At Recreational Wardrobe CIC, we’re stitching together a movement
—one that challenges the status quo of fashion, champions sustainability, and empowers young people to reshape their relationship with clothing. Through educational workshops, social events, and hands-on textile experiences, we’re fostering a culture where wellbeing, financial resilience, and creative freedom thrive.
This is a space for self-education and self-organising, where curiosity leads the way and every voice—whether emerging or established—holds equal weight. Here, textile professionals, students, and the public connect, collaborate, and co-create. No hierarchies. No gatekeeping. Just real conversations, bold ideas, and courageous action to reduce waste, disrupt norms, and build a more equitable future.
We believe in active participation over top-down direction, in questioning over compliance, and in community over consumption. Whether you’re here to learn, teach, or simply explore, you’ll find a platform that values your intent, your process, and your growth.
Our principles are simple:
- Consume consciously. Ask questions. Demand better.
- Create fearlessly. No pressure to produce—just permission to experiment.
- Connect kindly. This is an intersectional, feminist space where respect is non-negotiable. Racism, sexism, ableism, or any form of discrimination have no place here. We learn from mistakes, call in (not out), and grow together.
Together, let’s:
- Challenge power and privilege in how we create and share.
- Listen deeply and assume nothing.
- Speak up for justice without shame or judgement.
- Turn blind spots into learning curves.
The wardrobe of the future isn’t just about what we wear—it’s about how we think, how we make, and how we care. Join us.
Our Team
Veronika – the Founder & Chaos ‘Architect’
The world tells you to buy. Veronika is here to remind you: You already own the revolution.
Clothes aren’t just fabric—they’re time travel. A well-worn jumper is a map of winters survived; a mended seam, a quiet act of rebellion. We are what we wear, what we make, what we unmake. So why settle for a dress that doesn’t whisper (or roar) back? Before you thread another fast-fashion needle, ask: Who spun this yarn? Whose hands shaped it? Can it be unravelled, reknit, reborn? The most sustainable garment is the one already in your wardrobe—waiting for your scissors, your needle, your defiance.
Craft isn’t nostalgia. It’s applied philosophy. A dropped stitch is a lesson in patience; a repurposed shirt, a middle finger to linearity. When you darn a sock or rewire a jumper, you’re not just mending—you’re editing the story. (And if that story involves turning a duvet cover into a dress while listening to Ólafur Arnalds on repeat? Even better.)
For 20+ years, Veronika has lurked in the gaps between fashion, education, and sheer bloody-minded creativity—first as a PR wrangler for Czech fashion designers and crafters, also for IT startups. For ten years, she has nourished designers, launched projects, and smuggled craft into boardrooms at the Czech Fashion Council (she co-organised Fashion Talks, Business Workshops, and a summer school for wide-eyed rebels). Now as the founder of Recreational Wardrobe CIC and the Creators Hub, a digital labyrinth for makers who’d rather design systems than follow them, her mission is to arm you with needles, questions, and the dangerous idea that you might be the craftsperson you’ve been waiting for.
On Merseyside’s airwaves, she hosted ‘Through the Bohemian Looking Glass‘ (Wirral Wave Radio)—part radio show, part sewing circle for the soul. Think: Gorillaz meets Tolkien, with a side of subversive stitchery. Because if sustainability lacks a soundtrack, what’s the point?
She is no guru. She is co-conspirator. Whether you’re a frayed beginner or a jaded pro, if you’re ready to treat your wardrobe like a choose-your-own-adventure book, let’s talk. Just bring your own scissors.
(P.S. Her inbox runs on tea, dark chocolate, and well-timed memes. Proceed accordingly.)
Lauren – Director of Community & Sustainable Fashion
Lauren holds a BA (Hons) in Fashion Design and spent nearly a decade working in high-street fashion design before deciding to pursue a new path. Currently studying for an MA in Fashion, she is shifting her focus from designing for large corporations to fostering creativity and community engagement. After experiencing burnout and a loss of motivation in the industry, she became passionate about creating spaces where people can reconnect with their creativity and well-being. Deeply proud of her Welsh heritage, Lauren is committed to living and working in Wales, using her skills to support and enrich her local community.
Lauren’s university research is concerned with how creativity impacts our health and wellbeing, she is raising questions around what creativity means to us, how we feel when we are being creative, how we manage to find time for creativity and how important to our lives being creative is. She is encouraging an insightful and honest discussion, where individuals have a space to explain their work/ life/ creativity balance and how integral creativity is to their individual sense of wellbeing.
“Community is everything.”
Esther – Director of Vintage Fashion, Sustainable Retail & Education
Esther is a senior lecturer at Leeds Business School at Leeds Beckett University and the research lead for retail and consumer marketing, encouraging collaboration in research and publication across the school. She is passionate about the retail experience and extending research in this area, to encapsulate emotional, subjective and symbolic shopping. Esther’s research interests are vintage, slow and circular fashion retail, consumer culture, visual merchandising, and the sensory retail experience in physical stores. Prior to entering the academic world, Esther was in charge of visual merchandising for global fashion retail brands, Oasis and Coast. Esther has also run her own vintage fashion business and continues to maintain a keen interest in vintage fashion, the circular economy and sustainable lifestyles. Currently Esther is focusing on fostering student sense of belonging through student-centred popup events created as assessment activities.
Currently, Esther is researching vintage fashion pricing, the role of British Vogue in shaping the Slow Fashion agenda, ‘what academics wear’ and the role of mirrors in physical fashion and beauty shopping spaces. She is publishing from her PhD the conceptual contribution ‘Spatial Fabric’ and her innovative participative smartphone photographic methodology.
Esther extends learning beyond the classroom into the world of retail, marketing and business with real organisations and real live problems. Her extended network is always brought in to support the students with real projects, assignments and the opportunity to engage externally with future potential employers. This develops students’ transferable skills and confidence. Esther is also passionate about the students she teaches and especially their sense of belonging. She is undertaking a large and multi-departmental project with the student union, IT, wellbeing, the library, careers and admin to investigate this. By exploring the undergraduate students’ feelings about sense of belonging, Esther aims to improve wellbeing and resilience to enhance belonging, which will in turn improve student success, continuation and outcomes.
Cathy – Director of Craft Sector
Cathy is passionate about heritage, sustainability, the soil-to-soil approach and the environment. She is encouraging people to have a passion for textile crafts to keep the skills alive and maintain our wellbeing.
She often starts with raw sheep fleece to weave with, performing every part of the process, namely dyeing, spinning, knitting, weaving, and embroidering. Thus, a raw fibre is turned into a gorgeous unique hand crafted piece that you will treasure forever. She wants to share her passion for colour, textiles and craft with anyone who will listen. Cathy, as Lazykate Textiles, teaches spinning, weaving and dyeing in person and also online.