Hi, we're the founders of Melyr. British slow-fashion womenswear

Marc spent his working life in luxury fashion, heading up a number of Liverpool's most prestigious stores. Amy was born into hairdressing, enjoying many years on the salon floor before our second child arrived and one of us needed to be home on Saturdays.

When COVID came, and everything changed. We made the extremely difficult decision to wind the remaining retail store down

At the same time, something else was changing. I was in perimenopause, and my body was changing faster than my wardrobe could keep up. Trousers I had worn for years no longer fastened. Tops that fitted my bust swamped everything else. I went looking for clothes made for the body I had now, and couldn't find them anywhere.

So, at a time in life when most people are slowing down, we started again. We sold our home and bet everything on one idea: clothes that keep up with the women who wear them.

I bring the ideas. Marc brings the calm. My brain runs at a hundred miles an hour, and Marc is the one who quietly keeps us on course. From the very first day, he has believed in me far more than I believe in myself. Twenty-five years in, it's still the best partnership I know.

I have ADHD with rejection sensitive dysphoria, a trait that makes the smallest sign of disapproval land far harder than it should. Menopause brought its own companions: brain fog, insomnia, anxiety, and prolonged sadness. I choose to retreat from the world and hide. Some women are lucky to pass through with a few night sweats and a flash of temper. Many of us don't.

Starting a business that asked me to be its face during this period was somewhat foolish. Posting into the silence of social media. Each time, a quiet voice telling me I'm embarrassing myself, and each time I have to decide not to listen. Some days I win that argument. Some days I need to rest before I try again.

Behind the brand there are just two of us, doing the work of twenty. We design, handle customer service, photography, modelling, marketing, and every email, parcel and return. We are learning as we go, and we would rather tell you so than pretend 

We are a proud neurodivergent family, yet It took raising our own children to realise that the "lazy" labels we'd carried since school were never true. Watching our children flourish with additional support has changed the way we see ourselves. Traditional education is only one route to success. 

As we grow, that's the message we most want MELYR to carry: there's more than one way to shine.

And then there's you. Hundreds of women write to tell us in their own words:  how Melyr makes them feel. On the days I doubt all of this, that is what I read.

Our jersey tops are made in Portugal, known for producing the finest T-shirts, in LENZING™ ECOVERO™ viscose: fluid, soft, and cut to drape rather than cling. Our trousers come from a Turkey. knitwear and dresses in China. We work only with factories whose people are treated as we would treat our own, and we pay more to be certain of it.

We produce in small numbers, and don't dump what doesn't sell. Some pieces from our first collection are still with us, and we're at peace with that. There is no parent company behind us and no investor to absorb a mistake. Every piece we order is our family's money and our risk, so we make only what women genuinely want, in quantities we can stand behind.

Which is why we grow slowly, and responsibly. When a shape works, we don't replace it. We make it again, in new colours and new fabrics, so the style you trust always feels the way you remember.

Before you trust a brand, you look for yourself in it. So every MELYR piece is photographed on real women of different sizes, heights and ages, myself included. You'll see how a top falls across a fuller bust, how a trouser sits on a taller frame, where a pleat lands above a size 18. Where a style runs generous or long, we'll tell you plainly.

Nothing fits every body, but we design for the bodies brands forget exsist, and we widen that circle with every collection. We've just introduced a size 24, in our new MELYRFLEX Ravello trouser

Customer service is old-fashioned, by choice. If we think you've ordered the wrong size, we'll call or email before it's dispatched as we want to make every experience personal