Designer Olivia Rubin: “We want to be able to have the offering and for people to buy whatever they want”

"I think there's a lot of preconceived ideas of women or people of a certain size don't want to wear colour."

The world of fashion is everchanging, with trends coming onto the market as quickly as they go, there is one designer who is not afraid to step away from the norm. Olivia Rubin launched her self-named company back in 2018, and with colour and rainbow being the main focus, it has been highly successful despite not being the same as other runway shows. The pastels, contrasting patterns and rainbow designs have become a signature, and there's a reason why - it's versatile and stunning, something to light up any wardrobe. While it has been consistent in this over the years, Olivia revealed to Her.ie that she doesn't intend it to remain this way, but colour isn't going anywhere. "The brand will always remain colourful, I think colour is a very versatile word in a versatile medium, I think in the future we will be experimenting with different colours, just I know we'll never do black. I know people say 'never say never', but it's just not part of me and not part of the brand ethos to make black dresses or black tops," Olivia said. "We want to be more eclectic than that, more vibrant. I think the reason the brand is based upon rainbows is because within rainbow, incorporates every single colour combination you can think of, so we may not be using rainbows in such an obvious way, we will move it along and we already have moved it along by incorporating a lot of block colour within all the prints that we design and we make. "I think it's important to move on and stay relevant and also just to keep evolving, to watch what new customers want and what old customers want and grow the brand. I don't think the brand would carry on being successful if we just only did the same thing over and over again." The brand is known to be inclusive when it comes to sizing, offering a wide variety of different sizes, from a UK 4 to a UK 24. Not many luxury brands offer this, but for Olivia, it was something she couldn't leave out. The ethos of Olivia Rubin is positivity, it prides itself on joy and happiness so it's no surprise that inclusivity is something Olivia herself feels so strongly about. "When I started the brand and what the brand ethos is, inclusivity, really positive, to have fun with fashion, to enjoy it and feel good about yourself so it was always in the back of my mind that I wanted to branch into being inclusive, gender and size wise so it was a natural progression and something that we spent a lot of time researching and making sure we had a full offering, not just a small selection of pieces. We've had amazing responses to it and it's something we will continue to explore in the size inclusivity journey we're on," the mum of two said. "There is a lot of work involved, but I think designers who aren't doing it yet, I think there's a lot of preconceived ideas of women or people of a certain size don't want to wear colour or they don't want to wear designers or they can't afford designers but we don't want to make those decisions for people, we want to be able to have the offering and for people to buy whatever they want. We put in a lot of time into fits of our samples on real sized people and a lot of time is dedicated to that within the team." Olivia is currently working with Very as they have rebranded in Ireland from Littlewoods. Bringing her collection to the site is allowing her to not only open to a bigger audience, but gives her an opportunity to bring more creativity to the Irish market Along with the collaboration, Olivia is also set to be a judge at Very’s Ladies Day at the Dublin Horse Show on August 18th, and there are some specific things she is looking out for. "Creativity within putting an outfit together, we obviously have lots of different people wearing the brand who tag us on Instagram, and I always love seeing how everyone styles it so differently. Bringing a little bit of individuality to the styling aspect of their outfit will be key and will be something I'll be looking out for because I always get inspired by the way people style my pieces," she said. "I think that's a key thing I'll be looking out for, lots of colour, putting colour together, combining different colour palettes and just wearing something that they feel good in, because I think if someone feels good in it, that will radiate and people will tell and they just look amazing. So many different things to look out for but I'm excited to see the variety." "I'm excited to be part of an inclusive event, I love the fact that it's open now to all genders and being part of that with Very, it's a really great experience for me and also just to meet everyone in person."