Female Founded Glasgow Fashion Brand Kiwi & Co Donates 10% of Profit to Woman's Aid

Written by Lauren Dickson, edited by Charlotte Lewis

Glasgow founded independent fashion brand Kiwi & Co has had a beautiful connection with its female customers since it’s humble beginnings in female founder Melissa Lanigan’s living room in 2020, established with the goal to bring colour and joy to people’s lives during the uncertainty of the covid pandemic. 

Since then, the brand has completely exploded, now supplying their cool girl styles on retail giant ASOS as well as having huge influencers hooked on the brand – notably Shakira Khan (the people’s princess of Love Island season 12), who can frequently be seen sporting Kiwi’s iconic knits on socials, as well as being featured on hit BBC show Traitors.

The brand not only helps everyday women find their confidence through its bold, beautiful colours and styles, but it’s now vowing to give back 10% of all knitwear profits until Mother’s Day on Sunday the 15th of March to the incredibly important charity Women’s Aid. Women’s Aid is built on the vitally important ethos of protecting women in dangerous domestic situations.

The charity provides its support in a huge variety of ways including providing refuge for women in need, protesting and fighting against systemic failures, speaking up about the gender imbalance in abuse victims and offering a general support system for women fleeing domestic violence.

The brand has chosen this organisation in particular, as while Mother’s Day is about celebrating women in maternal roles, it’s also incredibly vital to recognise not everyone family looks the same or is built on the love and support that some experience. 

The Kiwi & Co team chose to visualise this by creating a campaign focusing on their own female led team with their loved ones and chosen families; and providing a platform to emphasise the beauty in everyone’s family looking different, with some of Kiwi’s team showing up with mothers and grandmothers, some with siblings, children, grandchildren, and there were even a few furry friends in the mix. 

“Mother’s Day is about love and showing appreciation, but we also want to bring attention to the unique variety of different maternal relationships, or lack thereof, and echo the notion that everyone’s family looks different.” 

The mission behind this was to recognise that despite the importance of this day, it can be a hard one for some people. Founder Mel felt strongly about contributing to Woman’s Aid’s vital message, which resonated with the brands ethos as well as her own moral alignment, and we got to hear a little bit more about why this was such a valued collaboration for the brand,

“As a female founded and female led business, we wanted to put together something different - and critically important - for Mother’s Day this year, as we appreciate that this day can be difficult for some people and particularly for women in dangerous domestic situations.” 

“Women’s Aid is a charity incredibly close to our hearts, and we wanted to take this opportunity to go beyond just celebrating women but also to serve as a platform for financial contribution and giving back, and to also give our customers the ability to directly contribute to an incredibly important charity with no extra cost.”

This partnership is a beautiful initiative from a female focused fashion brand and paves the way for other likeminded fashion founders to follow their lead, and give a platform to Women’s Aid and other vital charitable organisations.