ELLIE DICKINSON: Founder of ELVEEV

Ellie Dickinson has spent over a decade buying womenswear for some of the most respected names in fashion retail from Sydney to London, until a role in a small luxury boutique in New York brought everything into focus for her. Picture a senior buyer who doesn't need to be on the shop floor but chooses to be there anyway. Serving customers. Watching how women shop. Listening to what they really want. She knew that if the role had existed in London it would be her dream job, but it didn't. So she built it instead.

ELVEEV is Ellie's vision brought to life: a carefully curated, independent multi-brand concept bringing emerging contemporary luxury labels to London through intimate pop-ups, with a personalised, in-person shopping experience at its heart. The carefully curated edit for each location is shaped by genuine customer obsession rather than trend cycles or commercial pressure. If you're a woman who values quality and style, ELVEEV was created with you in mind.

From the Shop Floor Up

Ellie's fashion journey started on the shop floor at David Jones in Brisbane, one of Australia's major department stores, where she worked her way up to sales supervisor before setting her sights on buying. The head office was in Sydney so she packed up and relocated, spending six months in a supervisor role before the buying role she’d been waiting for opened up the womenswear team.

“In Australia, it was super competitive – there weren’t many big companies that had buying departments, especially multi-brand. So when I got the buying role at David Jones, I couldn't even believe it.”

A British passport opened the door to London, and she landed at Topshop as a BAA working across shoes and knitwear, two technically demanding departments that gave her a thorough grounding in garment construction, production, fit, and the mechanics of placing orders at scale. Then four years at The OUTNET, a stint at Flannels working across contemporary luxury, and a senior buyer role in New York that changed the trajectory entirely.

The New York role was transformative not because of the title, but because of the scale of the business. Small enough that she was across everything - brand positioning, store planning, events, marketing, working with founders and CEOs directly - it also meant Ellie was back on the shop floor with customers most days. Everything she'd learned across a decade of buying, she could finally apply in full view of the people she was buying for.

“When you're in big global corporations, you're so removed from the customer you’re the buyer for, and it's just such an abstract concept if you're not talking to them. You're just looking at data, and there's no nuance in that.”

Before returning to London, Ellie took on a commercial director role at DISSH, the Australian contemporary brand, leading their northern hemisphere growth strategy. It was a role that took her back into the strategic side of the business, and reminded her how much she missed being close to the product and the customer.

The Gap Nobody Was Filling

What Ellie saw on her return to London was a market with a conspicuous hole in it. The majority of luxury e-commerce platforms had grown so vast they'd lost their point of view, and once successful independents and boutiques had either disappeared or made decisions that cost them their audience.

The push for growth at any cost that most brands have been facing post-COVID often comes at the expense of the customer experience, which is something Ellie is very clear she wants to avoid.

She illustrates the point with comparison examples from high street to the top end of luxury leather goods. Zara works because it's fast, trend-led, accessible - hike the prices and the whole thing falls apart. Hermès works because it's the opposite - scarcity, craftsmanship, exclusivity. Make it accessible and the brand value evaporates overnight. Two completely different models, both successful, both because they've stayed absolutely true to what they are. "They're staying in their lane," Ellie says, "and that's why they continue to be successful." ELVEEV, she's clear, knows exactly which lane it's in.

“I don't want it to ever be this huge, giant business. I want it to be really small, considered, community building - the exposure to brands you would never otherwise see, the touch point and the access to designers you would never normally get.”

Introducing ELVEEV

ELVEEV sits at a luxury price point that is more accessible than most retailers, which is a considered decision. The brands Ellie selects share a common thread whereby each label designs for women who favour style and quality over trends, and dress for themselves. The edit is sophisticated but effortless, rooted in craftsmanship and classic modernity, featuring pieces from Tove, Posse, TWP, Dagmar and A.Emery - the latter two of which ELVEEV is the only London stockist of for ready-to-wear. These are pieces that work across all walks of life, for women who appreciate simplicity and considered design.

