The Launch Party

By TheChicSeeker, June 16, 2026

By the autumn of 2009, Chic&Seek had taken on a momentum of its own.

My days were consumed by endless to-do lists. Clothes to collect and price. Photographs to take and upload. Confirmations to send. A website to finish. The launch date was looming, and I was running on a mixture of adrenaline, determination and very little sleep.

Every evening I promised myself I’d exercise the next morning. Every morning I woke up thinking about stock lists, journalists and unanswered emails. I was stress eating, smoking too much and barely exercising. Looking back through my diary from that time, I found an entry that perfectly captured my state of mind:

“It feels so amazing to be doing this and I am concerned about (a) huge disaster (b) not making any money.”

That was it. Equal parts excitement and terror.

Over a glass of wine at my kitchen table one evening, my friend Marion casually suggested:

“You should do a launch party.”

A launch party?

I hadn’t budgeted for a launch party.

I was trying to stay within the confines of a small start-up investment. Every pound mattered. Chic&Seek was still an unproven idea. I had no idea whether anyone would buy anything or whether I was about to make a very public fool of myself.

But the more I thought about it, the more it made sense. I would host the party from home to keep the costs down.

People were already coming to my house to browse the growing collection of designer clothing that was steadily taking over my spare room. The launch party would be a chance to celebrate, thank the friends who had helped me, introduce the concept to a wider audience and, hopefully, make a few sales.

So I said yes.

Marion kindly offered to design the invitation. I wrote the press release and, with help from friends, sent it out to every fashion editor, journalist, stylist and fashion enthusiast I could think of.

This was before Instagram, influencers and social media marketing. There were no reels, no stories and no algorithms to appease. Marketing was done the old-fashioned way: printed invitations, press releases, email lists and word of mouth.

I hand-delivered invitations across London myself.

Looking back now, there is something wonderfully innocent about that time. Building a business felt tangible. You physically handed your idea to people and hoped they would care enough to show up.

Meanwhile, I had a house to transform.

My neighbour Anthony, a permanently disgruntled older gentleman who somehow managed to weave a casual insult into almost every conversation, reluctantly agreed to rent me some space in his chaotic garage. I needed somewhere to store furniture and photography equipment while I turned my home into a showroom.

Thanks to my years at Anya Hindmarch, I knew exactly how I wanted the space to feel.

I sourced shelving for shoes, a mannequin to display dresses that deserved more than a hanger, mirrored plinths for accessories and matching hangers for every garment. The clothes were arranged by colour. Fresh flowers were ordered. Candles were lit. Music was chosen.

I had visited enough second-hand stores to know what I didn’t want.

Too often beautiful clothes were crammed onto overcrowded rails and treated junk. I wanted Chic&Seek to feel different. Elegant. Organised. Aspirational. I wanted women to walk through the door and feel as though they had discovered something special.

At the time, I thought I was simply creating a shopping experience. Looking back, I can see I was creating something else too.

The year 2009 was a turning point in my life.

I had completed the London Marathon earlier that year after deciding I needed a new challenge to divert me from partying and I needed to lose weight. Training had taught me something important: if I could learn to run, perhaps I could learn to run a business too.

It was also the year I started therapy.

At twenty-eight, I wasn’t in the greatest place personally. I was grieving the end of a relationship and another more recent heartbreak. I was restless, ambitious and constantly searching for something I couldn’t quite name.

What I didn’t realise then was that many of the questions I was beginning to ask would eventually lead me towards understanding my grief.

Not just the grief of lost relationships, but the grief I carried for my parents too.

And somehow, without fully understanding it, I was beginning to follow in my mother’s footsteps.

After my father died, she transformed herself from housewife to businesswoman, eventually running a large Ford dealership in a male-dominated industry. I was only nine years old, but I watched her do it.

I watched her lead board room meetings, implement change, navigate recession and buy and sell land and property.

Despite vowing I would never have my own business, here I was doing exactly that.

Looking back, it feels as though I was recreating the past in my own way. As though the blueprint had been quietly lodged in my DNA all along. Sometimes I wonder whether there are moments in life when an invisible hand guides us back towards parts of ourselves we have yet to understand.

At the time, though, I wasn’t thinking about any of that. I was just trying to get ready for a launch party.

As the launch approached, I found myself caught between excitement and exhaustion.

The beginning of 2009 had been about transformation. Running the London Marathon had given me confidence that I could do hard things. Yet somewhere between training runs and launching a business, self-care had vanished.

The exercise stopped.

The cigarettes returned.

The wine flowed more freely.

