On 27th June 2019 we posted our second ever podcast. It was Pride month and we interviewed Chris Davis from Wicked Waists. With the title ‘Cars to Bras, the journey of a blind, transgender designer’ people were intrigued by Chris’s extraordinary life.

Here’s what they’ve been up to since our podcast and what they’re doing to celebrate Pride this month. Chris and his partner in business (and life) Fiona have been surprisingly busy considering. We hope you enjoy finding out what it takes to keep an independent alternative clothing brand running, generally and during these challenging times.

June 2019
“It might have been Pride month and the podcast may have gone out, which was great, but business still needed to continue, so, most of the month was spent trying to find some dosh so we could order what we needed for the upcoming War and Peace Revival, which is the biggest military extravaganza of the year. Kind of like Glastonbury, a one week festival for all things military. We hunted down some new rain coats from one of our main suppliers, Elements, plus hair bows and accessories. Like most small businesses, cashflow is always a challenge, but somehow we always find a way. You have to right? Although it was a bit late we did manage to get most of what we needed.”

July 2019
“Everything was focused on The War and Peace Revival. Our friend Jess made us some gorgeous leather cuff sets and collars which we added to the stock we were gathering to take and once we had everything under control we headed off to set up at the festival taking place during the last week of the month.

The weather was great until the Friday when it absolutely hammered it down all day. I looked like a drowned rat. The Saturday was the same, raining nearly all day, though it helped sales a lot, selling out of the rain coats! (We’d made a good call investing in buying all of those for sure.) We also managed to sell loads of petticoats to the rock and roll fans, some hand fans to those that wanted to waft around looking fancy and girly and plenty of hair dye. So, we made some decent money and had some fun while we did it, so it was well worth the effort.”

August 2019
“When we got back from War and Peace we finally decided to sort the workshop floors. Which is quite a feat considering I’m blind. Firstly I put down the laminate in the stock room, all was going well for the first couple of days, then Fiona and I ended up at the chiropractor with bad backs. Eventually we got the floors done and began moving all of the workroom items into the showroom, rearranging the entire workshop so it flowed better and the showroom was at the front as you come in.”

September 2019
“Throughout the month we got most of the big stuff moved around, but we were plagued throughout by our backs, which was not fun, as, having taken the doors off, we discovered we had a lot of stuff we’d gathered over the years to sort out. Our filing cabinet looked like it had exploded and that a bomb had gone off in the workshop. There were boxes inside boxes inside boxes, it was like a fabric version of pass the parcel combined with a thousand Christmas mornings. We could be heard constantly shouting to each other “Oh that’s where that went”, so it did take quite some time to make sense of it all.”

October 2019
“During the month I bought plaster board for the wall in the stock room to finally make it into a single room again, but we first had to clear the final batch of items from the work room to give us room to move. It was a bit like a Chinese puzzle. We had to move things to free up space and yet it seemed to take ages to rearrange everything. But we got there in the end, a 180° turnaround giving us a separate showroom, workroom and stockroom which we’ve never had before. But we’d stopped making clothes because of the mess, which wasn’t good for business, we needed to keep going.”

November 2019
“We’d finally got most of the ‘stuff’ organised and ready to put in their rightful places. Because, having pulled up the carpet we still had to lay the final floor. The thing is the workshop was now in a right state with fabric and tools scattered everywhere and everything was covered up against the dreaded filth that was also everywhere. All of the dress rails needed to be moved to the front of the unit, but as they were 13x14 feet and about 3 foot higher than the door, it was not an easy task for a blind person. On top of that we had a couple of black sofa chairs that required quite a lot of wiggling to get through the door.

It was reminiscent of the old PG Tips Chimpanzee adverts “Do you know the piano’s on my foot?” “You hum it and I’ll play it.” kind of situation. I ended up having to have my own cup of PG Tips just to calm me down after that little fiasco. Try moving oversized objects through a door with your eyes closed and then you might understand the challenge I faced.

I do remember the song “Right Said Fred” by Bernard Cribbins being sung during that move quite a lot as well, which is quite a sight when it’s being sung by a small, black pattern maker and seamstress and a blind transgender fashion designer sporting a gimpsuit/dust overalls, dodgy, long pink/purple hair and combats. Too funny.”

December 2019
“Finally we managed to get the last of our laminate floors down and finished! We pulled some very late nights to get all the cutting done and get the floor laid. By this time we had a fantastic playlist to accompany our pre-Christmas push (because we were really starting to feel exhausted by this time) and were supported by Fiona’s younger brother Ray bringing us Jack Daniels several times towards the end on some of the longer nights, giving us the much needed energy boost to keep us going for the final push. By this time it was about the middle of the month so we did some final tidying and went to Fiona’s mums for Christmas, where the entire family of about fifteen of us had gathered together to celebrate and have fun with silly games like Beer Pong etc. and generally eat, drink and be very merry. It was needed after such a big year for us.”

January 2020
“We got back from the holidays a day or two after new years and did the one thing we both dreaded…moving our precious glass topped cutting table. It’s a metre wide and 2.2 metres long and b****y heavy! Somehow I managed to get the glass top off and carefully lent it against the wall while we moved the table itself into our new workroom. Once we’d decided which way round to position the base we moved the glass. After much praying I finally got the glass back on the table and we were both were greatly relieved. The rest of the month was taken up with rearranging and cleaning as we went. Sorting out where we wanted to put things. We must have tried dozens of layout ideas to see what worked best before we settled on a final look.”

