Cara & The SKy
Cara & The Sky is a knitwear brand seven years into business, with stockists worldwide and a loyal customer base built on that expertise. The brief was twofold: reposition the brand's story to feel more mature and confident, and introduce a new summer dress line - supported by a dedicated launch photoshoot - so it read as a natural next chapter rather than a departure from the knitwear customers already knew and trusted.
#1 Ensuring strong foundations
To begin, I conducted an in-depth discovery, tracing the brand back to its origin - the founder's creative upbringing, her early love of customising clothing, and then her specialism in knitwear design. This brought her values and craftsmanship the brand had been built on clearly to the surface, and put it into words for an updated brand ‘About’ page.
I also audited the brand's existing customer avatars and found a small but significant mismatch from her true customers: one avatar was skewed too young, another lacked the depth to guide real decisions. We rebuilt these into three precise avatars, and then used these as a compass for every positioning decision that followed.
Cara & The Sky: already beloved for colourful knitwear, needed my help ensuring their move into summer dresses would be as loved.
Positioning
Next was the brand’s positioning within the marketplace.
The brand had seen a boom during Covid, followed by a few quieter years - and the founder felt it had lost some of its confidence and identity along the way. Part of the work was helping her reconnect with what made the brand distinctive in the first place: an urban heart, born of the founder’s North London roots.
The founder had also planned a picnic scene for the dresses launch campaign, but a closer look at the brand’s DNA and their target audience showed us that this wasn’t the right route for them, and we instead settled on the idea of ‘Urban Whimsy’ – showing the dresses worn by a trend-led young woman going about her Summer in central London.
We now had a clear brief, and we knew exactly who we were speaking to.
Getting clear on the target audience & fleshing out the avatars into believable customers.
Art direction
We brought urban whimsy into the summer campaign shoot, directing creative direction, model selection, styling, locations and poses.
The key call was moving the shoot from a planned countryside picnic to an urban setting - a decision drawn directly from our early strategy work.
I provided a moodboard, suggested poses, and directed props and styling so the final images read as storytelling rather than catalogue shots. Post-shoot, we selected the strongest campaign assets and mapped how to use them across marketing.
the summer dress shoot
The final shoot
Storytelling – the connecting thread
The priorities of our audience (comfort, colour, ease, style) and the phrase ‘joyful dressing’ became the through-line connecting knitwear to dresses.
We developed a founder story that built around the designer’s approach and the brand’s underlying ethos, rather than a single product category - giving the brand room to expand without losing coherence.
I also brought storytelling into the brand’s content, using it as a tool to showcase the brand’s products, creating awareness of the range and purchase desire.
This also allowed the brand to show off some clever design details that could be missed on first glance, underpinning the message that every piece is designed with great care, and consideration about the woman who will wear it.
social content
As well as helping her launch the summer dresses, part of my remit was to solidify the brand’s messaging and internal identity.
Before this work, Cara & The Sky's social content leaned on reels showing full rails of product - so no single piece stood out - and content focused more on the “small business” message, rather than creating aspiration for the audience.
The client herself admitted she felt “very stuck”, reaching for "stupid hooks" because they were the only thing getting her views - content that performed, but didn't sell and didn't reflect the brand.
I identified where the brand could be playful and where it needed to step back from trend-chasing altogether, building content ideas around the brand's real differentiators: quality, attention to detail, comfort, and its signature silhouette. Each idea was designed to work as a sales driver while still telling the brand's story.
the result
The collection launched three weeks later than planned due to supply chain delays, which affected overall launch momentum. Even so, one of the three dress designs almost sold out entirely on pre-order before it was available to ship, and the launch drew an overwhelmingly positive response from the brand's existing audience.
The founder has since said this shoot set a new benchmark for the brand - raising the standard she now works to for future campaigns and content.
client testimonial:
"We went really deep, and it helped me figure out what the heart of the brand was. Cara put together two very good mood boards to help me work out the direction for the shoot should go, and because of that, we landed some incredible shots that I'm so proud of."
"What she's got out of me to then push my brand forward has been invaluable."
