{"id":98703,"date":"2023-09-11T10:44:40","date_gmt":"2023-09-11T10:44:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebritycovernews.com\/?p=98703"},"modified":"2023-09-11T10:44:40","modified_gmt":"2023-09-11T10:44:40","slug":"luxury-handbag-brand-owner-reveals-struggle-with-dyslexia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebritycovernews.com\/world-news\/luxury-handbag-brand-owner-reveals-struggle-with-dyslexia\/","title":{"rendered":"Luxury handbag brand owner reveals struggle with dyslexia"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2>I couldn&#8217;t even read the alphabet at school because of my crippling dyslexia but now I design handbags for millionaires in Harrods and have a successful business<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Natalie Dennis is one of the UK&#8217;s fastest growing luxury handbag brand owners<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>But the 47-year-old&#8217;s success hasn&#8217;t come so easy due to her crippling dyslexia\u00a0<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><span>After taking the fashion world by storm, she reflected on her difficult journey<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Natalie Dennis is one of the UK&#8217;s fastest growing luxury handbag brand owners, but her success hasn&#8217;t all been plain sailing.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The 47-year-old battled extreme dyslexia for all of her childhood, and couldn&#8217;t even read the alphabet.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>She left her school in Bratton Fleming, Devon with just one GCSE in art and was finally diagnosed at the age of 18.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Against all odds, Natalie became a leading designer available in Harrods, fighting off\u00a0job offers the likes of Alexander McQueen, Mulberry, Burberry and Gucci.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>After taking the fashion world by storm and working for the million-pound business, Natalie has reflected on her difficult journey to get there.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/i.dailymail.co.uk\/1s\/2023\/09\/11\/09\/75203993-12495287-Natalie_Dennis_is_one_of_the_UK_s_fastest_growing_luxury_handbag-m-4_1694419526678.jpg\" height=\"464\" width=\"634\"><\/p>\n<p>Natalie Dennis is one of the UK&#8217;s fastest growing luxury handbag brand owners, but her success hasn&#8217;t all been plain sailing<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/i.dailymail.co.uk\/1s\/2023\/09\/08\/09\/75203989-12495287-image-m-2_1694162551001.jpg\" height=\"969\" width=\"634\"><\/p>\n<p>The 47-year-old battled extreme dyslexia for all of her childhood, and couldn&#8217;t even read the alphabet. She left school with just one GCSE but didn&#8217;t let that slow her down<\/p>\n<p>She said: &#8216;It was in primary school when I started to realise I was different.<\/p>\n<p>&#8216;I couldn&#8217;t read the alphabet and I would get a ruler across my hand. I started to fall behind quite quickly in my learning and couldn&#8217;t really make sense of any of it.&#8217;<\/p>\n<p>&#8216;I knew dyslexia was a thing, but in rural places like that, it just wasn&#8217;t something that was even talked about.&#8217;<\/p>\n<p>Natalie spent most of her school life in the bottom set, and left with just one GCSE, an A in art.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>She said: &#8216;I hope these days there is much more support for young children like me and by the time I got to university, I had a scribe for my exams which helped immensely.&#8217;<\/p>\n<p>Despite her academic battles, Natalie&#8217;s creative flare was always alive and she began designing at just three years old.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>She said: &#8216;I started designing handbags at only three or four years old when I would make clothes and little handbags for my Barbie dolls.<\/p>\n<p>&#8216;I would go to my friends&#8217; houses who would have lots more toys than me, because we didn&#8217;t have much money, and I would play with all their toys and dolls and then come home and recreate them all.<\/p>\n<p>&#8216;I would make these little bags out of cardboard, paper, and scraps of fabric. I would also make little mini patterns myself.<\/p>\n<p>&#8216;I didn&#8217;t realise then, but now looking back, that is where my pattern skills came in to be able to make handbags.&#8217;<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/i.dailymail.co.uk\/1s\/2023\/09\/08\/09\/75203983-12495287-image-a-5_1694162598031.jpg\" height=\"476\" width=\"634\"><\/p>\n<p>Natalie had a flair for creativity from a young age and began designing bags out of anything she could get her hands on at just three years old<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/i.dailymail.co.uk\/1s\/2023\/09\/08\/16\/75216143-12495287-image-a-13_1694186819125.jpg\" height=\"634\" width=\"634\"><\/p>\n<p>Natalie says her handbags (pictured) are inspired by her love of the outdoors and describes her style as &#8216;timeless&#8217;<\/p>\n<p>With just one GCSE, Natalie found it challenging to get into university and had to spend three years at North Devon College studying for a National Diploma in all different areas of art.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Natalie thrived in her field, going on to study for a Higher National Diploma in Fashion clothing at Maidenhead College, which is now part of Reading University.