I started easy side hustle from my bedroom – now I run a successful business with celeb clients… here’s how I did it
A YOUNG woman who started selling second hand clothes online has built a successful business from her bedroom.
Freya McKee, 24, used internet tutorials to learn the basics of knitwear and marketing, before selling online.
Freya, from Richmond in Surrey, has gone on to work with Marc Jacobs in Los Angeles and her knitwear has been modelled by prominent social media influencers such as Emma Chamberlain.
Freya started selling unwanted clothes on digital marketplace Depop to help fund her photography degree.
Speaking to London Live she said: “This all started in October 2021. I was invited to sell at a pop-up store by a friend of mine.
“I was selling on Depop at the time to fund my degree, so I had these second-hand clothes that I was meant to be selling.
“I thought I might experiment a bit. I tried knitting some tops myself to bring with me.”
She then started posting videos online to promote her brand, one of which racked up 20,000 hits.
Freya said she was inspired by London’s rich fashion scene, in particular the work of the late Vivienne Westwood, who helped pioneer the punk movement in the 1970s.
She said: “[Westwood] in particular, her seditionary sex line is what inspired me to make my mohair jumpers. All the colour blocking aspects, I absolutely love it.”
Freya’s striking collection of knitwear attracted the interest of American clothing brand Marc Jacobs, who invited her to collaborate on a collection for their flagship Heaven store in Los Angeles.
She said: “They reached out to me in January 2022, just after I started making knitwear. They asked me to create a one-off line for their LA store.
“I was a huge fan of Heaven and I never thought that from my childhood bedroom I would get an opportunity like that.
“It was a fun process. Everything they commissioned me to make was a one-off, so it gave me a lot of creative freedom. It was quite surreal, seeing my pieces hung up in a place like that.”
Freya has hired several employees to handle production, leaving her as the full-time designer for the brand.
Freya, whose business is still based in the bedroom she grew up in, said she is using her latest shoot in Southwark to publicise pieces for her first ever full line of clothes.
“This a spring/summer collection,” Freya said. “This is the most effort I have ever put it into a collection. I have really tried to step up the designs from my previous work.
“These designs are more complex, incorporating more details. This means it takes more work and time, so I am hoping it will pay off.”