Levi’s Shape What’s To Come initiative

Last week the lovely folks over at Levi’s invited me to the launch party for their new global initiative – Shape What’s To Come. In a nutshell, this initiative aims to give a platform to young, entrepreneurial women to share common interests and seek support from like-minded women. I really like the concept, career-wise and even blog-wise it’s sometimes really hard to know what to do next so this community for guidance and direction sounds fab. It’s not just a fashion or blogging this either, though one of the mentors is Kristin Knox of The Clothes Whisperer, there are mentors across music, media, social change and everything in between. 

On the night, there was a panel discussion chaired by Annie Mac with 6 ambassadors from different backgrounds. It was really inspirational hearing their stories from how they’ve achieved their dreams. Here is a run down of the ambassadors:Patternity – Anna Murray and Grace Winteringham set up design agency Patternity which specialises in pattern design in furniture and fashion. The girls really just needed a creative outlet to showcase all of their ideas and they knew they had to go out on a limb. Justice Williams – Social change campaigner and the youngest black woman in the UK to be awarded with an MBE. She got into social change because she wanted a reason to get out of bed, she knew there was more to life than waking up, going to work for someone else and coming back home. She found that helping others has boosted her own confidence and self belief. Kristin Knox – Founder of The Clothes Whisperer and author of Alexander McQueen: Genius of a generation. Going from being an academic to a fashion blogger, her biggest piece of advise was not to box yourself in, if you’re not 100% sure what you want to do, put yourself out there. Kirstin shared her experiences of blogging, in particular the difficulties of essentially being a one person publishing house. She also touched on the difficulty of turning a blog into a business, as there’s no business model for this yet. Also, businesses don’t realise the monetary value of blogging and bloggers which is a huge challenge, there’s a lot of education to be done. Ikonika – Acclaimed DJ and songwriter who rose to fame via the internet. She knew music was her passion from early on and left uni to pursue her dream. She advised ‘follow your heart’ and highlighted the importance to have ambition and a dream. Kathryn Ferguson – Self taught filmmaker who’s been featured in Vogue.She spoke about her initial struggle and how amazing it is to make a living out of her passion.