Yumi
Bold print, cheerfully unbothered by whether it is too much.
In 1995, Camden Market was full of independent fashion, music and people making it up as they went along. Clare and Uttam, husband and wife, took a stall there and sold knitwear from Uttam's home country, Nepal. It went well enough that they are still at it three decades later, still family-run, which in this industry counts as a very long time indeed.
Designed in London, in a room, by people.
Every collection still starts with an in-house design team in London, which sounds grander than a room where somebody is arguing about whether a print is too much. It usually is, slightly, and that is rather the point. Bold dresses, cosy knits, and the day-to-night pieces that quietly do most of the work while the dress collects the compliments.
The disasters they list themselves.
Knitted jumpers with daisies that looked more like fried eggs. Rainbow jackets whose colour nearly always ran. Several break-ins, and 821 curries eaten along the way. It would have been easy to write that history as a smooth ascent. Yumi's version reads more like a series of near misses with a shop attached, which is considerably more convincing, and is why we like them.
Find them here.
Have a browse through the dresses and skirts, the knitwear, the coats and jackets, or the wider women's fashion edit. Yumi sits among our family-owned brands and the rest of our British brands. There are more stories of this sort in the journal.
