IN CONVERSATION WITH Kate allan
How do you make sure your website, social and campaigns all feel unmistakably you?
We caught up with Kate Allan, founder of Sea-m, to chat all things brand building, content creation and bringing a tactile product to life online. From creating a cohesive visual world to balancing storytelling with selling, Kate shares her approach to building a brand that feels considered, distinctive and true to itself.
How do you make sure your website, social and campaigns all feel unmistakably you?
Years as a creative director in advertising taught me that a brand is really a set of decisions you keep making the same way. At sea-m the biggest one was made on day one: no beige. Linen has been sold in oatmeal and stone for so long that colour became our point of view: tomato red, citrus yellow, a proper off-white. Once you've committed to that, it shapes everything, from where we shoot to how we write.
Tone is the other half. We're dry, warm and a bit irreverent. If a caption could belong to any other linen brand, it doesn't go out.
Do you approach campaign imagery and everyday social content differently?
It's the same story told at different volumes. Campaigns are the set pieces, and every one needs a narrative. Plenty of brands pick a theme each season and run with it, whatever it happens to be. I'd rather each campaign told a story that means something to the brand, because that's what lets people immerse themselves in the vision rather than just look at it. The personal touch and the point of difference come through in the visuals and the tone of voice. Even the names do some of that work: Volcanic, Through the Fog (AW26/27 coming soon….)
For the Volcanic Collection we went to Lanzarote, where black volcanic rock against tomato red does half the work for you. Social is where people get to know the person behind the brand. Some of our best-performing content is simply me getting ready and talking through what I'm wearing.
Advertising teaches you quickly that polish and effectiveness aren't the same thing. The palette, the light and the attitude are what tie the two together. Someone scrolling past either one should know it's us before they see the handle.
Customers can't feel linen online. What do the website and photography need to do to bridge that gap?
Photography has to do the touching for you, and that takes two approaches. Outdoors, linen comes alive when it catches the wind, so our shoots are about movement and how a piece actually lives on the body. In the studio, macro shots of the fabric give us the detail. Controlled lighting lets you see the weave, the texture and the slight irregularities that make linen what it is, and that brings a real level of tactility to browsing. Gentle movement through video ties the two together. A few seconds of fabric swaying tells you more about how it drapes than any still can. I'm also not precious about creases, because the creases are part of the point.
Words have to help too. The website should tell you how a piece feels on the first wear compared with the tenth wash, when it has softened into something you won't take off. Reviews matter enormously here as well. Another woman saying "it's softer than I expected" is more convincing than anything I can write.
How do you balance building the wider brand world with actually selling the product?
Advertising gave me a healthy impatience with brand content that forgets to sell. If someone loves the world but can't work out which dress they've just fallen for, that's a failure, not an art project. So every piece of content has to earn its keep. The world gives people a reason to care, and the product is always clearly in it: what it is, how it's worn, how it moves.
The same thinking goes into who we work with. We don't take a scattergun approach to creators. We look for women who share our values and, above all, have fun with their content. Someone who is genuinely enjoying herself in a tomato-red linen dress sells it far better than a perfectly styled post from someone who'd rather be wearing anything else.
In practice, campaigns lean further into the world and ads lean further into the product. The voice never changes..
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