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>At the end of the course, she won first place in a competition by designer Wayne Hemingway, who urged her to apply for the London fashion school Cordwainers.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0It was there that she met fashion designer and lecturer, Darla Jane Gilroy, who managed to help get Natalie&#8217;s dyslexia diagnosed properly at the age of 18.<\/p>\n<p>Successfully achieving a 2.1, Natalie surprised her tutors by using an unusual revision technique.<\/p>\n<p>She revealed: &#8216;I managed to overcome my dyslexia challenges by being creative. I got people to do stuff for me, I recorded all my lessons and lectures. One of my lecturers knew it was pointless me going to lessons as I couldn&#8217;t write to take down notes.<\/p>\n<p>&#8216;The night before the exam, I had a whole term of lessons that I didn&#8217;t attend. She gave me a recording and I played it through the night. I got up the next day and I got the second highest score ever in the test without attending any of the classes.&#8217;<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/i.dailymail.co.uk\/1s\/2023\/09\/11\/09\/75286199-12495287-image-a-1_1694419443455.jpg\" height=\"424\" width=\"634\"><\/p>\n<p>Natalie now sells her designer handbags to millionaire customers at Harrods in London<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/i.dailymail.co.uk\/1s\/2023\/09\/08\/16\/75216145-12495287-image-a-24_1694187768712.jpg\" height=\"634\" width=\"634\"><\/p>\n<p>Despite being sought over by big name brands from Gucci to Burberry, Natalie has invested in her own brand and wants to put sustainability at the heart of her business<\/p>\n<p>My last college project was for a company called Tula which was one of the largest in Europe for handbags at the time, and I also helped them develop Radley&#8217;s first range.<\/p>\n<p>&#8216;At the end of the course I was offered a position with Alexander McQueen, which my university turned down.&#8217;<\/p>\n<p>Natalie went from strength to strength outside of fashion school, she quickly became head of design at Dollargrand and had to repeatedly turn down job offers from world-renowned design brands.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>She revealed: &#8216;I had people like Gucci, Burberry and Mulberry ringing me up daily to ask for an interview, but I turned them all down because one day I wanted to have my own luxury brand, but I knew if I worked for someone else, I would give all my own style away, so I refused.&#8217;<\/p>\n<p>Natalie first began selling her own homemade handbags at London&#8217;s Portobello Market, and within 12 months she was pushing thousands of units a month for big name brands such as Ted Baker, Faith, Country Casuals and Austin Reed.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>But despite money pouring in, Natalie wasn&#8217;t fulfilled, she said: &#8216;I got fed up with that. Although I was making lots of money, I realised it wasn&#8217;t really about design, it was about taking trends, looking at the market, and then feeding into each of those brands.<\/p>\n<p>&#8216;I wanted to make timeless designs that people wanted to purchase for the aesthetics and because it makes them feel good, instead of merely keeping up with fast fashion trends.&#8217;<\/p>\n<p>After watching the market trends change within the industry, Natalie saw an opening for smaller, bespoke, unknown brands and took the plunge in 2018, investing time into her own brand.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>She said: &#8216;It was time for me to start thinking about what I was going to do and how I was going to eventually unfold my story, that I where we are now, we started just before lockdown. In 2018 I travelled around the world looking at manufacturing in Portugal, Spain, China, and everywhere. I went to over 100 factories.&#8217;\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&#8216;My handbags, based on curves and timelessness, are driven by my love for the outdoors.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&#8216;I spent a lot of time by the sea, the waves and patterns on the shore massively influence me. I found 3D structures within nature fascinating My facilitation with the curve I didn&#8217;t know at the time had a name. The Golden Ratio.&#8217;\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>But with her international footprint growing fast Natalie, who puts sustainability at the heart of her business, has even bigger plans.<\/p>\n<p>She said:&#8217; We are now currently in the middle of designing a prototype which will be recycled leather, and we are going to do a vegan leather to come out in the next six months.&#8217;<\/p>\n<p>Source: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailymail.co.uk\/news\/article-12495287\/I-read-alphabet-school-crippling-dyslexia-design-handbags-millionaires-Harrods-successful-business.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Read Full Article<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I couldn&#8217;t even read the alphabet at school because of my crippling dyslexia but now I design handbags for millionaires<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":98702,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.8 - 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