VITA | Why Now
Vita started as a conversation. A conversation while we were all at home in the first lockdown, we needed to have with each other. We’d been working on a new collection for some time, which was going to be an extension to our Aphrodite necklace, launched in partnership with Jo’s Cervical Cancer Trust. After the success of that single necklace, and the conversations it had started with people around us, it was clear our little family had to grow. The plan was to launch the collection later in the year, but after everything that was going on, it felt right to bring that forward. Why not?
I’d not long been back in the office full time after taking a few months away to have surprise baby number two, when suddenly we were all locked in our homes. I remember being surrounded by mirrors in my house, picking out the worst traits of my body and being really unkind to myself, which just felt rubbish.
There was this moment, post-shower. I stood there, holding my son. Just looking from my body to my son and realising "Woah", you were inside of this body. This body created you. That scar is where you came from. Those lines on my stomach are from where my body stretched to grow you, to give you life. So why, with everything else going on in the world, was I finding the time to be unkind to my body, the body that got me through this life and in
turn created two beautiful lives, for whom I am utterly grateful for.
When I spoke about this to the team, we felt like it was now or never to launch this collection. We decided on the name VITA, Latin for “life”, because if ever there was a time to be grateful for our life, for our health, for the big and the small, it was now.
The reaction to the campaign around the launch was phenomenal (if you missed it, you can watch it here). I don’t think we’d ever created something so personal, something that really resonated with people. Over the last year, VITA has gone from strength to strength, so it seemed only right to introduce some new pieces to the family.
Jo, our wonderfully talented designer, and I pulled together a few ideas, and she was off. My favourite part of the process was Jo sending me photos from her kitchen table working with modelling clay to create the perfect wobbly bottom whilst homeschooling her son at the same time! The outcome was brilliant, and it is by far my favourite piece of the collection. The Vita Lips Ring or kissy lips ring as I like to call it, is another. So simple, but such gorgeous shapes.
As the samples flooded in, so did my anxiety, something I’d only ever experienced since having children. With the world beginning to open up, I know this was something lots of us were feeling. It was strange that something we’d been hoping for so long was now close
enough to touch, yet we wanted to push it away. The journey this past year was really something (a journey I’ll share another time), but, like for so many of us, our sacred space had become crowded with worldwide meetings, Zoom calls, IG lives, and for many (myself included!) kids in the workplace. Working from home brought so many incredible things, yet I felt myself becoming more and more overwhelmed with what my world required of me.
So I pulled the stroppy teenager card, ran away to a treehouse, closed the door, and didn’t come out for 48 hours. It was silent, and it was bliss. With a bit of clarity, I started to reflect on how I was feeling, and how a lot of the women in my life were feeling, and often feel.
As women, we put unbelievable amounts of pressure on ourselves to be ‘perfect’. Yet, that definition of perfection is different for every single one of us. Some of us are lucky to have the headspace to know who we are already. Some of us are still learning. We all have good days and bad days. In life, we play so many different roles to those around us, and it’s important to remember how valuable they are, but it’s also important to stop. To think about who we are. To be kind to ourselves, to our bodies, to our minds.
The campaign for this year, ‘I am me, unapologetically’, encourages us all to think about the many roles we play, and how valuable they are to ourselves, and others around us. Championing, encouraging and learning from each other is at the centre of what we do at Daisy. We wanted to share this message with you, our Daisy chain: to be more accepting. To open our eyes, our ears, and most importantly our minds to the world and those around us. To be us, unapologetically.