ENTERPRISING JOURNEYS
Ewe beauty… the wool wedding gowns set to disrupt the bridal industry
The Founders
Nikki Atkinson
A sustainable, luxury collection of gowns and wedding dresses made from Australian merino wool and other textiles.
“I want to revolutionise the bridal market.”
“My location. Living and running my label in the bush near the Flinders Ranges makes it more difficult to get in front of clients But I drive into Adelaide regularly for fittings… and I offer fittings over Zoom, which works well!”
The Mission
“I feel most confident in my business when I’m designing, sketching, playing with fabrics, and just being creative in my studio” – Nikki Atkinson
Nikki Atkinson was running a bridal boutique in Adelaide when she was swept off her feet by a wool grazier.
She fell in love, got married and moved to the South Australian bush in 2003.
But she never lost her passion for designing couture gowns and found new inspiration in the rolling paddocks and shearing sheds of her new home – a merino sheep property in the Flinders Ranges.
Why not turn the wool into dresses?
“My husband dragged me to the countryside, and it allowed me to indulge a dream I’d held for a long time of making sustainable dresses out of Australian merino wool,” she says.
“Twenty years ago, a friend wanted a wedding gown made from it, but I couldn’t find the fabric anywhere. That always stuck with me, and it’s how I came up with the idea.”
The idea percolated over the years as she created bespoke dresses and wedding gowns from silks and other mixed fibres from her studio in Wilmington, three hours north of Adelaide.
In 2022, her dream finally came to fruition as she launched her first range of five merino wool dresses under the brand Horrocks Vale Collections, named after the family property.
“If you had told me 10 years ago I’d be designing wedding gowns made out of wool I would have told you you were crazy,” she says on her website.
“But I am now so excited to be able to bring my two loves together and create a garment that not only conveys classic beauty, but aligns with an environmentally friendly movement in the fashion industry.”
She says rather than being “scratchy”, the fibre is softer than cashmere, is breathable and six times finer than human hair.
“I’ve become utterly obsessed with the fibre for textile use, consistently amazed at its unexpected silky soft texture and amazing application qualities,” she says.
“And better yet, it’s sustainable. Merino wool makes up just eight per cent of the world’s fibre for apparel – it’s true luxury.”
The Passion
Most days of the week, Nikki can be found designing and stitching her range in a renovated church in Wilmington, 8km from home.
She works with just two other manufacturers and has recently recruited a third in Melbourne.
“I feel most confident in my business when I’m designing, sketching, playing with fabrics, and just being creative in my studio,” she says.
“And I just love coming up with new ideas, new concepts and new ways of using wool.”
She says the home-grown wool is a novel and sustainable substitute for polyester and is biodegradable, comfortable, and non-allergenic.
“It’s for those reasons that wool is the future of sustainable fashion and, thankfully for the planet, is being used in more and more garments globally,” she says.
“Wool is 100 percent natural, renewable and biodegradable, meaning less carbon emissions into our air and less polluted water, and it does not contribute to microplastic pollution in our oceans or on our land.”
The wedding collection aims to be inclusive with stunning pants and beaded tops for people who don’t want to wear a dress on their big day.
Meeting TV star Catriona Rowntree, the merino wool ambassador for Australian Wool Innovation, proved a boon for her blossoming idea.
Rowntree requested a merino wool dress for an AWI event, which Atkinson designed and named the ‘Catriona’.
“She asked me how I came up with the idea, and I told her my story, which was that I married a farmer. She laughed and said, ‘Didn’t we all!’.”
Atkinson, the South Australian winner of the 2024 AgriFutures Rural Women’s Award, is now on a mission to “revolutionise” the bridal industry globally and showcase the fine, Australian-grown wool as an alternative to mass-produced polyester gowns.
The Challenges
Starting a new business is daunting at the best of times, but Nikki says it can be even more challenging in a male-dominated agricultural region.
“Sometimes you get that feeling that you’re not being listened to, or you’ve been dismissed, because you’re not the one that’s on the land, doing the heavy lifting that the men are doing,” she says.
She says it was a huge learning curve to transform her business from creating custom-made, one-off creations for clients into a fashion range ready for wholesale.
“The fashion industry has changed a lot,” she says.
“When I worked for fashion houses in the ‘90s, we still had skilled manufacturing in Australia. But now I’ve discovered we barely have the specialised skill set in Australia any more. This has been a huge challenge for my business as I am passionate about Australian-made products and keeping skills here in Australia. We do not want to lose specialised skills, and it has become an issue as the generation that has those skills is ageing, and we have a huge gap.”
The age-old question of how she juggles a business and a family often rears its head, too.
“The question I get asked the most as a female founder is: ‘How do you do it all when you’ve got three children, a family, a business and a family business, and volunteering?’” she says.
“And my answer always is that you generally just have to be very strict on your time and go with your passion. But also be strict on your time with your family and your commitments. Don’t try and do it all, just do a little bit at a time.”
She says the business landscape is always changing, which is something she loves.
“The one thing in business that I find that continues to fuel my curiosity is that it is never the same,” she says.
“You can’t just wake up the next morning and think what you did 10 years ago is going to work. There’s always going to be hurdles that come up, and it’s how you perceive the problem and find strength in that problem that will help you grow.”
The Future
With a dream of seeing her dresses gracing the windows of bridal houses in London, Paris and Madrid, Nikki set off on an exploratory tour with ten designs in 2024.
She showcased the line at Bridal Week, Harrogate in the UK, and knocked on the doors of stores around Paris, using Google translate to pitch her dresses to store owners.
“I learned a lot, and a few orders came out of it too,” she says.
“It was extremely interesting, and there was a lot of interest in the sustainability element. “They all noted the quality of my gowns because they are not mass-produced. Going to Paris, I really had to step out of my comfort zone. You have to get rid of your ego. I’m not the best saleswoman in the world but I am very passionate about what I do.. and I think that came across.”
Words of Wisdom
Follow your Passion: “Your passion will get you up in the morning. It will keep you alive and keep you going.”
Kick self-doubt to the kerb: “Self-doubt will always creep in, but it's how you handle it that is important. You need to be confident and not worry about the self-doubt.”
Have fun along the way: “I can take things too seriously at times, but it’s important to find joy in what you are doing - otherwise, what is the point?”
Show humanity: “Just be kind to yourself and to others.”
