The Story of Grace Aura

If you'd asked me at seven years old what I wanted to be when I grew up, I'd have told you the same thing I told my mum every Saturday: I wanted to own a clothing shop.

I'm Grace. I'm 28, I grew up in Northampton, and I've been quietly building toward this for as long as I can remember.

For most of my twenties, I worked in other people's shops. I folded other people's jumpers, recommended other people's collections, watched women try on dress after dress looking for something that just felt right — and so often not finding it. I'd come home with a notebook full of ideas: the cut I'd change, the fabric I'd choose, the way a fitting room should actually feel.

I kept that notebook on my bedside table for years.

In the spring of 2023, I emptied my savings, picked a name I'd been hoarding since I was a teenager, Grace Aura, and I started.

The first order was packed in my parents' spare room. I remember exactly which piece it was. Exactly how I folded the tissue paper. Exactly how my hands shook printing the address label. My mum took a photo of me holding the parcel before I walked it down to the post office. I've still got it on my phone.

Three years on, Grace Aura is no longer a spare-room business.

We dress women and men across the UK and beyond. Our pieces lean into the things I always wished I could buy myself — timeless silhouettes, beautiful linen, considered tailoring, nothing trend-chased or disposable. The kind of clothes you reach for again and again, not the kind you forget about after a season.

And this year, the biggest one yet: we opened our first boutique. A real door. A real shop. A real space to walk into.

I still get a little overwhelmed when I think about it. Most days I'm there myself — hanging the rails, steaming the linen, helping customers find the piece that just feels right in the mirror. The thing seven-year-old me would not have believed was possible.

Grace Aura is for the people who care about what they wear and how they feel in it.

For people who want clothes that last longer than a season. For anyone who's ever stood in a fitting room wishing the world made something that just fit them properly.

That's the shop I always wanted. So I built it.

Thank you for being part of it.

With love,
Grace x