About Us

Where we began

Before MELYR, there were two careers and twenty-five years together. Marc spent his working life in designer menswear, across some of Liverpool's largest stores. I owned several hair salons and loved them, until our second child arrived and one of us needed to be home on Saturdays.

When COVID came, we made the slow, difficult decision to wind the menswear business down. Around the same time, my body began to change in ways I didn't yet have a name for. It was perimenopause, and it moved faster than my wardrobe could. Trousers I had worn for years no longer fastened. Tops that fitted my bust overwhelmed everything else. I looked for something better than the high street, and found nothing made for the body I actually had.

Perhaps you know the feeling. The wardrobe that used to work. The slow, private conclusion that you are what has gone wrong. Your body is not the problem. The clothes are.

So we sold our home and put everything we had into making better ones.

Some would call that reckless. I'd call it conviction, which, with an ADHD brain, can look remarkably similar.

MELYR was never Marc's dream. Menswear was his world. He said yes because he wanted to see me shine, and from the very first day he has believed in me far more than I have believed in myself.

The part most brands leave out

I have ADHD and rejection sensitive dysphoria, a trait that makes the smallest sign of disapproval land far harder than it should. Perimenopause brought its own companions: brain fog on top of brain fog, insomnia, anxiety, low mood, and a retreat from the world I mostly chose for myself. Some women pass through it with a few night sweats and a flash of temper. Many don't.

And so, at the moment I most wanted to disappear, I started a business that asked me to be its face. To post into silence, then post again. Each time, a quiet voice tells 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 two of us, doing the work of twenty. Design, sampling, photography, modelling, marketing, the website, every email, every parcel, every return. We are learning much of it as we go, and we would rather tell you so than pretend otherwise.

Why we keep going

Our family is our why. Ours is a neurodivergent household, and for years Marc and I explained away our own lack of qualifications as laziness. Watching our children flourish in an environment that understands how they learn changed the way we see ourselves. Traditional education is one route to success, not the only one. As MELYR grows, supporting projects that show neurodivergent children exactly that is the cause we most want the brand to stand behind.

And then there is you. Hundreds of reviews, emails, calls and messages from women who wear what we make and tell us it works. On the days I doubt all of this, that is what I read.

How we make

Our jersey tops are made in Portugal, where the best men's T-shirt brands produce their finest T-shirts, in LENZING™ ECOVERO™ viscose: fluid, soft, and cut to drape rather than cling. Our trousers come from a Turkish mill whose fabrics we fell for. Our knitwear and dresses are made by a skilled, accredited factory 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 we 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. No endless markdowns to fund the next season. Nothing sent to landfill.

Which is why we grow slowly, and deliberately. 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.

Real women, real fit

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 fashion tends to forget, and we widen that circle with every collection. We've just introduced a size 24, and our new MELYRFLEX Ravello trouser is the first to come in a long leg.

Service here is old-fashioned, by choice. If we think you've ordered the wrong size, we'll call before it's dispatched. Every email is answered by one of us. Returns and exchanges are free, and you can try before you buy.