In Conversation With: Megan Wing from Wings World
Q: What is your first memory of having fun with fashion?
A: My mum and dad were very eccentric, my dad was an older father, he used to wear almost like a uniform, he was more of an old school father. My mother is a creative artist so she just wears black. Growing up with them I was very much given the freedom to explore and to express myself. I remember I used to love going to vintage shops. Once my mum and dad took me up to London and there was a vintage shop on Tottenham Court Road and they bought me a dress which was really old fashioned, it was like something out of the 1920s, it was similar to a pinafore. I remember getting some little heels to wear with it and I managed to find an Audrey Hepburn hat and I didn’t smoke obviously, I was very young, but I found one of those cigarette holders. I remember that as one of my first memories of dressing a little bit quirky and out of my comfort zone. With my parents I always felt very safe to explore that, they were always very encouraging of antique ways of dressing.
Q: When did you first become interested in specifically thrifting and sustainable fashion?
A: My friends do laugh because I would drag them to the East End thrift store after school when we were about thirteen. It no longer exists but it was a thrift store in Whitechapel and everything was fill-a-bag, and I was just obsessed, my friends would literally bring a pack lunch and wait for me outside because I was in there for so long. I would always climb inside the cages and the crates. I just love old things and finding the character of them and the fact that nobody else was going to have them, I loved how unique the items were, I think I’ve always loved thrifting. My dad used to sell military clothing second hand so I grew up in his warehouse, being around all things old. He would go to auctions and I would always go with him, so I’ve always loved secondhand clothes, it just evolved into a bit of a shopping addiction really.
Q: Can you tell me about the founding of your company, where the first ideas came from and how it developed from there?
A: I went actually went to drama school and studied acting, I did not have it planned at all to have my job being anything to do with clothes. It was one of those life paths that falls onto you. So, I went to drama school and sadly when I was 21 my father passed away and that was such a big moment in my life because I was so close to my father - he was my best friend - we would go everywhere together. I really struggled with the loss, I went down a bit of a dark loophole, I didn’t really know what I was doing with my life, I felt like I was just existing. I was just not in a good headspace at all the year after he passed away. I went and saw a few therapists just to talk it through and then one day there was this guy sitting there and he just looked at me and said, “you can either go down this rabbit hole where you’re miserable, you’re unhappy and you live out your days or you can have a lightbulb moment and decide to just get on with it”. You know when someone says something to you that’s so direct and so straight? I thought, “Okay, I want to be the best version of myself”, and I went to stay with my godfather in Italy. I was around all these clothes and I found that going to markets was actually the only thing bringing me joy at that time in my life. Being around second hand things just made me feel a bit closer to my dad because he sold militaria. I remember one day at this market I thought, “I could really start a business out of this. I could dedicate it to my father because of what he did.”, and that was it, I just decided to start. I kept back all my stock for the whole of December so I could launch my brand on the first of January 2020 and I was just selling on Depop. I named it Wings. My surname is Wing so it was for the family heritage. And that was it, that was the start. I always knew that doing this was going to heal me. When I don’t do Wings for a while I get anxious, it keeps me feeling good and connected to my dad, it’s such passion project that just fuels me with love.
Q: Are you working with other members of your family at the moment? Is Wings something you’d like to pass down to your children?
A: The business is definitely something I’d want to pass down if my children wanted to be involved. They might say, “nah don’t want to get involved in this rubbish!” My family are very much involved in clothing, my great grandfather came over from Poland and he started a little haberdashery where he was selling buttons and tailoring, and on my fathers side, my dad had his business. So we’ve always been very much involved in passing down family businesses. So yes, I’d love to pass it down. My mother has been my rock, she’s been a mother, a father, a brother, and a sister, she’s been it all. She’s the one that really pushed me to start Wings. When I began setting up Wings I was working three other jobs, when my father passed away it was just my mum and myself so I was helping to support her. I was working at Kings Cross, for Coca Cola, for KitKat and doing litter picking. I was doing all these jobs and also had this dream of Wings. I have friends who say, “I remember when you were in the back of the shop, writing on the back of the receipts your visions and your dreams of Wings.” I was always planning it while I was doing my other jobs. I remember my mum said, “Meg, if you really want to do Wings, you need to solely focus on it. Even though we might be tighter for money you need to just start and get on with it.”
Q: How long would you say it took for your brand to really take off? Was it more of a steady growth or did you have one post that really blew up and started the ball rolling?
