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Craftaganza Live – review and what’s to come…

For those of you that joined us for the March Craftaganza Live, thank you for coming along and I hope that you enjoyed Eleanor Callaghan’s super inspiring and honest talk.

For those of you that did not make it along here’s a little recap for you!..

We were lucky enough to have Eleanor Callaghan sharing with us her inspiring story as a self taught dress maker and her journey to opening her first shop “Dig For Victory”. The story began with her love for dressing up and making dresses for herself when on stage with her band “The Bobby Mcgees”.  Eleanor found that she was constantly being asked where her dresses were from and decided to begin making and selling them to see where it would lead…

Initially the dresses were available on Ebay, at craft markets and also in Oxfam in central Brighton, although they did sell the financial returns on the dresses meant that Eleanor was not hitting minimum wage. She persevered and began selling dresses with Noki in his “Wardrobe” shop back in 2007 and then moved on to selling dresses in online craft market websites.

Eleanor caught wind of Etsy and began listing her dresses on there as well as Folksy and on the German equivalent Dewanda. The dresses have sold so well that she now has employees and has been able to open her first shop with the online sales underpinning the finical weight of the store.

The talk was very inspiring, along the way Eleanor has taken obstacles, which others may have thought “this isn’t going to work” and learnt from them, overcoming hurdles in a positive way. She has not given up but intelligently persevered and worked extremely hard to make her passion for dress making a success.

If you live or ever find yourself in Brighton and have a penchant for dresses then you really should visit the Dig For Victory shop, there is a whole room full of vintage fabric that eleanor has hand picked, some quirky, some bright and all original. There are different styles of dresses that Eleanor has designed for you to choose from, they are completely made to measure so you know that you are getting something unique and perfect for you.

If you are from further afield then you can shop on Etsy or visit the Dig for Victory website.

For this months talk (March ’13) we are going to be hearing from one of Brighton Craftaganza’s founders Zoe Edwards, she will be giving us an insight into running the craft market, what she looks for in applicants and how it fits in with her work. It’s definately not one to miss. It is happening in the usual venue of The Old Market in Hove on Wednesday 27th March, doors open at 7pm and Zoe will be speaking from 7:45, hope to see you there.

16/03/2013
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