Welcome to Alison Jayne Clothing!

My name is Sammy and I am a co-founder of Alison Jayne alongside my husband Owen and we wanted to tell you a little bit more of how the brand began.

In January 2025, I (Sammy) was diagnosed with FND (Functional Neurological Disorder) after a year of battling facial paralysis, limb paralysis and a lot of other symptoms. This had completely changed my life and I went from being completely independent and working full time to being cared for and unable to work. I made an attempt to go back to my 9-5 job but my FND did not seem to get any easier to manage as it was so unpredictable. In the May of 2025, I made the decision to leave my job as it was no longer manageable. Owen was caring for me full time and I really struggled with not working so we decided to take a huge risk and start a business that I could run around my illness and Owen could be with me to support me when needed. We went to our local wholesaler's the next day and bought our first lot of stock which was sandals, this then grew to clothing and this was the start of Alison Jayne.

Alison Jayne was my mum, who I sadly lost to suicide back in 2000. This massively impacted my life, from that day everything changed for me and I do believe that this time in my life is a huge contributing factor to my FND diagnosis. Throughout my teenage years I was angry because I used to think my mum had chosen to leave but as I got older I began to understand mental health and learnt that things are not always black and white. I had the most amazing support from my Dad, my Gran and my Granddad along with all my other family, who a lot of our items are now named after. My Dad gave up everything for me and I will be forever grateful to him and even now I am an adult and a mum myself, he is a brilliant Granddad and is a huge part of all our lives, if you read this Dad, we love you!! Gran, I cant even put into words what I feel about this woman, she has been the mother I didn't have and to have her support throughout this whole journey is something that will forever mean the world to me.

Our sales began to grow from the start, some days slower than others but we gained such a beautiful, supportive community and I could not believe it. My goal was a clothing brand, not a boutique but we had to start with somewhere to sell our products and build up a trusting relationship with our customers, many of whom are now friends. In June 2025, just 2 weeks after we launched, I decided to design a t-shirt that symbolised my journey and I came up with the butterfly and flowers for our Still I Rise design and then this quickly led to a collection of 10 designs, all inspired by times in my life and we worked with an amazing team to bring The Healing Collection to life and this is where our tagline of Wear Your Confidence came from. I wanted to be more than a brand, we wanted to tell a story and on launch night we sold 47 t-shirts which is small to most businesses but not even a month after our start up, I didn't expect to sell one and this absolutely blew me away. We continued to grow our sales and launched the Varsity Collection also in Summer and we learnt so much from that collection and we continue to learn now, every day.

We rebranded in February 2026 with the same lady who we worked with on The Healing Collection and we are in love with the new logo and branding. Green for mental health and purple for domestic violence are now the colours that we use and the meaning behind them is something that is very important to me. We are still a very small business and have achieved so much more than we ever imagined in our first year. We are already working on things for later this year and mental health is what our brand is all about. This journey has been incredible and to see my mum's name on our website, our clothes and up in lights in our unit makes it so special for me. Our daughter's love our work to and support in any way they can, they didn't get the chance to meet my mum as she passed away when I was so young but they are helping to create a lasting legacy in her name.

My story is my inspiration and if I can turn all of the negatives from my life into positives and help people along the way then that can only be a blessing.

We appreciate everything, thank you so much! 

Sammy & Owen- AJC!