Introducing Salt & Saunter on International Women's Day | The Art of Destination Dressing

It's not often, if ever, that I write about women's fashion because let's not pretend, I know f-all about it! However today is International Women's Day and in celebration I wanted to write about a brand that is making waves in it's field and a founder that I have an incredible amount of respect and admiration for. Gemma Cheyne the co-founder of Salt & Saunter, please stand up and take a bow.

Whenever I talk to Gemma she has a hat-full of creative plans and being a fellow business owner like myself it's great to bounce ideas off her because in many cases we have been through the same ups and downs of running an e-commerce business. Not only is Gemma creative, she works harder than anyone I know, often up at 1am cutting fabric and stitching together her latest swimwear designs from her home office just to get the made-to-order swimwear orders out to her customers in time for their next beach holiday. 

Gemma is a powerful woman, intelligent, courageous, focused, kind, approachable and is the ultimate role model for empowering women all over the world - total #GirlBoss (had to get that in there somewhere!) 

Salt & Saunter was founded in 2017 by best friends Gemma Cheyne and Aimee Kewn, they met whilst studying contour fashion at university and bonded over swimwear design and holidays...hence the tagline 'The Art of Destination Dressing'. Salt & Saunter is mainly a swimwear brand but touches on lifestyle with their new travel wear Flight Mode collection and wicker bags, perfect for the beach. They've organically attracted various top Instagrammer's from all over the world wanting to wear the latest, unique Salt & Saunter designs including Chloe Lloyd (above pictures, photo credit Chloe Lloyd). And Rocky Barnes (below pictures, photo credit Rocky Barnes).

It's not all plain sailing for fashion brands such as Salt & Saunter. Their designs are all unique, the pattern, the colour designs, everything is the hard work of the founders and by buying a Salt & Saunter piece, you are purchasing guaranteed quality. Yet being a destination for the next top trends in swimwear comes at a price and that price is that larger global fashion brands and foreign distributers such as the factories on Alibaba (and others) copying their designs using cheap fabric and poorly fitting replicas. The problem is massive not only for Salt but for so many other SME businesses creating unique products and are finding that cheap, poorly made copies of their designs are being sold, often using the brands photos without approval. It's just blatant 'TAKING THE PISS'. 

The above problem is almost impossible to stop as websites are so easy and cheap to create these days, so if one gets shut down, another is there to pop-up in it's place within a few hours. But I would like to do my bit and encourage you all to support local small fashion businesses and to try and be more vigilant when purchasing from unknown websites. Do your research and ask questions prior to buying.

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