Grown Clothing Founder Sara McLelland

By Ellie Wiseman

Sara McLelland is the founder of Grown Clothing – an environmentally-conscious clothing brand for children and babies.

When it launched in 2019, Grown sold knitted sweaters and beanies for babies, but it has since expanded to clothing for toddlers. The collections feature denim, outwear, pants and overalls (and, of course, knits) that are as durable as they are adorable.

Sara grew up in Country Victoria with her parents, brother and identical twin sister. From a young age, she knew she wanted a career in fashion. “As a kid, it was my dream to be a dressmaker or a seamstress,” she tells THE INARRA. “I was always looking for my own identity and trying to be different.”

Sara now lives in Blairgowrie on the Mornington Peninsula with her husband Tristan, daughter Quinn, 7, and son Reggie, 4. “I’ll never take for granted that I get to be ‘their person’,” she says. “I am the one person that sometimes my children just need and want and that’s the best gift in the world.”

After studying fashion design at RMIT, Sara started her own homewares business (which she recently sold), but she missed fashion. When her daughter was six months old, Sara started working on the concept for Grown.

“[I remember Quinn] had this knit cardigan which was a size 000 and she wore it till she was nearly 12 months old. It just kept stretching and I was so impressed with how long she got to wear this one item.”

As a knitwear technician, this discovery inspired Sara to design knitwear for babies. “It took about a year to develop our first collection, which consisted of branding, manufacturing and logistics, but mostly designing and sampling our first and second collections,” she says.

For Sara, durability is one of the most important factors when it comes to designing clothes for little ones. “A huge part of my love for fashion is actually more the production and technical production side, rather than totally about the design, so now that I am a mother I really value good construction, durability, quality fabrics and yarns that are comfortable to wear and easy to care for. 

“While style and trends are still important and a huge element, for babies and kidswear, I do value function over form.

Grown is a small batch production business, which can be difficult to navigate at times. “The main challenges are being able to purchase our specialty yarns due to minimum orders with the suppliers, especially because our items are so tiny compared to ladieswear so we don’t need a lot of raw materials. The benefits are shorter lead times and more control over the production, but mostly this is a sustainable way of manufacturing.”

Having control over and confidence in the materials is important for Sara to be able to create sustainably, environmentally-conscious garments. “We mostly use natural fibres for our fabrics and yarns,” she says. “We use a lot of organic cotton, linen and hemp.

“Our collection is made up of roughly 75% organic cotton which has been certified organic from GOTS. We use about 2% syntenic materials and this is mostly used for function, for example, elastane for stretch in our socks. And from that 2%, the material is always of a recycled nature.”

“I believe our quality is one of the main attributes of our success and why our customers return. We are fortunate enough to have the most amazing factory whose quality is amazing.”

Sara’s design process from inspiration to production takes a year. “I always start a new season development by looking backwards at what styles sold well and I build out our silhouettes and style blocks from there. I then look at the trend forecasts and finalise the colour palette. I visit overseas fabric markets and attend yarn exhibitions once a year to discover new fabrics and yarns.

“We then develop the technical packs for our factories to start the sampling process. We get 2-3 samples of each style and then a final quality control sample to approve the garments for shipment. It is always a very exciting day when a collection container is finally delivered to the warehouse.”

Sara has celebrated many milestones with Grown this year, including moving into her own warehouse (“a pinch-me moment!”). 

“We are also attending Play Time Paris, an international childrenswear trade show, and we recently launched our ‘Out Grown program’ – a circular fashion project where customers can return worn items for a voucher and we re-purpose those items. This is a project we are very proud of.”

As a business owner and mother, Sara finds it hard to carve out time for herself, but maintaining her personal style is important to her. “I think there is a real ritual in getting dressed in the morning. It can be empowering to take the time for yourself and choose an outfit that makes you comfortable and gives you confidence. It’s self-care.”

Setting boundaries between building the business and parenthood is something she and her husband Tristan (who also works for Grown) have found challenging in the past. But now that Grown is five years old, they’re in a better rhythm.

“We have a pretty modern family dynamic,” she says. “We don’t have traditional mother and father roles, which we’re pretty proud of as a family. Tristan does a lot to help out with our children, which allows me to focus on Grown.”

Sara’s advice to other mothers wanting to start a business is: go for it! “I would encourage any mother to start their own business,” she says. “It offers amazing flexibility and empowerment for any woman.

“With both businesses, we started small and slowly grew them, which helped keep cash flow and inventory manageable. They also started out as passion projects, every sale for the first few years was invested back in the business, so you need to have the passion to keep you motivated. I would also highly recommend a mentor and a good accountant.”

Through Grown, Sara hopes to instil creativity and good work ethics in her children. “Creativity should be practised and encouraged. Children are born with a natural creativity because they don’t have so many social or cultural influences. I love nurturing that natural creativity and teaching them to trust themselves and to have fun with it.”

Visit Grown’s website and Instagram for more.