OW Spotlight India Wheeler (A 18), Founder of India Grace

Tell us a bit about your journey since Wellington…

After Wellington, I went to university, studying Politics, totally irrelevant to what I’m doing now, but I did internships at retail brands every summer, which I learnt a huge amount from. Then into marketing in the food industry, then briefly into fashion, which turned out to be a very definitive three months. I wasn’t learning anything, I wasn’t being given room to develop, and I could feel quickly that it wasn’t going to change. So I cut my losses and left. It felt like a huge risk, but I’d only planned to stay for a year and take everything I could from it, and when it became clear that wasn’t going to happen, staying felt pointless. I spent the following year working four days a week for a jewellery brand and every other hour designing and building my first collection. India Grace launched in December, and I’m still slightly amazed it exists.

What inspired you to launch India Grace?

I’d always known from the age of about 12 I wanted to have my own business, but it really started on Depop during Covid. I began selling my own clothes, and when those ran out, I bought wholesale pieces to resell. I loved the selling and the independence of it, but I didn’t love the product. So I used the profits to buy a sewing machine… I had never sewn before. With a lot of YouTube and a lot of trial and error, I taught myself, which is the full extent of my design education. The deeper root goes back to the way I’ve always dressed. The pieces I go to now aren’t different from the ones I wore as a child, feminine, floaty, soft. What changed was how hard it became to find them. Everything at an accessible price point was fast fashion and full of polyester, and everything made well cost a fortune, and somehow, both managed to be full of polyester anyway. That genuinely annoyed me, so I decided to make what I couldn’t find.

What has surprised you most about starting your own brand?

I think I was lucky as, before launching, I worked for a brand where there were only two of us, so I had a pretty clear picture of what running a small business actually looks like day to day. It’s mostly just things going wrong and learning how to fix them. The job revolves a lot around being willing to adapt when reality doesn’t cooperate, which it rarely does. I went in expecting that, which probably saved me from a lot of early disillusionment.

What advice would you give students interested in entrepreneurship or fashion?

Just go for it, don’t wait until you feel ready, because you never will. At some point, you just have to start. If your work is something you genuinely care about, it stops feeling like work in the way that other jobs do. And never take no for an answer, there is always another way. Entrepreneurship is hard, but it’s far more rewarding when things go right, and you learn so much faster than you ever would working for someone else.

How has Wellington shaped you, if at all?

I won’t pretend school came easily. I’m a perfectionist who has recently been diagnosed with ADHD, and the two don’t go hand in hand. Dr Gardner had to chase me down most weeks to get my coursework in. Academics also didn’t come naturally, and I couldn’t bear to do badly, so I had to learn grit in a way that easier things never would have taught me. Just to keep going, that’s something I use every single day building this brand.

What Wellington also gave me was variety, an almost overwhelming amount of it. There was so much on offer that you couldn’t help but try things, and in trying things, you start to work out what you actually care about.

One thing that has stayed with me is something my Economics teacher, Mrs Bidston, announced one day: that of the whole class, she thought I’d be the one running a big business. I wasn’t even particularly good at Economics, and I’m not sure what she saw. But having someone believe in you before you’ve done anything to earn it is more powerful than it sounds. I’m yet to get there, but I think about it often.

What’s next for the brand?

SS26 is about to launch and AW26 is in sampling, our first proper cold-weather collection, with a new knitwear category, which feels like a meaningful step. I’m only five months into this, and I’m genuinely looking forward to seeing what happens next.

Quick fire:

Favourite Wellington memory? There are so many; the night before Speech Day each year was always a highlight.

Best piece of advice you’ve received? Don’t wait to make the right decision, make the decision and make it the right one. OR one thing my Dad said to my sister, which I also think is great: If you can do something you hate well, imagine what you can achieve with something you love.

One word to describe India Grace? Timeless.

Dream person you’d love to see wearing India Grace? Bella Hadid or Olivia Dean.

With thanks to India Wheeler (A 18) for this spotlight. Find out more about India Grace here.