Gilly Woo designs and sews bespoke clothing from her studio and workshop in Stokes Croft. She tells her tale of passion, hard work and dedication – with a helping of serendipity

Images by Lukasz Cypis Kaminski

The mannequins dressed in long silk gowns look out across the road to the patisserie. Their home in Stokes Croft was previously a bank, and still houses the enormous safe. Now the stoic building Gilly Woo’s mannequins adorn the window of holds multiple creative business residents; music and filmmakers, Gilly Woo – fashion designer and maker, and jewellery importers (they’re the ones with the safe now).

Gilly Woo loves being surrounded by fellow creatives in the heart of Stokes Croft. “Knowing that creative businesses are the most difficult to make a living from, it’s just awesome to be in a building full of people doing just that. It’s inspiring every single day. I also love the artwork in the area, and watching fellow businesses like Patisserie Leila flourish. All those delicate cakes are made at the back of the shop by French-trained patisserie chefs, you know? Beautiful. They have worked like me; made some money and invested in a sign, made more and bought a mirror, tables and chairs. I’ve loved watching the area grow.”

So let’s start from the beginning, Gilly wasn’t always watching patisserie establishments grow from a large window, while designing and sewing bespoke wedding dresses, corsets and evening dresses. “It was all very serendipitous,” she says looking around her as if a fairy godmother just that second waved a magic wand and popped her there. But watch her a little longer and you can see that true, unwavering determination in her eyes. There may have been coincidences and magical moments – her friend finding the grand mirror that hangs on the wall reflecting the mannequins in the window, being scouted by a seamstress – but it’s clear that Gilly has put in some serious hard work. Her “100 hour weeks”, combine with her belief in fate. “You can always make your own luck, but it’s about being open and positive,” she says.

Gilly grew up in Southmead and has been sewing since she was six-years-old. “My cousin has a memory of me being off from school, sick with mumps, and the only thing that would keep me quiet was sewing buttons on fabric.”

With her grandmother as her teacher, buttons turned into cross stitch and embroidery. “Then she taught me how to smock velvet cushions, which is actually a very complicated process,” she says. “Recently I found sketches of clothes from when I was five or six, so I was designing from a very young age. By 10 years-old I was making clothes. I used to make these outfits, ‘Mum, I’m wearing this to the party,’ I’d say. She would reply: ‘No you’re not!’ They would usually be made from a pair of curtains,” Gilly laughs. “Sewing is in my blood.”

After going to college with aspirations to become a fashion editor, Gilly decided to take a GNVQ to move further in the practical side of fashion, design and making. However, she felt disillusioned in the course and left, finding herself with little experience and money to follow her dream of a career in fashion. “I ended up getting a job in Karen Millen. I also worked full-time in a nightclub into the early hours of the morning. I saved everything I made in my second job, got a backpack and went travelling.

“When I came back, I was told a girl had been looking for me. She wanted to offer me a job, as I had sold her a dress in Karen Millen and she’d liked my customer service. A corset maker who was opening up her second shop, it materialised that she needed someone to head up the retail side of her business and wanted me onboard. When she was looking for me, she had no idea that I wanted to work in fashion and that I sewed. She was my hero, someone who had made a job out of sewing. This was fate! I learnt on the job for five years.”

Gilly had to return to bar work however, when the business suddenly closed down, but she didn’t miss an opportunity to develop her design and sewing skills. There she wore items she had made and along with ordering their drinks, people would enquire about what she was wearing. Gilly says: “It began happening so often that I printed out some business cards. They were so funny, literally just a piece of card with my name on. People would phone and commission me, but of course back then I didn’t have a clue as to how long something would take to make. I had never made items from scratch in my previous job, And then, because you enjoy it, you say: ‘hmm, I think it will only take a couple of hours’ – but in reality it’s three day’s work.”

After a while working seven days a week on commissioned pieces, Gilly quit the bar and made her first collection of 12 outfits, culminating in a fashion show with L’Oreal. 

“Then I launched at Byzantium and shortly after in September 2007, I went to the room opposite this one, my workshop. Then in August 2012 I rented this room. It had been occupied as an office, the blinds were down, it was very dark. I imagined mannequins in the window. When the guy moved out my dad and I did the sums and added everything up. He said ‘yep, you definitely can’t afford it.’ But I just did it anyway and once I did, it made enough money for me to be able to afford it.

“The window is about trust. People walk into here and say to themselves, yes, this is a proper set up with a fitting room and pictures on the wall. It gives people confidence. And it’s so nice in the summer with the sun in the window.”

She takes me on a little tour, to her workshop in the next room; a place filled with fabric, binders brimming with designs, swatches of delicate lace, embroidery and silks. We look through her portfolio of wedding dresses, an album featuring photographs of elated brides beaming on their wedding day. “These are some of my brides. I love that they are all so different and each dress suits the bride so well, it’s a very collaborative process.”

Fabrics are sourced from all over the world. “Madrid, Leeds; Italy, India, France, Manchester, London. I would save a fortune buying directly from mills,” she says. “But I tend to buy single metres, not whole rolls. You pay a premium for that. 100 metres of silk needs to sell and not everyone wants silk. I also like to keep things UK-based and there’s a premium on that too.

“Ideally, soon I’d like to go on a business trip up to Scotland, to the tweed mills. They have a cashmere factory up there and I would just love to do a cashmere range. It’s the oldest continually operating mill in Britain. They produced the first twinset, including one that Audrey Hepburn wore. I want to take that trip, take my sketchbook.

Now in her sixth year of business, Gilly doesn’t want to make any big decisions just yet, however. She’s enjoying business running smoothly. “But of course, I always have stuff on my mind,” she says. “More off the peg, the cashmere range – and I’d also like to take a proper break with my boyfriend. We’d like to go away in a campervan for a little while. When I was doing my first collections, I was doing 100 hours a week. It was very intense, but those times made me make serious changes. Booking days off. You need to be able to fix things to make them better. You can learn from everything to improve and grow.”