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The Fool a designer women’s hippie fashion company started in 1973 with a little bit of magic
From Aden, Manchester, Eritrea, Cheetham Hill, Scotland, Clydebank,, Dvinsk, Russia, and Israel Ruti, Myrna and Aury set up The Fool.
They managed to make it work despite huge cultural differences, different life experiences and different expectations. This hotchpotch combination made the magic happen brought the spark alive and created a successful entrepreneurial business.
The Fool designed manufactured and sold colourful, flowing, lacy hippie style women’s clothes retail and
wholesale from a back street run down shop with an incredibly low rent in Westbourne Park, West London from where the 3 of them all lived with their children.
They had so little money that they couldn't afford to buy expensive fabrics to make the clothes.
Having a eureka moment they found that if they bought cheap cotton printed fabric in any colour they could then over dye the garments by hand which blended the patterns and colours in a new beautiful way. The resulting colour ranges became a trademark of The Fool style.
Where had the idea for The Fool a fashion enterprise come from? Ruti, Myrna and Aury had been working for Trivia an indoor market kind of shop in Middlesex Street near Petticoat Lane market, London. It was the beginning of indoor markets, a bit like Kensington market. Aury's brother Morris and Ruti's uncle Judah ran it. "There was someone selling records. Aury sold jewellery, candles and pottery, another person sold shoes and I sold fabrics which African customers loved. Morris, Aury's brother at the beginning sold clothes he bought from wholesalers", Judah. Then, a fashion designer friend from the Royal College of Art, Marissa Martin briefly designed for Trivia. Ruti and Myrna took over the designing and manufacturing. Some time later Ruti, Myrna and Aury left Trivia needing the freedom to set up their own creative enterprise, The Fool. There was a renewed energy and after a feature in The Drapers Record a wholesale magazine new customer discovered them and ex Trivia customers came and bought from The Fool.