This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
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Many people who are differently sized or particularly tall or short sometimes can be ignored, at least they feel ignored by the fashion world. And that's where today's featured side hustler comes in, in Melbourne, Australia. In fact, one woman was fed up with the inability of finding clothes that fit her six foot, three inch frame. Now you'll never guess what she decides to do. Okay, well actually she starts a business 'cause that's what we're all about here on side hustle school.
She decides to address the problem and start her own e-commerce shop, specializing in clothes for tall women around the world. Her business is called Height of Fashion. The store does in fact reach tall heights and she has high ambitions. Aussie stretches out with online store for tall women. That's today's story.
It's coming right up. [Music]
There's a little known flight in this world, often seen, usually ignored. For women over 5'10, jeans that cover ankles and sleeves that reach wrists can feel like a solar eclipse event. At 6'3", Natalie Matthews, e-commerce manager by day and hero to tall women by night, knew the problem intimately. In Melbourne, Australia, she managed clients and drank fantastic coffee.
I do love the coffee of Australia. After hours, she scoured the internet, returned to disappointing orders and swore off long pieces, pieces that were labeled as long, but they actually shrank into potato sacks. Enough, she decided if the industry wouldn't fit her, she'd fix the industry. In 2016, she turned frustration into a side hustle and named it Height of Fashion. She wouldn't resell other brands.
She would design for tall women from the ground up. After all, she understood where seams should land, how proportions should fall and which silhouettes actually flatter. Daily Life became her test lab with work commutes and weekends doubling as fit trials. Natalie could sew, she had learned at age 14. So she drafted patterns for the staples she wanted in her own closet.
She carved out evening blocks to sketch, measure and refine. Inspiration came from favorite stores, celebrity looks and what her friends wore, but all adjusted for tall proportions. A few hands-on courses reinforced her foundation knowledge and turned teenage DIY into usable pattern skills. As the brand took shape, customers found her from the Netherlands, the UK and North America. To keep up with demand, Natalie hired a pattern maker on Upwork.
Together, they translated her sketches into technical patterns, then sent them to a manufacturer in China for samples. The sampling phase wasn't tidy. In fact, fabrics that draped beautifully in theory sometimes clung in practice. Shapes that worked on a 6'3" model did not work for a 6' model, sizes drifted. Trial and error became an asset, each round clarified specs and improved the next cut.
Because size really does matter in this underserved niche, Natalie pulled her Instagram audience to choose which sizes to sample first. Most customers clustered from small to large, but she watched the outliers in extra small and extra large to ensure those risks were covered too. Instagram doubled as a listening post and a size lab, a place to gather that feedback, preview ideas and show the clothes on a body that matches the buyer. Finished products shipped from the factory to Natalie's Melbourne home and wait patiently to meet new owners. With no physical store fulfillment as her two hands, plus a very good friend and a Shopify database to keep orders straight.
She's now on a first name basis with the staff at Australia Post and inevitable outcome of bootstrapped logistics and lots of outgoing parcels. She funded height of fashion with about $40,000 in savings. That money covered a website, marketing materials, and in her words, about a thousand other things required to launch the real brand. When we first featured her, she was still reinvesting profits into photography, hosting, shipping, import duties, barcode fees and transaction costs. Ethical manufacturing and small volumes can be difficult for profit margins.
So that's why she wasn't taking home much at the time, but those costs are necessary and she's playing a long game built on fit and trust. Her e-commerce background has helped, but running height of fashion forced her to learn on her feet, sourcing pattern development, quality control, international freight, customs duties, and the nonstop rhythm of customer service. This is what she says, "Getting my hands dirty and starting something from scratch "that touches so many areas across the supply chain "really improves your confidence." Meanwhile, the brand voice has stayed clear. No frump, no compromise, just properly proportioned pieces that look like the styles tall women actually want. Fit is the feature, long lines are the point.
Hiccups and challenges still happen. Every brand has them, of course, but they sharpen the process. A clingy fabric becomes a weight adjustment. The manufacturer relationship wants the scariest variable, now flexes for small runs and quality checkpoints. Financially, the cadence is simple.
She wants to build, sell, reinvest, and repeat. The mission is steady, to make tall women's wardrobes look like they always should have, intentional, modern, and long enough, finally. Height of fashion is a top shelf adventure, built one hemline at a time. [Music]
I love the long-term goal and the mission statement. We first featured Natalie's story a number of years ago.
I went to look at her website, heightoffashion.com. That's with some hyphens, height-of-fashion.com. It is still up and running, and not only that, you can get free delivery on orders over $150. It looks like worldwide, international. If you order more than Australian, $150 per transaction, which is less than $150 US, you get free international delivery.
So you can check that out, or of course, you'll get it sooner if you're in Australia, heightoffashion.com, also on Instagram. Inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is so much better. That's my encouragement for you. I hope you hear these stories and ideas and get thinking about your own idea. Like, what are you gonna make next?
How are you gonna change the world? Or how are you gonna at least make something happen for yourself? And by that, you may end up changing the world. Who knows? But for now, I'll say thank you for listening.
Thanks for tuning in. New episodes are out every day, sidehustleschool.com for lots of other resources. My name is Chris Guillebeau. You are listening to Side Hustle School. [Music]
From the Onward Project.