My weight crept up and I felt increasingly uncomfortable in my own skin.

Looking back at the photographs from that period, I chose outfits less because I loved them and more because they stretched.

I remember feeling frustrated with myself, trapped in a familiar cycle of ambition and neglect. I was pouring every ounce of energy into creating something exciting, while quietly abandoning the habits that helped me feel good.

And yet, despite all of that, I loved it. I loved the adrenaline. I loved the sense of purpose. I loved waking up every morning with something that felt entirely my own.I wrote in my diary that the clocks had changed and I’d barely noticed.

By the time the launch party arrived, I hardly had time to wonder whether it would be successful. I was too busy trying to keep up with everything that needed doing.

On the morning of the event, I headed to Flowered Corner on Ladbroke Grove to collect fresh flowers.

To my surprise, I felt relatively calm. Not calm because everything was under control. Calm because I was surrounded by people who believed in me.

Friends had helped me build this thing from an idea into reality. Even if nobody else showed up, I knew we’d have a good time together.

My sisters best friend Jane had helped me organise stock, writing up seller confirmations. Christina loved the label gun from Morplan, happily attaching tags working her way through rails of clothing. Marion had an eye for merchandising and would add her magic touch to make everything look fabulous!

I couldn’t have done it without them.

Everywhere I looked there were clothes. Designer dresses draped over chairs. Handbags balanced on tables. Shoes lined up along walls. What had started as a business idea that was taking over my home.

Then something unexpected happened. While drinking my morning coffee, I opened an email from Daily Candy.

For those unfamiliar with it, Daily Candy was the newsletter everyone wanted to be featured in. It curated the coolest openings, events and discoveries in the city. Being featured felt like winning the lottery.

That morning they had chosen to highlight the launch of Jade Jagger’s new store. Unfortunately for me, it was opening on exactly the same day, literally footsteps away from my home. I remember feeling a small wave of defeat. Of course Jade Jagger would get the attention. Of course she would get the feature.

That tiny mention in Daily Candy was exactly the sort of publicity I would have loved. I allowed myself a brief moment of self-pity before carrying on with the day. There was no time to dwell on it. People were about to arrive.

And arrive they did.

Throughout the day there was a steady stream of visitors coming through the front door. Friends. Family. Work colleagues. Curious neighbours.

People wandered through the rooms with glasses of prosecco in hand, browsing rails of designer clothing and chatting amongst themselves. I found myself talking constantly. Explaining the concept. Telling the story of how Chic&Seek came about. Showing people the clothes. Answering questions. Repeating the same conversation dozens of times.

The atmosphere had a buzz to it. People seemed to genuinely connect with the idea. They understood it immediately. The idea of ‘Redistributing fashion’.

Giving beautiful clothes a second life. Creating a more modern and enjoyable way to buy pre-loved designer pieces. Some guests stayed for hours. Others left and returned later with friends. Again and again I heard:

“You have to meet my friend. She would love this.”

Those comments meant more to me than I realised at the time. They told me people weren’t just buying clothes. They were buying into the concept. One of my vivid memories from that day is of a petit blonde woman marching confidently through the front door announcing:

“This was my idea!”

At the time I had no idea who she was or what she meant. Later I came to understand her frustration. But the encounter taught me something interesting. Ideas rarely belong to one person. Sometimes the same idea appears in multiple places at once. It’s as though creativity exists in the air around us, waiting for somebody to pay attention.

Just recently on instagram I heard a story about Michael Jackson waking up in the middle of the night to record an idea before Prince got hold of it first. Whether that’s true or not, I’ve always loved the sentiment. The best ideas often arrive to more than one person. The magic lies in who acts on them.

Then, midway through the day, another surprise arrived. Zoe, who had been helping with some PR, rushed over excitedly. “Marie Claire Online wants to feature you.” I couldn’t believe it. The press release had worked. The invitations had worked. Someone had noticed.

At the time online coverage felt less significant than print. How funny that seems now. Looking back, it was a defining moment. Chic&Seek had received its first piece of press.And from Marie Claire, no less.

As the evening drew to a close, my sister and I stood together at the edge of the kitchen watching guests browse, chat and sip prosecco.

The house hummed with conversation. People were still shopping and socialising.

She looked around the room and smiled.

“I don’t think you’re going to be putting this back to your living room anytime soon.”

I took it in.

“Yes,” I said. “I think you might be right.”

What neither of us knew then was that Chic&Seek had already moved beyond being an idea.

Without realising it, I had crossed a threshold. The launch party simply gave everyone else a date to mark it. The business had already begun.