Hi, I’m Violeta, the creator behind ILO. When I became a mother I grew increasingly frustrated by the lack of choice for dressing my babies. Dressing them in stereotypes felt incredibly wrong and so I set out to make their clothes with the most fun organic fabrics I could find.

Making their clothes gave me a chance to experiment and tweak designs, if you sew something yourself you do not want to have to pass it on after a couple of months, so when I had sourced the best fabrics, I set out to make their clothes as long-lasting as possible both in quality but also in the way they were designed. Those first items were created almost 8 years ago and they are still in circulation amongst friends and friends of friends, proving that baby clothing can be made to last, and the most common comment I hear is that ILO really lasts for months and months.

At ILO now we design our own fabrics, often commissioned from local illustrators and also designed by myself and so every design is an exclusive pattern to ILO.

Sustainable and ethical business practices are core to me, I do not see the point in being part of the fashion problem; if I am going to create garments, they have to be part of the solution. To do this, we create small runs at ILO HQ in Bristol, with Laura, who is my seamstress extraordinaire.

We make mostly to order, and have complete control over quantities, therefore reducing deadstock to the bare minimum. What deadstock we do have we distribute through Clothes Together, of which we are founding members. We develop new products in consultation to customers and stockists, and always test before launching. Today ILO is proud to be working towards B-Corp certification, for which I have the wonderful help of project manager Chloe.