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Amy Powney is one of British fashion’s leading voices on sustainability. After nearly two decades at Mother of Pearl, where she has helped position the brand around conscious design and responsible production, she is now bringing that same philosophy to AKYN, the purpose-led fashion label she founded in 2025.
Powney’s route into fashion was not a conventional one. She spent part of her childhood living off-grid in a caravan in rural Lancashire, an upbringing she now recognises as inseparable from both her passion for fashion and the values that underpin her work today.
Growing up so closely connected to the land instilled an awareness of the relationship between people and the natural world. That perspective has shaped her approach to materials, manufacturing and supply chains throughout her career.
The connection between her childhood and her work is also explored in the 2023 documentary Fashion Reimagined, which follows her mission to create Mother of Pearl’s first fully traceable, sustainably sourced fashion collection.
Powney stepped down from Mother of Pearl in December 2024 and launched AKYN the following year. Building a new business allowed her to place traceability and environmental standards within its operating model from the outset.
Her long-term ambition now is to develop AKYN into a regenerative business that supports workers, improves soil health and protects water quality. She also wants its methods to provide a practical blueprint that other fashion companies can follow.
Powney speaks to TheIndustry.fashion about the respect she has for every role within the fashion industry, how the natural world continues to shape her creative process, and what it takes to build a fashion label with environmental responsibility at its core.
Have you always had an interest in fashion? Why does it appeal to you and why did you want to work within it?
I had a rather unique childhood as I grew up on off grid, in a caravan for some of my childhood in Lancashire. My father sunk a well where we got our water and we had no electricity for a while until he later got a small wind turbine.
We did not have much and so me and my sister used our creativity to play. Art was my favourite subject in and out of school and I always knew creativity as a job would be my happy place.
As a teenager I naturally rebelled my farm-working parents with off grid life. I wanted to conform, to fit it. At the time the Spice Girls were my inspiration and so I dreamed of tracksuits and suits with wonder bras and ‘fitting in’. My creativity took a turn towards textiles at school, and I became fascinated by fashion and subculture, and the status an outfit could bring.
What I now realise is that everything has come full circle, with my upbringing and my passion for fashion coming together. My upbringing was the grounding in my understanding of how we give and take from the earth. That has since informed everything I have tried to do within my career, and why I strive to create without costing the planet.
Tell us about your first job in fashion.
After graduating from university I joined Mother of Pearl (MOP) where I spent the first 20 years of my career. I really started from the bottom, from sweeping the studio floor to eventually working my way up to Creative Director.
That journey immersed me in every part of the business almost immediately, not just design. I wasn’t shielded from the boring or difficult bits, and looking back, that’s exactly what gave me the grounding to eventually launch my own label AKYN.
What were the most valuable skills or lessons you gained from that first experience?
There are many, firstly that running a small scale business is hard, and that every single decision counts.
I have a genuine respect for each job in the building, because I’ve done most of them and I’ve also learned that small teams have the power to move fast and be flexible. When I won the Vogue Fashion Fund while at MOP, I used the money to produce the brand’s first fully sustainable collection, the subject of the documentary ‘Fashion Reimagined’. This was the start of something for me. How slowly but surely, one step at a time, I reimagined what I was creating to take into account the people who make it, the way it is made and how this affects the planet we live on. I discovered which processes worked most in harmony with those things and which ones nurtured and didn’t take too much.
At my new label AKYN I have taken that even further with the long term ambition to be a fully regenerative business. My collections are now my love letters to the planet and to the women that buy them and make them. It is my way of telling them we can and should do better, while making them feel good along the way.
What do you most enjoy about your current role?
With AKYN it has been the freedom to build something from the ground up with transparency and ethics at its heart from day one, rather than retrofitting sustainability onto an existing system. There’s something really energising about designing the whole model — not just the clothes. With every single business decision I make, I question how can I do this better? Is this right for the people, the planet? If it isn’t, we simply don’t do it.
If you could go back and give your younger self one piece of advice at the very start of your career, what would it be — and why?
One of my favourite quotes is ‘I always wondered why someone didn’t do something about that, then I realised I was someone.’ This is how I now see my career and the advice I would love to give to my younger self. To become a conscious designer but to also be brave and bold as an industry leader, to support and nurture change.
I would also want to tell my younger self to celebrate my background and not wait for permission to care about the things I care about. When I started, sustainability wasn’t really part of the industry conversation, and I sometimes felt like I had to justify caring about it, or where I came from. I’d tell my younger self to trust that instinct sooner and louder and that being a working class northerner absolutely could have a place in the industry and I should have felt that loud and proud.
What does the next chapter of your own career look like, and how are you hoping to grow from here?
I am always learning and AKYN is a work in progress, not perfection. We’re only a year old, though it feels longer with all the amazing support we have received. My ambition is for us to be the most responsible and traceable brand. What if you could create a collection which could leave no trace on the planet and could actually improve it, supporting local workers, regenerating the soil, and improving water quality? I want to provide a regenerative blueprint for other brands, to show that it can be done! That would be the ultimate success for me.
Has there been a person in fashion you’ve always admired, and why?
There have been too many incredible people to mention but I am particularly drawn to women who refuse to accept the status quo. Who fight to challenge and change systems and who are willing to be the difficult voice in the room when it isn’t fashionable to be so. There are so many incredibly intelligent, passionate and strong women in this industry who are striving for a better system and I’m so grateful to my amazing advisory board who agreed to advise my journey, they are forever my inspiration and a source of trust and wisdom.
As Anne Klein said “clothes won’t change the world but the women that wear them can”. I like to see this quote as a powerful reminder that all of us that work in this industry have the power to change something within our work for the better, no matter how big or small.