Welcome to The Scoop, a weekly email series in which I quiz fashion insiders on the stories of the week.
This week’s guests are Nikki Campbell and Sophie Coote, who, in 2014, co-founded the contemporary womenswear brand SIR. after seeing a gap in the market for minimalist separates, intimates, and ready-to-wear (which make up the acronym SIR.!)
SIR. is one of those DTC brands that exploded in Instagram’s heyday, leading, in many ways, to the e-commerce reckoning of a few years ago. Sophie and Nikki are traveling to Paris next week to celebrate more than a decade in business, so I called them up for a chat.
Hi Sophie and Nikki, what’s the scoop?
Nikki: We’re gearing up for a big summer because we’re in Australia, and it’s also our brand’s anniversary celebration. We are about to launch our anniversary collection with a campaign we shot in Greece. Then, from September 30 to October 6, we will be in Paris with our first solo showroom space.
Is this your first time at Paris Fashion Week?
Nikki: We’ve shown a little outside of Paris before, but this time we will be in Rue de Thorigny, which is central and also our own space.
Sophie: We are at a turning point for the brand; it feels like we are entering a new chapter, and we really wanted to bring it to the global arena in a more physical way. We want to show our clients what we want the brand to look, feel, smell, and sound like. We’ll also have a cocktail event, which is more about community-building.
And like everyone else, you also went to Greece this summer — but to shoot your campaign.
Nikki: We shot in Hydra last week. We photographed eight models, and it was the first time in a few years we’d done such a large-scale group shoot. We were very specific with our costumes for this project because we wanted it to be a representation of the muses of the brand. Some of the girls that we shot, like Tahnee Atkinson, were some of the first talent we ever worked with.
How have you seen the market change since you have been in business?
Sophie: There’s a move towards personalization and in-person retail experiences — things that have to do with community. It’s interesting for us because we get to connect to our customers in a new way.
What are some tentpole moments for the brand from the past decade or so?
Sophie: Since we launched as a digital brand, expanding into international wholesale was a big moment, especially for us as an Australian brand. Barneys was our first international account in 2018. We’ve had quite a few pinch-me moments since then; our expansion into retail post-Covid was another.
Nikki: Yes, bringing the brand to life in this tangible way was incredible. And getting to work with some amazing creatives and people around the globe is very surreal all the time. The campaign we just shot was an example of that.
Sophie: Just seeing people we admire wear the brand has also been huge.
Nikki: We still freak out when we see girls in New York wearing it down the street.
You really grew your brand on Instagram. What are your rules for doing that?
Nikki: It was so different then compared to now. At that time, growing a brand was as simple as posting a photo, and everyone saw it, right?
Sophie: We started by posting just sneak peeks for three months before launching, while no one really knew what this brand was. The night we launched on Instagram, we had 10,000 followers — and back then, that meant that 10,000 people saw what we did. We kind of made back our savings very, very quickly.
Nikki: These days, we have a full omnichannel approach to our marketing strategy. On Instagram specifically, we try to capture a lot more of our voice as a brand. I guess it’s not just about the product but about the entire world. People don’t want to see the product anymore; they want to see what goes on behind closed doors.
That reality TV aspect of socials is quite interesting. Would it even be possible to grow a brand the way you did just over a decade ago?
Nikki: Absolutely not. We kind of had divine timing with the algorithm. I think it’s so hard to cut through now. It’s not impossible, but...
Sophie: Not with the budget we had. We didn’t pay for marketing for about four years because we were able to sort of ride that organic wave. It would look different financially.
What are you excited to see or do in Paris, besides the showroom?
Nikki: When in Paris, we go out to the vintage flea markets for inspiration. We get lots of little pieces of lace and things that we develop. We’re also shooting our Spring campaign while in Paris.
You only shot your Fall campaign last week.
Sophie: We’re Australian, so we try to do everything in one trip!
Catch up with last week’s Scoop with Vogue Italia’s Francesca Ragazzi here.