With Mother’s Day being celebrated tomorrow, we are very excited to kick off another one of our blog post series – Meet The Mother Maker.
So, it is with great pleasure that we present to you, the dynamic sister duo behind the children’s fashion label – Wolf & Rita. We have long been a fan of their work since their beginning in 2013 and have long been singing their praises. Both working mothers, Sonia and Claudia have transformed their family run company into an innovative fashion brand that breaks the boundaries and moulds of children’s fashion and their artistic approach to design, enlightens and inspires the industry. We speak to them about making it work, where they draw their inspiration from and how they have built a successsful fashion brand and grown their collections into womenswear and menswear…
” Wolf & Rita : We cultivate the savoir faire and inspiration of the past to create childrens wear for every day use. “
Every collection, we are blown away by their creativity and unique designs. Their recent SS18 collection Hi Mister Ed! highlights include the Alice Tencel denim dress in trapeze like shape with small collar , the Adelia blouse in Pistachio, Pink and Blue with draped shoulder details in accent colours and my absolute favourite swimsuits particularly the Iris Red and White candy striped one piece. We got to find out a bit more behind the brand, where they draw their inspiration from and what its like to be working mothers.
Patricia Blue
Sleeveless Knitted Jumpsuit
€78.00
SHOP NOhttps://www.wolfandrita.com/shop/hi-mister-ed/patricia-blue/W
Where are you both from? Describe us your childhood, and how its impacted you both as mothers and women in business today.
“We were both born in Guimaraes, Portugal. We had a simple and easy going childhood, close to our cousins, aunts and uncles, grandparents. We believe this has developed in us a deep sense of our roots and a sense of family and belonging. It is almost as if we are a part of a “tribe”. As mothers we are the same, we help and are helped by close members of the family, and this greatly helps our business.
It seems like you all have such a strong family relationship, having worked in your fathers business for all those years. Whats it like working with your sister now? How do you split the work??
“Claudia is the designer and she is in charge of the creative department. I take care of sales and accounts. We do quite different parts of the work but they are complementary. We get along well and help each other whenever necessary.”
“It is almost as if we are a part of a “tribe”. As mothers we are the same, we help and are helped by close members of the family, and this greatly helps our business.”
We know that the years of experience gained making shirts in your fathers company enabled you both with the tools and ideas to create something of your own but what inspired you to go into children’s designer wear??
We thought it would be more interesting to experiment and create in the childrens wear world because we felt that this would allow us to be more free and creative, since we believe childrens wear is still a growing market and it is still possible to have a positive impact on this area.
” ..childrenswear is still a growing market and it is still possible to have a positive impact on this area..”
We see you also provide a small selected capsule range of clothing for adults. Is this something you do for every collection?
“We have tried this due to the positive feedback towards our patterns and styles so we had quite a high amount of requests from our customers to develop an adult line. Our SS17 collection was the first we are doing adult pieces but we sold out of most of the adult pieces, so the expectations are good to continue doing these.”
FOLLOW THEM ON INSTAGRAM
TRAVELLING TO PORTUGUAL?
(The girls share their favourite places with us )
