Spending mere minutes talking to Leigh-Anne Pinnock is enough to make you feel lazy AF. This year alone as part of Little Mix, Leigh-Anne has both performed at – and won – a Brit Award, she’s climbed Mount Kilimanjaro raising millions for Comic Relief and and she emotionally opened up to GLAMOUR about facing racism and her own insecurities. In the words of the woman herself, “I’ve been very, very busy, I haven’t been able to process anything! But I have been on a massive high.”
Now more confident than ever, Leigh-Anne is launching her own bikini line, In ‘A’Seashell with one of her closest gal pals, Gabrielle Urquhart, which serves up swimwear that promotes self-love and heavy helpings of body confidence by ensuring it caters to all body shapes and the imagery is fully representative of the world we ACTUALLY live in.
Here, Leigh-Anne opens up about building a swimwear brand from scratch, becoming a badass business woman and why body positivity is so close to the heart of her brand…
Watch our empowering and emotional interview with Leigh-Anne above
It all started from a conversation in Miami and four months later we were visiting factories in China…
It all started as a conversation in Miami with one of my closest friends, Gabby, and she told me she wanted to do a bikini line and her boyfriend had bought her a sewing machine. I said, ‘seriously? Because that is exactly what I want to do!’; I have always wanted to do my own swimwear line and we didn’t even know it to that moment. Four months later we are in China picking our factory and picking fabrics. That was a crazy experience. It was surreal and really daunting, I couldn’t believe I was actually there! We have done it from scratch, with it just being us two for the whole thing, we have done everything ourselves and there have been a lot of set backs along the way. But we have got here and launch day is finally upon us.
I wanted to fund the brand myself because I wanted complete control…
When I am on my own, I get nervous and have butterflies. But when I am with Gabby I feel at ease and know I am doing it with her, I just feel more comfortable. I couldn’t do this on my own to be honest. The problems came from what you can actually do design wise, cost wise and timing wise – there were a lot of set-backs like that. We actually wanted to launch last summer, which was stupid of us, I don’t know why we thought we could do it within two months! It’s so expensive to launch your own brand too, I didn’t realise at first how much money you had to put into it as well, it takes a lot. I funded it myself as I wanted complete control. I didn’t want to do it for a brand, I wanted to do my own thing, that was really important.
I wanted the casting of the campaign to be as representative as possible…
I didn’t want to use just the usual stick thin models. I think it’s so nice and refreshing to see real women wear it – that was a big part of the campaign. It was important for me that everyone felt represented. I was looking at all races, all shapes – I didn’t want it to represent just one woman. I wanted everyone to feel included by In ‘A’ Seashell as far as possible. Anybody is a beach body is what I love to say. We want you to go out there, rock it and love it regardless of body hang ups. We want you to feel incredible!
We all have beach body panics…
We all worry about being beach body ready. It’s one of those really annoying things worrying about having the perfect bod. But really what is the perfect body? That is what our brand is about, anyone can wear it, feel good in it and so you should! I want this message to be absolutely love yourself and feel yourself.
What I have learnt about myself through becoming a designer…
That I am an extremely hard worker! I don’t really take a day off, it’s constantly go, go, go! I am impressed with myself that I am actually a business woman and I can say that. I am proud that I have managed to put this business together from nothing.
The me starting out this journey would say…
She would say you go, girl! In amongst juggling things with Little Mix to actually set this up, I can’t quite believe it, climbing Kilimanjaro, performing at The Brits – it’s a lot! I don’t really get time to decompress as even on a day off I will be thinking about the business. I do it myself – what can I say?! It makes it a lot easier as I am 100% at one with myself at the moment. I have never been more focused in my whole life and I am loving it!
This is just the beginning for me…
I have honestly loved fashion from the beginning so to actually have my own line, my own swimwear feels like a dream – I can’t tell you how excited I am! Swimwear is the beginning. I 100% want my own fashion line, too. But let’s tackle the swimwear first!
At the top of my packing list is…
I have one set called the Power Bikini – it has buckles on it! It’s like dungaree buckles and it’s really fierce and different. A lot of our designs stand out as there’s nothing really like them out there.
