Autumn scene with woman doing yoga

Style And Sustainability: The Funky Legging Brand That Stands Out From The Crowd

If you ever find yourself bored with your typical black leggings, Loony Legs is here to brighten your gym wardrobe. This funky yoga wear brand is the creation of an all-female creative team based in London. Combining their passion for eco-friendly fabrics and sustainability with bold, trendy patterns, their leggings have taken the yoga world by storm. Leading the team of creatives at Loony Legs is Valentina and we met with her to learn more about:

  • How Loony Legs has achieved success in such a competitive market
  • The role of sustainability in their processes
  • Their booming Instagram presence and the influencers that love their leggings

What made drove you to create a sustainable women’s yoga wear brand? Was there a gap in the market that you identified or is this a passion project?

Loony Legs was born because of a personal whim. At the beginning of my pregnancy (I’m seven month now!) I started practising yoga to take care of my body and my well-being. I wanted to buy some funky leggings to cheer me up, but I couldn’t find what I was looking for. Everything was either boring-monochrome or very repetitive, with not so original patterns. So, with the help of my partner, (he works in advertising as a creative director) I founded Loony Legs. The sustainability aspect came quite naturally. Since I’m having a baby, I really wanted this business to play its part in taking care of the planet. You know as they say… there’s no planet B.

Woman in chair wearing bright leggings

This is a really competitive niche and with some huge name competitors. How does Loony Legs grow a serious customer base in this market?

It’s all about bold and unique designs. As I said, we don’t use repetitive run-of-the-mill patterns. I would actually say we don’t use patterns at all. We design each pair of leggings as a unique piece of clothing. We take inspiration from beautiful dresses and clothes, so the result is very different from any other activewear brand. And obviously, this bold identity helps a lot on social networks. Our designs are definitely thumb-stopping! This helped a lot in growing a solid customer base. We don’t buy followers, we don’t use tricks to grow. We are still small, but we prefer to grow steadily and in a healthy way.

The designs used are so bold and unique whilst being trendy and widely marketable/appealing. Do you find that’s a difficult line to tread? What’s the design process like?

It’s quite difficult and it takes a lot of time. I would say most of the time is spent in research and design development. As I said, we start looking for inspirations in the fashion and graphic design world. We create mood boards. We choose different themes. Then we start designing. The number of attempts for a single pair of leggings can easily get to 30/40 before we find the right one. For us, it was not enough just to use crazy colours. We wanted to find our own style. And we found a very nice space that sits between illustration and graphic design. Luckily, people love it.

Woman performing yoga in dotty leggings

Sustainability is obviously a huge part of Loony Legs. You offset CO2 production with tree planting, make each piece of clothing to order, and use eco-friendly inks and printers. Where do you take your sustainability now?

The next step is definitely 100% recycled fabric. We are not there yet. But the company that manufactures our leggings is working on it and hopefully, we will be able to offer that option soon.

Why is sustainability so important to Loony Legs? Do you think every brand has an obligation to its customers to be as sustainable as possible?

I definitely do. The planet needs it. Our customers want it. It’s a win-win situation. Really, there’s no reason not to go that way. All in all, we are not a mass-market brand. We don’t work on volumes, but on quality. And being sustainable adds quality to our clothes, our brand and our planet.

Woman on yoga mat
Loony Leg’s Instagram is full of amazing ladies doing crazy yoga poses. All the content is really aspirational with aerial splits and full backbends, etc. How do you communicate that these leggings are for beginners too?

I think It’s a fairly simple assumption. Even if you don’t do crazy splits you want to be comfortable, don’t you? And the fabric of our leggings is lightweight and really super-soft. Most of our customers wear them all day, not just to exercise. But of course, on Instagram crazy poses are more fun and attention-grabbing.

Your recent collab with Camille Shakti looks incredible. An aerial yoga challenge is definitely something I’ve never seen before! It makes so much sense to collab with such a bright, cheerful, and unique influencer. Is it difficult to find influencers like Camille in the yoga community that align with your quirky identity?

That was luck really. I didn’t even know what aerial yoga was when I started Loony Legs. If you think about it, It’s a mix between yoga and circus and our brand fits perfectly with it. When we saw Camille’s feed we fell in love straight away. She’s an incredible athlete but also a very positive and smiling person. And she loves colours, so it was a match made in heaven. But in general, I would say It’s not difficult to find influencers. Even those who prefer simple, monochrome styles love to have that one crazy pair of colourful leggings in their wardrobe. We actually had to suspend our ambassador’s program because we had too many requests. And since we are a boutique brand, our budget for that is limited. But hopefully, we will be able to open it back soon.

Woman in bold leggings doing yoga

It’s clear that a huge amount of work goes into your social media presence. Are you able to attribute sales directly to your social media activity, or is it more to strengthen the brand?

Organic reach on Instagram and Facebook is actually our first sales channel, together with email marketing. Again, the bold and thumb-stopping design helps a lot on socials. We are starting to invest in a digital marketing strategy, so hopefully, that will help us grow, but the relationship with our customer base will always be central in everything we do. Together with our designs, it’s what makes us different from all the big brands out there.

 

Posted in Brand, Interviews.