How Hemingway Design co-created Girlguiding’s new uniforms
Why go through the massive effort of redesigning different uniforms for thousands of girls and volunteers in Girlguiding?
‘Because an organisation’s uniform is now seen as a recruitment tool’, says Wayne Hemingway. The co-founder of Hemingway Design knows the power of a uniform revamp. His company carried out redesigns for McDonald’s in 2011, and TfL four years later; in recent years there have been the National Portrait Gallery and Natural History Museum. Girlguiding’s new uniforms launched at the end of July, and next up is the Toronto Transit Commission.
With far fewer young members joining during the pandemic year, Girlguiding experienced a 30 per cent overall membership dip post-Covid. The new uniforms have a key role in helping the charity build up its numbers. What’s more, one of its primary income streams comes from uniform sales.
A non-compliant tender
When the client put out an invitation to tender, Hemingway Design answered – sort of. ‘We decided to do a non-compliant tender,’ Hemingway says. ‘We didn’t do any design or show anything that was the art of the possible.’
That sounds risky, but the team had their own logic. ‘We did that because one of the best projects we’ve ever done was the TfL uniform. Why do so many of the young TfL cohort customise it in their own way? Because it was a complete and utter collab with them, and the only way we ever wanted to go through this was as a collab with the girls and the women of Girlguiding. And so that’s basically what we said.’
Co-designing with 55,000 members
Involving nearly 55,000 girls and women in guiding, the collaboration took place in two stages. Participants first voted on colour combinations and branding placements. Then they were given design sheets to colour in, annotate and fill with their own ideas. ‘We had them papered up on the third floor of our headquarters,’ Parker says.
Hemingway Design’s lead designer Kate Cullinan took direct inspiration from those sheets. ‘That was really a labour of love on Hemingway Design’s side, and a real demonstration of how seriously they took the co-creation,’ Parker adds.
Emily Parker, Girlguiding brand strategist since August 2022, says the new uniforms are the main expression of the 2023 brand refresh by Landor & Fitch. Dating back to 1910, Girlguiding is the UK’s biggest youth organisation dedicated to girls. There are four sections for different age groups: Rainbows (four to seven), Brownies (seven to 10), Guides (10 to 14) and Rangers (14 to 18).
‘It was a balance between keeping the specific identities of our different sections, but getting across that we’re a family of brands,’ Parker explains. ‘The trefoil, which represents Girlguiding and our purpose, is one of the uniting design features.’
So while everyone is part of one organisation, each section needed to sing and be age-appropriate to the life stage of those girls, she adds.
Hemingway elaborates: ‘For four- to seven-year-olds, rainbows make them happy. After that, they shift to caring about the environment, and the uniform progresses to that. Teens want a skater look and to look a bit more street.’ As such, he adds, the new uniforms are a manifestation of the natural progression of changing minds and tastes as girls grow up.
Designing for changing tastes and budgets
While the client may have had some expectations of the new look’s alignment with the brand, Hemingway Design went in with a completely open mind. ‘We believe that if you’re going to do co-design properly, then nothing is on the table and nothing is off the table,’ Hemingway says.
He adds, ‘So, even though most people and we would think that the yellow and the brown (of the Brownies) is part of the history, if the majority of people had said “No, we want to leave that in the past,” then we would have advocated for it to be left in the past. If you’re going to do co-design, you have to be prepared for everything, and we were prepared for all that history to go, and then have that debate, obviously, with the leadership after that.’
Over the years that the studio has been working in this field, the concept of a uniform has changed, according to Hemingway. ‘Unless you’re in the police or the armed forces, there’s a loosening up in society, and a uniform is not what a lot of people want.’
With the cost-of-living crisis, some members might not be able to afford a conventional uniform. Despite the 45 garments and accessories, members are now considered to be in uniform if they just wear a Girlguiding top – that could be a long- or short-sleeved T-shirt, or a hoodie. They can also choose to keep wearing any parts of the old uniform – designed by fashion designer Jeff Banks in 1990.
‘We wanted to make sure that this uniform wouldn’t scream against the old one,’ Hemingway adds. ‘We took that approach with Red or Dead (the fashion label he and his wife, Geraldine, launched in the early 1980s), where every collection was sequential to a previous collection.’
In the 30 years since the Banks look launched, body shapes have changed, as well as tastes. ‘We did a sizing and fit session with our members to make sure we were getting that right at the sampling stage,’ Parker says. ‘There’s lots of ability to wear it oversized, if that is how people prefer to wear it.’
This September, a policy change means all trans girls and young women must leave Girlguiding. Trans boys are accepted, and can wear the organisation’s unisex T-shirt, Parker says.
Bespoke items for Girlguiding include the ‘snugby’ for volunteers – a cross between a rugby shirt and a sweatshirt, that’s intended to be cosy and practical. It echoes the ‘fleecington’, which was part of Hemingway Design’s TfL collection – a hybrid top merging a Harrington jacket with a fleece that is very popular with staff.
‘It’s important to have fun when you’re co-designing,’ Hemingway says, and he’s taking the same approach with Toronto Transit uniforms. ‘We’re designing some bespoke items that have never existed before, and they’ve got funny names.’
Since the dark days of Covid, membership numbers have steadily increased and now stand at around 300,000 young members and almost 80,000 volunteers in the UK. The aim is to double those numbers by 2035. How big a role will the new uniforms play in that?
As Hemingway says, ‘an organisation’s uniform can be a barrier to recruitment, or a chance to reach a wider audience.’