We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Ariana Wigdahl. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Ariana below.
Alright, Ariana thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. What do you think Corporate America gets wrong in your industry? Any stories or anecdotes that illustrate why this matters?
One of the things I believe big companies get wrong when it comes to clothing for mothers, and women in general, is that they are making clothes for aesthetic purposes only. Lots of bigger clothing brands are making products based off trends and need to get production done as quickly and cheaply as possible. This often times leads to poor patterns, and cheap materials that aren’t often well thought out. Clothing is more than just an expression of who we are, it is also something that is meant to be functional and support us in our daily lives. Its something we live in constantly. I want to make clothing that supports women. To me this means, clothing that can adjust to your body as you fluctuate in size and season of life. Clothing that helps you express who you are as a person. That is both comfortable and beautiful. All my pieces are made to be size adjustable, maternity and breastfeeding friendly, while also being comfortable and functional for daily life. I don’t want the clothing I make to make women feel shame when they gain weight, or are bloated. I don’t want them to mourn loosing a piece they love because they get pregnant, or to feel like they can’t wear something pretty because its not functional for normal chores or work.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
I am a young (25 years old) mother of two who has struggled my whole adult life with loving my ever changing body as a mom. I used to have a perfectly curated wardrobe made up of vintage and handmade clothing. I had unknowingly put much of my identity into how I dressed and presented myself to the world. When I got pregnant with my first at age 20, I slowly realized that I would not be fitting into my pre-pregnancy clothing and I felt very lost. The beautiful things I had made, now sat there making me feel worse about myself with every month that went by, I try them on and it still wouldn’t zip. I was so used to my body being the same, that when it changed I struggled to make clothes and my creativity took a deep hit as well. I ended up buying a lot of maternity clothing, which made me feel frumpy and sad, but wasn’t sure what else to wear. I then had to buy more clothes when I realized my maternity clothing wasn’t breastfeeding accessible. I struggled to continue in my craft of making clothing, until I got pregnant with my second in 2022. I had really bad prenatal depression in my first trimester, and to cope I started doing a lot of hand sewing while watching reruns of new girl. I’ve always had a love for historic fashion, and started studying it again. Clothing used to be functional throughout every season of motherhood, because it had to be. I started messing around with historic patterns and solutions to create modern clothing that would work for pregnancy, nursing, and normal wear years down the road. I ended up designing a nursing bra dress, with a removable hem that could be worn in many different ways in every stage of a women’s life. Not long after having my baby girl, I got reconnected with a old friend who works in the fair trade industry in Bangladesh. She asked if I wanted to help in designing handwoven fabrics, and I knew this would be the perfect fabric for my dress. We worked together for a few months, and she got me connected with international fair trade certified manufacturing. I’ve been iterating on this dress for about two years now,and have been selling my product since August. The fabric I use is made of 100% recycled materials from Cyclo ( https://www.cyclofibers.com/ ) that is then handwoven by artisans in rural Bangladesh at hand touch ( https://www.handtouchbd.com/ ) then sewn at Thanapara Swallows ( https://thanaparaswallows.org/ ) My three step supply chain is completely fair trade and has a massive impact on the planet and the people who make it. My goal is to create clothing that empowers mothers all over the world, from the ones who make the clothes to the ones who wear them. This has been such a journey for me as I find a piece of myself again, and hopefully help other moms do the same.
Can you talk to us about manufacturing? How’d you figure it all out? We’d love to hear the story.
Manufacturing was the last piece of the puzzle I needed to start the clothing brand. I had done small side hustles in the past of handmade goods, and I knew as a mom I did not have the time to make every dress I sold. So it was either find someone else to do it, or don’t start the business. This was probably the most intimidating part, because I had heard lots of stories of people struggling to get manufacturers to take them seriously with small MOQs and being new to the industry. My friend and mentor Jackie Corlett (Who runs Motif fabrics, where I source my handwoven fabrics from) Was in Bangladesh around the time I was working on this project, and she was meeting with Santo at Thanapara Swallows. This is a fair trade manufacturer in Bangladesh that does small batch production, and are so gracious to work with people at any skill level within the industry. I was shocked by how low their MOQs were, how gracious they were to work with my paper patterns i had made and graded and use a combination of video and written instructions for my tech pack. Anyone who has been apart of the the clothing industry probably thinks thats an odd way of going about it, but I didn’t have the money to hire someone to digitalize and grade all my patterns, and make a traditional tech pack for me. I was determined not to go into debt for this business, and did all of the startup work myself. I am so grateful for the time the seamstresses spent on zoom calls with me, to understand the complexities of my design and make the dresses in small batches.
We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?
I launched my brand in August of 2024, but I started building my social media in April of that year. As soon as I knew I was actually going to take the leap and start this brand, I wanted to start getting people interested. So I took my sample dresses I had made and started making videos about them, and how to style them. I actually cringe so much at the videos I first posted, because they don’t communicate the product well, but I was starting and it worked. I posted 1-2 times a day for 2 months, and in May had my first reel hit 1M views. This was crazy and I was not prepared for it to do so well. I threw the post up quickly while on a weekend trip, and overnight the reel had over a hundred comments of people asking for the dress. This had me excited, but I had no way of collecting emails yet, and my product was still in development, so that part was really stressful. After about 6 weeks of that it was slow going again, but I kept iterating on ideas and wording for my reels. I had another one do well right before my launch in August as well. I had just under 2,500 followers and 400 email subscribers when I launched my brand. I sold 12 dresses by the end of the year. The funnel of leads is insane, and something I still find frustrating to this day. I would say the best piece of advice I have for building social media is consistency. I know its cliche but its true. Everytime I’ve had a reel do well and gain a new chunk of my audience, it has been when I just posted something quick because I needed to check it off my list for the day. Pick how often you want to post, and then follow through with it. Post when you don’t feel like it. Batch content if you need to. Be your authentic self, and don’t overthink it. Trends don’t matter that much. Just start, and you’ll slowly get better. You gotta be cringe to get where you want in the world, there is no way around it. I also am apart of a community (Shoutout to Make New Marketing!) where I get post templates, lists of weekly trending sounds, and help with any questions I have. This is really helpful. If you can do something like this I’d recommend it. I used to get lost in the scroll and waist so much of my work hours looking for audios and ideas for posts. This has made my life so much easier and keeps me more focused and efficient during my work day.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://gleanandgrace.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gleanandgrace/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61560061888674
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ariana-wigdahl-120807315/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@Gleanandgrace
- Other: Substack – https://substack.com/@gleanandgrace
Image Credits
Faith Crane