Tease and Totes is a fashion company co-founded by Natalie Bardega and her twin sister Danielle Newnham, who strongly believe in the empowerment of women and children, and that fashion is the best medium to spread that message far and wide. Prior to Tease and Totes, Natalie Bardega spent her career as a buying manager, in charge of a multi-million pound budget for Jane Norman. In August 2015, Tease and Totes announced a partnership with non-profit, Worldreader, to create GIRL POWER t-shirts, with all proceeds going to provide digital books to children and families in the developing world.
“…We are pleased to see that the GIRL POWER message is spreading far and wide, with our furthest customer all the way over in Australia. It is definitely a slogan that seems to resonate with our customers …”
Natalie, it’s been a while since we’ve spoken to you. For those who missed your first interview alongside your twin sister, Danielle, please can you give us a quick recap about Tease and Totes and what made you decide to set it up together?
Tease and Totes is all about inspiring and empowering women. We do this through our empowering slogan tops which are designed to make the women who wear them stand out. (Slogans include: Fearless; Here’s to the Crazy Ones; Unapologetic; Misfit Rebel Trouble Maker and GIRL POWER.)
We want women who wear them to believe in themselves, be proud of who they are, and what they can accomplish. This mission is closely tied to what we do and therefore we don’t consider ourselves your usual fashion brand.
We do weekly interviews with inspiring women on our blog, which include: Assistant Commissioner Dany Cotton, the first woman to be awarded the Queen’s Fire Service Medal; Kate Richardson-Walsh, Captain for GB and England Women’s Hockey; and entrepreneurs such as Emma Sinclair, who was the youngest person to launch an IPO (initial public offering on the stock market) in this country. At our core, what we really want to do is show women and kids that anything is possible.
The idea for Tease and Totes really started just over a year ago, after Danielle had returned from another tech conference where the women were in the minority and the guys there were all wearing their startup t-shirts. She noticed how these t-shirts had become a talking point and a way for the guys to introduce themselves to each other.
At the same time, I was taking a career break and we had been discussing Danielle’s new book, which was about female founders and innovators. Having worked in the tech industry for over ten years, she found that even though there were brilliant women founders, there wasn’t much visibility, especially around positive role models within the industry so she really wanted to shine a light on them to encourage other women.
We then talked about lack of visibility of female role models in other male dominated industries such as sport, engineering etc. and we became frustrated that we could only name a few without having to use Google to find out about others.
This sparked an idea on how we could change this and Danielle then suggested starting a business together where we could really make female role models in business, sports, tech etc. more visible through interviews and fashion and, as we discussed it, we got more and more excited about the idea, and how we could shine a light on incredible women which would, in turn, inspire and empower many others.
Where possible, your products are ethically sourced. How do you go about ensuring traceability back through the supply chain and how has ethical sourcing become part of your brand?
Ethically sourcing is very important to us. As a brand that is all about inspiring and empowering women we wanted to ensure we “put our money where our mouth is” as they say, and produce a product that is ethical. We work closely with a local London printer and source clothing from reputable manufacturers who care as much as we do about how they produce their garments.
We are proud that the majority of our products are made from organic cotton and made in a Fair Wear Foundation certified factory. Our Books Before Boys tote is made from 100% recycled material.
Please can you tell us about the partnership with Worldreader and how this came about?
We always knew when we started Tease and Totes that we wanted to give back by giving a percentage of our profits straight to the empowerment of girls who needed it most and that the best way was to find a charity or non- profit organisation doing that.
Obviously we wanted to find one that fitted with our brand and that we both felt equally passionate about but after discussing some charities we couldn’t find one we both agreed on. I was really passionate about books – as a dyslexic, I struggled at school at a young age but once I started secondary school and was helped by an amazing English teacher, I really fell in love with books and felt that books and education were key for empowering young girls.
On the other hand, with Danielle’s background, she was keen to find a charity more involved in tech. So Danielle took to Twitter asking her followers if they knew of any great charities which provided digital books to kids who couldn’t afford them and, as serendipity would have it, the Worldreader co-founder Colin McElwee was the first to respond.
We were very excited by the idea of partnering with Worldreader as they are a non-profit organisation which provides e-readers to those in poverty, and so it seemed like a perfect fit. It seemed to tick the boxes for us, especially as it combined my love of books with Danielle’s love of tech, but we wanted to find out more so we had a Skype call with Colin and found out more about Worldreader’s history and mission.
We then played around with slogan ideas before we finally all agreed on GIRL POWER, which we thought was a simple, powerful slogan that really sums up both our mission and Worldreader’s mission perfectly.
What has the response been like to the GIRL POWER t-shirts?
With only a soft launch of the GIRL POWER tees, we have been so heartened by the reaction and, in fact, we were initially only going to do the children’s version, but after a huge response from our Instagram and Twitter followers asking if we did an adult version we decided we couldn’t not do one!
Whilst the adult GIRL POWER t-shirt has performed slightly better – now with the lead-up to Christmas, the Kid’s tee is receiving a lot of interest as customers buy them for their daughters, nieces and granddaughters etc. Also, we are pleased to see that the GIRL POWER message is spreading far and wide, with our furthest customer all the way over in Australia. It is definitely a slogan that seems to resonate with our customers, which we are over the moon about, as every sale helps Worldreader to continue doing their great work.
Are you planning any more collaborations in the future?
As a company, giving back is really important and we don’t want to dilute the help we are giving so, at the moment, our only focus is on raising awareness and money for Worldreader. Moving forward, this may change to include more charities, as well as collaborations with up-and-coming female designers. Outside of Tease and Totes, we also give time and money to many other charities and Danielle busily organises The Great Agency Bake Off every spring to help raise awareness and funds for The Sick Children’s Trust.
What is coming up next for you and Tease and Totes?
We are planning new empowering slogans and also to expand our product range to include other items besides clothing.
We are also hoping to grow our weekly interviews with inspiring women, and potentially host our own TED-style event which will include some of Wednesday Women as well as other inspiring female speakers. So keep your eyes peeled!
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