We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Abigail Miner. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Abigail below.

Alright, Abigail thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Can you tell us about an important lesson you learned while working at a prior job?

Although not a typical path for a founder of a fashion brand, my formal educational and professional experiences have mostly been in the field of electrical engineering. From the time I was a child, I have always had an appreciation and love for fashion and design, however, I was always a lover of classic designs and simple silhouettes instead of the obvious “Avant Garde” indicators of a future fashion designer. Luckily for me, I also was blessed with a strong aptitude for math and sciences and was able to lean into those talents all the way through grade school, high school, and university, eventually landing myself a degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Waterloo. After graduation, I found myself working in building design on projects in downtown Toronto where I was able to wear my favorite fashion pieces everyday, absolutely loving my niche of passions.

When the pandemic hit in 2020, I think many of our worlds were shaken and many of our mindsets were challenged. For me, with the lack of my social life, I was forced to find another source of joy and I found myself questioning if I could use my engineering drafting skills and apply it to create my own fashion designs. I had very low expectations for this new hobby, but to my surprise, not only did my engineering experiences assist in being able to bring the designs in my mind onto a virtual paper, but I was fortunate enough to discover a missing piece of myself that actually brings me so much joy. After two years of slowly learning, allowing myself to grow as a business owner and as a designer, I have started to build a community through the Ambrose Collective of like minded women who have similar tastes and motivations as I do.

So many of the processes that I use as a fashion brand owner are practices that I learned from my engineering experiences. Fashion design/construction and building design surprisingly have quite a few crossovers – beginning with drafting high-level designs, sourcing materials, consulting with manufacturers, and even going to final design phases and asking for feedback from reviewers are all common steps. Once I decided to use my experiences and combine them with my passion for fashion design, everything changed. I am very grateful to my past self for not trying to fit myself into a specific box of “electrical engineer” or “fashion designer” and that I allowed myself to share my unique views and mindsets. I have something special to offer to the world and I’m excited to do well by my community and hopefully inspire a few more ethical and creative minds to do the same.

Abigail, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

The Ambrose Collective is a feminine clothing brand that creates modern, classic pieces with the goal to have multiway pieces in neutral colors to last the test of time. Our pieces are all locally made and ethically sourced, in order to both support the local economy and attempt to cut down on the environmental impact that is associated with importing supplies. For us, its not just about the product, it is also about the creation process of the product and the lifetime after it’s in the hands of our customers.

We are inspired by our busy, motivated and forever moving customers to create pieces of clothing that are able to be used in multiple ways and are adjustable to form to your body exactly the way it is. Overconsumption is a constant battle that we are trying to overcome and we hope that through making products that have flexibility in their styling as well as their sizing, we are giving more opportunities for the garments to have moments to be celebrated in.

Our brand identity is rooted in making feminine people feel good in whatever they wear and it is our responsibility to do our part behind the scenes to make sure that as a company, we are putting in as many environmental and ethical practices into the process before it gets to you. We are focused on continuing to be an example of a fashion company that can move a little slower and take our community into consideration as we make decisions to create our beautiful products. The Ambrose Collective will forever strive to be a company that is as beautiful on the inside as it shows the world it is on the outside.

Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?

In this age of digital technology, it is so easy to curate your social media to only show your best version of yourself and hide the rest, and this is no exception for companies. We at the Ambrose Collective thrive on being authentic and openly ourselves at every chance we can. We attempt to share small wins, big struggles, and everything in between along our journey. Through our transparency we’ve been able to connect with more people on a deeper level than we ever could through pretending to be perfect.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

The hardest part about becoming an entrepreneur is having the desire to become one, the second hardest is having the courage to launch your brand. Especially when it comes to small businesses, so many of these companies are passion projects that had been in the works for years. So much love goes into every decision and in the beginning it’s easy and fun to create a brand that is fully and entirely your dream. However, at some point you need to have to believe in yourself and your business enough to put yourself out there. No matter what we do, people will judge us and all the decisions that we had made in our businesses so far so its only natural to hold back on launching until you feel as if your brand is perfect. But after years in the corporate world and a few years in this world, I can vouch for the fact that no matter what you put out there, you’re going to make changes to it – and that’s okay! How lucky are we to be able to take feedback and iterate our products to be allowed to improve? More importantly, when we begin to give ourselves the grace of living and learning from our mistakes, we set an example to those watching that they too are allowed to learn along the way. I know we are taught to strive for perfection, but done is so much better than perfect.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.theambrosecollective.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theambrosecollective
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/theambrosecollective
• Other: tiktok: @theambrosecollective