, such as eye masks and aromatherapy bags, for the bedroom, inspired intriguingly by her somewhat eclectic interests – burlesque, decadence, ecology and the home environment. She decided to make them out of a luxurious woven fabric she calls “bamboo” (apparently softer and silkier than cashmere), digitally printed silks and laser-etched vege­table-tanned leathers.

She finally launched the Eco-Boudoir range in February at the International Salon de la Lingerie in Paris and the reaction was impressive. Boutiques in New York, Athens, Germany, Scandinavia, Switzerland and the UK (from department store Liberty to boutique Phoebe Carlyle) now stock the wares. More recently White was involved in an exhibition during New York’s International Contemporary Furniture Fair called Haute Green and in August she will show at the Lingerie Americas trade show.

She thinks the extra business training she took on has been key to her success. “Creative brains often work in a different way. You can have the best idea in the world but if it can’t be produced, the price is wrong and you don’t know how or where to sell it you don’t stand a chance. The production process [for example] was a roller- coaster of problems for me but in the end it was the most important aspect of the business that I needed to get a tight rein on.”

There are still problems to resolve. Her collection is very broad, the eco-friendly materials she uses are expensive and the pound is disadvantageously strong against other currencies. Sometimes, White acknowledges, she thinks she might like to have a business partner or investor to share the burden. (“Starting and running your own business is not for the faint-hearted.”) But she also loves her independence and is pleased to have made it so far on her own.

She hopes to set an example for other designers and is full of advice for would-be entreprenuers. “Make sure your idea is valuable, long-lasting, strong, viable and versatile,” she says. “Research your market. There is no point trying to sell something that is already out there. Make sure your prices are right. And keep it simple at first.

Most importantly, “have the determination to see things through. If it doesn’t seem to be working out it doesn’t mean that you can’t develop something else within the same concept and make it work.”