A: When I started I was just doing Depop, I did that for about 8 months, and had a steady growth and made about 1000 followers. When I got back from Italy I found myself a little studio because my mum was sick of all the clothes in my house. The clothes were stacked up in boxes and I have a picture of me and my dog just sitting on the sofa in the middle of it all. It catches up on you. My mum said, “Listen I need my sanity, I need my house back”. So I found a little studio in Euston. And then I just had customers come in, I was still on Depop. It was 2021 and around summer time and I decided I needed tog et rid of a load of stock that I had so I just made a TikTok video, very quickly and said I was going to do a fill-a-bag event inspired by my favourite thrift shop to get rid of all the clothes, didn’t think anything of it, 20 minutes later I was getting all these notifications and it was going from 20 thousand to 40 thousand to 50, My bedrooms like harry potter vibes, under the stairs, I’ve got this tiny room and all you could fit in there was a bed, and I was just sat on the end and called “Mum, mum!” And she came running in and we couldn’t believe it. And that was it. I went that morning for the event at my studio. It was about 10 AM, the event started at twelve. There was a queue around the block. And I’m close with the guy from the cafe next door and he said, “I’ve had my cameras on, they’ve been queuing since six in the morning”. It was insane. We had over 6,000 people turn up. Q: Did you have enough stock for it? A: No, I had to turn people away, only 2,000 people got in. It was a seven-hour queue. I had people telling me they’d flown in from Lebanon. It was insane. It blew up from there. I’ve got a specific style of how I do these montage videos. I think if the brand was a person it would be gender neutral, I see wings as very androgynous, it’s for the people, I wanted it to be a space where everyone was welcome, everyone could come and shop, it was just an extension of myself, almost like an alter ego, and that’s how Wings arrived. People didn’t even realize it was run by this young girl, I was 22 at the time, and I was just winging it, it was just me and my mum. I think people thought that it was a legitimate company at the time.
Q: How big is your team now? A: We’re a team of six. There’s myself, I’m in pretty much most days, and I’m pretty obsessive with Wings. And then there’s Alex, who’s been with me pretty much a year now and she’s our operations officer. She pretty much runs most of it, she’s amazing, there’s nothing Alex can’t do, she runs the website, she does the stock list, all the admin. And then I do more on the social media side and the buying of the stock. And we have people who run our thrift store now, we’ve got Nil and José, and then we’ve got Harry who helps build everything, set everything up. And we had Lola, she’s the one who left, she ran Portobello. We used to be part of the market but I’ve slowly stepped away from Portobello just because it’s very oversaturated there now with lots of people doing the same thing.
Q: Do you buy your stock in bulk from wholesalers, do you pick out your pieces from charity shops just as and when, how does it work?
A: Back in the day when I first started, I went to my good old friends, a wholesaler who’s closed down now but he was called Mint Vintage, Mr Mint. When I first started selling I checked him out. I went to go and see him and bought some clothes, and as I was paying at the till he asked what my company was called, he’s been in the business for about 50 years, and I told him it was called Wings. He said, oh you’re no relation to P.G Wing, are you? Am I said, yeah that was my father. He said I’ve been buying off your father for 20 years! It’s just such a small world. It was just so nice that he knew where I’d come from and the history. Now, tuning my thrift store I no longer buy bails which is important to me, those bails are mainly for vintage sellers, and for me, I wanted to make more of a difference and go down a thrift route. I started to source my clothes from places where charity shops would get rid of their stock. Charity shops only take 20% of what’s donated to them, the rest of it goes into landfills, so I was finding out where clothes were going before they were getting destroyed which is how I can keep my prices so cheap. I’m just trying to keep the clothes in circulation. Now I’ve made my own ecosystem, I have a swap shop, where customers bring their unwanted clothes, we ask for them to be clean and of decent condition, and for every item you receive a one pound credit to spend in store. Wings circulate clothes in its ecosystem, so we are 100% zero waste. If you’re a student and bring your card on a Friday, you get 10% off, and it’s the same with a benefits card on a Friday. One of the main reasons I started Wings, yes because of the thrifting, yes because I love clothes but it was actually for low-income families, there’s a lot of people out there who can’t afford to go to Brick Lane to spend £30 on a pair of Levi’s but they can come to Wings and spend a fiver on the same thing. I have a lot of single mothers who are clothing their children and families with these items and it’s hard because the alternative to us in Primark which we know for both ethical and quality reasons isn’t great so I wanted to be their alternative option. Q: I’d love to know more about your plans for the future of your brand. A: I’d love to get a more permanent space. It’s killing me every Friday and Saturday setting up and packing down. It’s a lot of work. Once that does well I’d love to be in Bristol, Manchester, and just have these Wings outlets across the country. Kind of similar to Goodwill, we have nothing like that in the UK. We’re also dropping out first design in two months which is very exciting. We’ve made these two-piece sets in four different colors and they’re inspired by the elegance of Italy as that’s where I first had my idea for the brand, I wanted to do something for Naples. We’re launching satin skirts with halter neck ruffled tops. I also want to do more collaborations with charities and reach out to places that help with refugees to make them aware of Wings. I want to push it out to an older audience and make them more aware of Wings. My dad was a massive charity donator, he was given an award by the monarchy for being one of the largest charity donators in the UK, so I wanted to carry this on in his spirit. It’s called the Peter Wing Foundation and every month people vote out of three charities that are on our page. At the end of the month whichever has the most votes we donate to that charity. It’s something very important to me, we wanted to spread more awareness for each of these charities and just keep growing and spreading the love.
Interview by Phoebe Violet.