NOT EVERYTHING NEEDS REPLACING. SOME THINGS JUST NEED REIMAGINING.
turns out, that goes for people too.

Life took a turn I hadn’t expected.

 

I went from travelling the world doing a job I adored to raising my two beautiful children, holding a lot of our life together myself, and figuring out who I was now.

 

I came out of a difficult relationship and into a period where I barely recognised the story being told about me.

 

I had been labelled. Judged. Given a reputation that didn’t feel like mine.

 

Being cast as the villain made other people’s behaviour easier to justify.

 

For a while, I fought against that version of me. I wanted to correct it, explain it, prove it wasn’t who I was.

 

Eventually, I realised I didn’t have to carry a reputation somebody else had written for me.

 

And that is where Ruined Reputation really began.

 

I’ve always made things. Creativity has always been how I make sense of the world and, somewhere amongst the chaos of rebuilding, I started making again.

 

I found myself drawn to things that had already had a life — worn leather, forgotten bags, battered shoes. Things with marks, imperfections and history.

 

I didn’t want to erase their history. I wanted to see what else they could become.

 

Somewhere along the way, I realised the same was true of me.

 

The name Ruined Reputation is deliberately defiant. It’s about rejecting the idea that our history, our mistakes, or somebody else’s version of us gets to define what we become next.

 

So I take old things and rework them. I foil them, paint them, change them and give them another chapter.

 

I don’t erase their history. I work with it.

 

And now, through Ruined Reputation workshops, I get to give other people permission to do the same — experiment, make a mess, try something unexpected and create something that feels unmistakably theirs.

 

Ruined Reputation grew out of rebuilding, but it isn’t really about what went wrong.

 

It’s about deciding what happens next.

 

Objects with history. Reworked.

People with stories. Reimagined.

Old Bags. New Tricks.