Ellie has a digital presence because today's customer requires it, but the point of ELVEEV is physical - events, relationships, the experience of discovering a brand you can actually touch and try. Part of the longer-term clienteling strategy includes building relationships with personal stylists who can introduce their clients to the ELVEEV edit, knowing the service will back it up. Each pop-up location is also part of a longer conversation about where ELVEEV eventually puts down permanent roots in West London, and which communities feel right to grow with. Beaverbrook Townhouse in November 2025 set the tone for the SS26 edit beautifully, and High Street Kensington is next, welcoming new additions Birrot, Ossou and Alemais alongside returning favourites TWP, Dagmar, Tove, Posse, A.Emery and Sebline.

On Doing It Anyway

Building something of your own after years inside major corporations requires a particular kind of nerve, and Ellie is refreshingly unromantic about what that really feels like.

“It's so scary. The fear of failure is always in the back of your mind. Every time I make a decision, I'm like, am I still doing this?”

And yet she keeps going. Her answer to why is simple: if she doesn’t do it now, she never with and if it fails it fails. There's something really powerful about hearing someone say that out loud with a kind of calm acceptance that the alternative, not trying, is actually the scarier outcome.

What sustains Ellie underneath the fear is curiosity, and also interestingly that she's never felt 100% fulfilled. However, she doesn’t see that restlessness as a problem to solve but more as the engine. Complacency, she points out, is actually the thing that would stop her from building ELVEEV, and in her career more broadly.

“What drives me is the curiosity of the next thing, something I'm not sure about - how can I make that work? I always need more.”

She's found reassurance in reading about other founders, in the reminder that pivoting isn't the same as failing and that an original concept doesn't need to be fixed to be right.

“Something not working doesn't mean the whole concept is wrong. It’s helped having something smaller scale and being able to look at the gaps. The simpler it is, the better. The businesses that try and do everything, that's where they often fail.”

Transparency with the brands she’s partnered with from the beginning has also been instrumental to the process. Self-funding the business meant working on consignment, and rather than obscuring that reality, she was very up front with the brands she was approaching.

This honesty, she found, opened more doors. Some brands who'd never worked on a consignment basis before wanted to participate, because they were invested in Ellie as much as the concept.

“Just that visibility and transparency and being calm and honest. People respond so much more to that.”

As Ellie puts it, when you build that trust with brands and people you work with, the longevity of your career and the opportunities that arise is endless. For ELVEEV, those long-cultivated brand relationships are foundational in the most literal sense.

“I wouldn't be able to do today what I'm doing if I didn't have strong brand relationships. There is no way.”

My Take

One of my favourite things about this conversation is how considered every decision Ellie has made about ELVEEV actually is. She backs herself and knows exactly what she is building and, just as importantly, what she isn't. That clarity is everything, and I think it's the reason ELVEEV feels so refreshing.

Ellie’s spent a decade inside some of the biggest names in fashion retail, watching how the industry shifts, what works, what doesn't, and what gets lost when businesses prioritise scale over substance. She's absorbed all of it and made deliberate choices, and knows that the bigger a business gets, the harder those choices become. More voices, more filters, more competing agendas. Ellie has the advantage of making every decision herself, from a place of genuine clarity about what ELVEEV stands for and who it's for.

Focusing on client experience as the foundation from the beginning, rather than it being an afterthought, is exactly how it should be done, and it's something I wish more brands would get right from the start. So many invest heavily in acquisition first: press, beautiful spaces, social strategy, getting people through the door - all important of course, but the service piece often comes later. Ellie has done it the other way round, and in my experience working with brands on exactly this clienteling strategy, it makes an enormous difference to creating long-lasting client relationships and a positive commercial impact.

Ellie knows exactly which lane she's in. And from where I'm standing, it's one of the coolest and most considered lanes out there.

Discover ELVEEV between 7th-17th May at 96 High Street Kensington, W8 4SG.

Follow on Instagram at @elveev_london