February 2020
”By this time we had the layout down pat, and it was just a case of getting everything in its place. We made a wall out of bookcases so we could separate our new little design area. Now we would essentially have four areas that would mean we could work just that little bit easier and mostly it stays tidy! (Kind of ha ha ha!)

But the biggest labour of love for February was to clean all of the outfits. Do you have any idea how much it takes to clean 150+ dusty PVC and leather outfits? We do. Literally hours and five cans of polish. In hindsight I should have put on a maids outfit to do it. It would have made a great video, but instead I have a very nice pair of shiny trousers out of it (that’s what I had on for that particular task) and don’t even get me started on the dozens of pairs of shoes and the pair of pink kinky books that also needed polishing to a shiny sheen.”

March 2020
“By the beginning of March we’d managed to get all of the dress rails in place and everything was looking great. We spent the next two weeks cleaning everything! I think we ended up going through another five cans of spray polish! Virtually everything was covered in a thin coating of dust, so we just sprayed and wiped everything! It was worth it though, by the middle of the month we were ready to re-open. We even did a little video on Facebook kick things off.

But…then the dreaded Covid-19 happened! I think we’d actually opened for about a week when we had to go into lockdown on the 23rd of March. So we just packed one of our big cases with loads of gear and took it home.

It was devastating. We had been so excited to get things up and going again. We were going to do a big video for the relaunch and when the news hit about lockdown I felt utterly miserable for the whole day. I thought to myself “Now what?” It sucked. We had no idea what we were going to do. It had all been going so well. People had been visiting the new showroom and it all been taken away all in one go. It felt hopeless because you can’t do anything about it. It had taken so many months of effort to relaunch and all of our emotional reserves were gone. And we both ended up with back problems again. Covid-19 was literally the straw that broke these two camels backs.”

April 2020
”Around the seventh I got seriously bad cramp which stopped me from doing just about anything. Then Fiona’s shoulder went so we just didn’t do anything for about ten days. I think the combo of months of physical hard labour and the disappointment of Covid-19 hitting at exactly the wrong time, as we were launching, manifested in physical ways.

But, some good news happened, we managed to still get one order for an apron at this time so Fiona struggled on and managed to make it and send it out. Because of the pandemic we stopped getting any enquiries and on top of everything else we had a few issues with the website, which we luckily managed to sort out. (A lot of small business owners will recognise that feeling of all the stuff going wrong all at once and feeling overwhelmed, but you just have to dig deep and keep going don’t you?). All in all April was crap, we had to just cope with lockdown. It was all a bit s***. Like everyone else we were just reeling and dealing.”

May 2020
”May was a much better month. Both of us were back on our feet and although we did still have some aches and pains we were back working our way through the orders we had from back in December last year. We had also started to get new orders through. It has continued to be difficult with regards fabric sourcing, as some of our suppliers are running a bit slow due to Covid-19. As a consequence, we’ve had to put some orders on hold until we find out how supply routes are working, or find new fabric suppliers/sources, because sadly quite a few fabric companies have gone under. (If anyone out there knows of any places we can source raw fabrics/materials or are in logistics and are aware of alternative ways of moving stock around let us know.)

We’ve had all the usual events for this year cancelled, including Pride, so like most people, we’re having to rely on whatever orders we can get through the website and from communicating with regular clients. It’s hard but we’re still managing to get there.”

June 2020 - Pride Month

“Like many other small businesses, we’re finally getting on top of things again. We have sorted a number of bespoke orders this month (an 80’s style leather jacket, multiple frilly knickers, and a number of different styled nurses outfits and we’ve even started to create new ideas again. Some of our favourite suppliers (all of which you can see on our website) have started to manufacture again, which is a great relief for them and for us.

It is Pride month and my birthday month and we’ve celebrated it by being positive, getting ourselves up and running again, re-dying my hair pink and purple and having Fiona’s Mum sing me a beautiful rendition of ‘Happy Birthday’. The showroom is now open to the public once more. So, like many business owners we’re thankful that we can get going again and people can start to visit us once more, which is wonderful.

Of course, we need to look at ways of getting out to people in place of the events we usually do, but I think it will sort itself out as we go. I think the next few months are going to be very interesting in that we have to come up with a new strategy for going forward. But I now feel positive that we’ll get there. It’s certainly something to celebrate in Pride month after everything we’ve all gone through.”

I for one am really glad to see the journey Chris and Fiona have taken over the last year, that they have come out of the other side of lockdown into Pride month with a positive attitude ready to get going with their original relaunch, albeit with adjustments just like the rest of us. We’re all feeling a bit battered and bruised, but if a blind transgender designer and a black pattern maker and seamstress can do it, then we are lucky to have people like them to aspire to be like in my view. I feel lucky that I get to work with people like Chris and Fiona every day. Inspiring human beings just going about their business, not conforming to the norm and being extraordinary. It’s what FTSQ is all about, community, having space to be yourselves and being surrounded by extraordinary people that can inspire us every day.

If you want to have a check find out more about Wicked Waists then you can head on over to their website or call Chris or Fiona on 07877 912644 they are the loveliest people ever and can help with any number of bespoke alternative clothing, fantasy or steampunk fashion items you might require.