Breakthroughs
Women / The Edit
Jada Lyton, 28, is the founder of JADA, a fashion brand on a mission to take the stress out of finding outfits to wear. ‘Everything is wearable and interchangeable – it’s very mix and match and I work with a tonal colour palette.’ Jada began working for London-based womenswear designer Georgia Hardinge, before moving back to Birmingham to create her own brand. Since launching last year, she’s showcased at London Fashion Week and has stockists in Asia. I wanted the brand to be wearable and accessible. I don’t want pom poms or a rainbow of colours – it needs to look classic, clean and modern. I’d always wanted to take key staple pieces and turn them into special items. Everyone needs a biker jacket, everyone needs a staple coat and everyone needs a little black dress. I’ve been a designer from a young age; it’s in my family. My mum had her own dressmaking business and I’d spend hours flicking through her stacks of Vogue magazines. She didn’t realise it was influencing me but because I was around it so much, it was just always in me. When I went to university I found my own style and even when I left I carried on designing, I never really stopped. I thought it would be great to give something back to my home city. I was really inspired to create something coming from Birmingham. When I was looking for internships, there were no creative opportunities in fashion design in Birmingham. Now I’m getting lots of students from Birmingham City University and the surrounding areas wanting to intern with me, and they are really grateful to have that opportunity. Being from Birmingham is working to my advantage and I think it’s refreshing for people to see that there’s something outside of London. The brand had a really good response at LFW and every woman actually said they’d wear every single piece from the collection. I was a little bit nervous to begin with, but people are really warming to JADA and saying, “Yeah, why not be from Birmingham!”
THE DESIGNER
If you want to be a fashion designer… Prepare to work really hard. It’s a very tough industry and you need to be able to take negativity and turn it into a positive and move on really quickly.
Winter 2015 | Style Birmingham | 29