Our Story

El Rose began with our daughter, Elsie-Rose, our first, and at two years old she was all chalk drawings, rainbows and running in the front yard.

Not long after her second birthday she came down with what we thought was an ordinary bug. She seemed to shake it, and then one morning it came back fast: a sore head, and within the hour she couldn't keep anything down or stand on her own. We took her in. A few days passed with no improvement, and a scan "just to be safe" found a brain tumour.

It had been blocking the natural drainage in her brain, and the built-up pressure was what had made her so unwell. Surgeons placed a shunt to relieve it, and within the week operated to remove the tumour, around ten hours of surgery. It worked. But a known effect of that operation meant Elsie woke unable to speak or walk. At just two years old, she had to begin learning both all over again.

The tumour was cancerous. Treating it took us to the other side of the world, proton beam therapy and radiation in America. We moved the whole family over, lived out of a Ronald McDonald House alongside other families doing exactly the same, and made the trip to the clinic almost every day for six weeks.

A year on, we're still on the road back. Elsie's speech and her balance are still returning, a little more all the time. She is still here, still improving, and still, unmistakably, herself.

El Rose grew out of all of it: the belief that something good can still be made in the middle of the hardest thing, and that what we wear can hold the people and moments we never want to forget. Every piece is made by hand. Some carry an even deeper meaning, named for the children we met along the way, made in their colours.

If any of this is close to your own story, or you'd simply like to hear more of ours, reach out, some stories are best shared one to one.

Thank you for being here, and for becoming part of ours.