about

Waeve is a new studio mill making cloth differently — where curiosity, heritage and waste meet by design.

At its heart, Waeve is a regenerative textile mill, producing cloth from locally sourced plant and animal fibres and non-toxic, natural dyes. Designed to be carbon- and water-net-zero, the mill draws on heritage methods

— re-engineered for contemporary production — to demonstrate how traditional textile practices can be scaled without losing integrity, place, or care.

Waeve brings together weavers, designers, makers and community practitioners to work fluidly across disciplines, combining lived experience, academic rigour and commercial viability.

Through an innovative in-house system, waste is treated as a resource, continually re-circulated into new products and applications within a regenerative, circular economy.

Alongside producing cloth for our own work, the mill is available to others who share the same ethos — supporting designers, makers and organisations committed to responsible material futures.

To show case our work Waeve develops one considered, once-yearly capsule collection, translating its cloth into garments that embody durability, beauty and restraint.

Community-minded by design, Waeve grows awareness, knowledge and skills through shared learning and making. As extractive systems fail and communities fragment, we use cloth as a practical tool to restore connection — reimagining place, voice and agency through regenerative yet commercial textile practice.

Waeve : Founding team

Ali is a textile designer, researcher, and systems leader working at the intersection of craft, industry, and future-facing production.

A 28th-generation weaver, her practice is grounded in knowledge passed down through family lines, alongside a PhD in constructed textiles from Goldsmiths University, London.

Aly's work combines deep material intelligence with strategic thinking about how textiles are made, scaled, and valued.

Her career spans Indigenous, place-based textile knowledge and advanced materials innovation, through to global, large-scale manufacturing systems as head of product development at Albany International, leading work across performance textiles, complex supply chains, and industrial production at scale.

Now working independently, she brings these worlds together — heritage and innovation, research and manufacture, culture and commerce — developing circular textile systems where material responsibility and desirability are designed in from the start.

Her work positions textiles not as surface or afterthought, but as infrastructure: intelligent, resilient, and central to how future products — and industries — are built.

Seymourpowell’s CEO and Executive Creative Director, Adrian is a global design strategist and product visionary known for blending creativity, technical precision, and foresight.

With a career built from product design roots into leadership at one of the UK’s most influential design agencies, Adrian has shaped work that spans consumer products, brand evolution, and future-facing experiences.

His expertise combines emotional engagement with manufacturability and strategic impact — a blend recognised through multiple D&AD Awards and his role as a juror for product design excellence.

Under his leadership, Seymourpowell has driven high-profile collaborations — including brand reinvention and sustainability-led design for major global products — and has pushed design into new contexts, from hospitality innovation to material and spatial future studies.

Adrian’s approach balances big-picture vision with rigorous execution, positioning design at the intersection of culture, commerce, and technology.

Lucy plays the leading organisational role at Waeve, where she turns strategy into operational delivery across the organisation.

With an MBA from London School of Economics, she brings rigorous commercial insight to a complex, values-driven enterprise — translating vision into systems, plans, and results.

Lucy is the operational powerhouse behind Waeve, overseeing finance, governance, partnerships, and growth, and ensuring the organisation moves with pace, clarity, and discipline.

Known for her ability to balance ambition with execution, she builds resilient structures that allow creativity and craft to thrive at scale. From funding and compliance to supply chains and delivery, she anchors Waeve’s work in operational excellence while enabling innovation to move fast and land well.

Her leadership ensures Waeve is not only visionary, but viable and built to endure.