How Glenson Hudson Began

A note from Glenson Hudson

I'd never planned to open a shop. What I had was a problem.

Every May, the wedding invitations would start arriving — three, four, sometimes five in a summer. There'd be a hen weekend in Mallorca thrown in. A milestone birthday somewhere in the Mediterranean. A long August trip booked the previous winter that I'd entirely forgotten about until it was a fortnight away. And every single year, I'd find myself on a Sunday afternoon in late June, sitting on my bed surrounded by tissue paper and dresses that didn't quite work, wondering why this kept happening.

The dresses were either too young or too matronly. Too short for a church ceremony. Too formal for a garden reception. Made of fabric that crumpled the second I sat down on a plane. Cut for someone fifteen years younger or fifteen pounds lighter. Or — and this happened more often than I'd like to admit — perfect on the hanger and miserable the moment I put them on.

I'm forty-two. I don't have the patience I had at twenty-five. I don't want to spend three weekends shopping for one dress, and I refuse to turn up to my best friend's wedding in something I've already worn twice and don't really like.

Eventually I started keeping a list. Not of trends or designers, but of what actually worked. The dress that survived the flight to Sicily and looked good in every photo. The sandals I wore for ten straight days in Crete without a single blister. The wrap dress that did Sunday lunch and a christening in the same weekend. The pieces that stopped me from panic-buying something I'd regret.

Everything you'll find here is something I'd actually wear, or something a friend of mine has tested and reported back on. If a dress creases on the plane, it doesn't make the cut. If the straps don't stay up, it's gone. If it photographs badly in natural light or pulls in the wrong places when you sit down, I'm not selling it to you.

I'm not trying to be a magazine. I'm not chasing what's on the runway. I'm trying to be the friend who's been to twenty weddings in the last five years and tells you, plainly, what works.

That's it. That's the whole shop.

If you want to ask me anything — sizing, fabric, whether something's too dressy for a garden reception in Somerset — email me. I always reply.

— Glenson Hudson