How to Manifest Your Creative Community with Rhi Dancey
Make it stand out
Rhi Dancey is part of the new generation of designers creating sexy, sustainable and size inclusive clothing. Starting her brand on resale platforms before developing her own digital site on Squarespace, Dancey used the tools at hand to create a brand that stands out against the rest.
Ethical clothing utilising deadstock fabrics, created on a small, personal scale is a much needed respite during the time of the fast fashion boom, and Dancey makes it easier than ever to look hot while remaining environmentally conscious.
From putting together a website that represents you to finding your place in the creative industry, Dancey is giving us her top tips for making a joyful business.
Balance is Key When it Comes to a Creative Business
Keeping up with the momentum of sending emails, writing social media captions and completing that to-do list can be challenging enough, but doing this whilst maintaining a creative vision is a whole different ball park. Over the years, Dancey’s work ethic has developed with the aim of avoiding the dreaded burn-out: “I think it's an ongoing struggle to be honest. Creating that perfect balance is really difficult. The first two years were working weekends, basically working all the time. I was losing my love for it as well, which is really sad.”
She continues, “I got to a breaking point, then realised that I needed to reevaluate how I was juggling things. In order to be creative, you need to have capacity and space and an environment in which you can do that. You can't force it. It's just about listening to your body and being kind to yourself and just trying to manage your time, so that you're not burning yourself out, so you have that space and that capacity in which to be excited about the projects you're working on.”
Become a D.M. Warrior
Starting out in any industry can be daunting, and fashion’s hierarchy can be difficult to navigate if you’re not already well connected. Dancey’s less than savoury experience studying fashion in Brighton paved the way for her drive for creating community. She explains that she “felt like fashion was quite isolated and sometimes in the fashion industry there is a cliquey energy, where it doesn't really fully support equality and collaborative projects.”
After leaving university and being faced with a lockdown in 2021, Dancey reevaluated her outlook. After developing her brand from a reselling app to her own Squarespace website, she recognised the importance of reaching out. “I thought, this is a bit silly. I still love making clothes. I love working with artists and collaborating with people. Maybe I just need to change this voice in my head. If people aren't gonna reach out to me and want to collaborate with me, maybe I just need to be the initiator.” Dancey enthuses, “I dropped my fear and just turned into a DM warrior. If I like someone’s work I'm just gonna be like, let's do something and if people say no, then not take that to heart. There's plenty of reasons why maybe people don't have the capacity to do things, but from what I found, like nine times out of 10 people were just equally excited to actually want to work on something together.”
Really Get to Know Any Collaborators
Sliding into DMs and mastering the friendly yet professional email is all well and good, but the most important thing is being on the same wavelength, something that Dancey believes you can only really discover face-to-face. “I really always try to meet someone in person. I think speaking digitally and emailing fervently is great, but I think meeting someone in person, or having a video call with someone where you can actually really get more of an energy and a vibe about someone really helps. So I always try that early on.” She explains, “I'm quite a yes person, but I think recently I’m more selective about who I work with.”
Take the Leap to Expand Your Business
When creating a business, a brand, or any kind of personal yet public facing project, you’re going to inevitably need a leap of faith - should you invest in the project with more money, time and practice to develop it into something larger, or should you stick to what you know? This can be daunting, but Dancey explains that with the simplicity of Squarespace she was able to take the first step to what Rhi Dancey is today.
“I was still working from my kitchen and my living room, and just kind of coming to this realisation that this is the point now where I either continue to pursue this and put all my capacity and energy into this, or it was just a lockdown thing.” Dancey describes. “So six months in, it was like, ‘Okay, I need to get a studio space.’ And with that, I was like, if I'm getting a studio space, I need to get a website. I wanted to make it work, I wanted it to withstand this lockdown hobby. I'm not a coder, I'm not very technical, I'm quite an analogue person. I like doing things with my hands. That’s how I ended up using Squarespace because everything that I've wanted to do, I've been able to do on there.” Rhi enthuses how exciting it was to be able to host her own store on her own website, whereas she previously had to rely on third party marketplaces online.
Find Joy in your Creative Community
Even with having a growing social media presence and a flashy website, running a business can be lonely, which is why it’s important to remember to check in with the creatives around you. Not only has Dancey made it a priority to catch up with her peers on a regular basis, but she helped to establish a collaboration community for creatives where artists and creators can hold each other accountable - not just for getting work done on time, but for enjoying the work that they are doing.
“If you're just there just with your ideas and trying to materialise them, it can be quite internal. Especially being a brand owner, fundamentally everything comes back to me. It can be quite isolating sometimes. That's why I really love collaborating and why I wanted to set out to create this community where people who may be in similar positions to me could actually kind of come together and support each other.”
Photos: Lewis Vorn | Makeup: Georgia Hope | Hair: Sky Cripps-Jackson | Words: Charlotte Amy Landrum
