Express Yourself

A love of fashion became a safe space to talk about what’s really going on. Meet the woman behind The Collective

- Erin Fisher

Brimming with bright, bubbly energy, Louise Clark is the sort of person who lights up a room, but it wasn’t always this way. For many mothers, the birth of a child is an exciting time of joy, love and connection. For Louise, it was a time of darkness. After a rollercoaster ride with fertility treatment she was elated to hear the news of her pregnancy, yet when her daughter Billie was born in 2009, Louise was hit with postnatal depression.

She struggled to feel a connection with her baby girl, and when she so deeply wanted to feel a sense of love and joy, she instead felt empty and suffocated. “It was a really frightening time, probably the scariest time in my life. I’ve never had anything like that before. I’ve always lived with anxiety, but this was by far the scariest thing I’ve ever had to go through,” she says. “I was like this shell of a person, any joy or love or happiness had just gone.”

With the help of therapy, medication and support, she made it through the depression and now cherishes her connection with Billie, but the experience sparked something else in her. “I realised after postnatal depression that I had to do something that was fulfilling to my soul,” she says. Knowing that her work had to be meaningful and rewarding, Louise began investigating charities and social enterprise. She was in search of a way that she could combine her love for fashion and pre-loved clothing with her passion for mental health, community spirit and compassion.

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