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For episode three of RISE Routines, we knock on the door of Katharina Mildren’s family home, which currently doubles as the headquarters for her label, Katharina Lou. Known for its bold colours and exuberant vibe, the brand feels like a natural extension of Katie herself.

While her world might look like the blueprint for some girls’ dream life, Katie doesn’t shy away from sharing the less glamorous sides of running a successful business. What began as a one-woman show has now blossomed into a small team, and with that growth, she’s learning how to balance the switch between work and rest.

In this conversation, we speak about learning to lead, designing with longevity in mind, and how a good sweat is her unofficial coping mechanism.

Watch the episode below or read on for the full interview, including the questions that didn’t make the final cut.

KATIE: Hi, Elly.

ELLY: Good morning Katie.

KATIE: Come on in.

ELLY: Hello, who's this here?

KATIE: This is Ruby.

KATIE: I would probably be working because I live and work in the same space. At this time of day, I would be at my desk probably doing all of the quick fire tasks. I like doing that early in the morning, just doing emails and making a list of to do things for the day so that I can get into more flow states later in the day and actually get things done.

KATIE: Honestly, I think Sydney. There's nowhere like home. I did live in Melbourne for a little bit too, which is where I started my brand, and I feel like that was a really good growth period for me. I really came into my own there, but every time I come back to Sydney, I just feel just supported and there's something in comfort.

I do think it's really important to leave the comfort and grow, but it's always really nice coming home and just getting into my groove and my routine. Being around my people and my family as well is so important to me.

KATIE: Probably just the proximity of living close to my friends and us all living out of home in this little space. We really didn't leave the three suburbs that we were all living in. I also think I lived there at a different stage in my life. Everyone was kind of still starting their careers, maybe still studying. We were all just having a lot more fun with each other, but I feel like that was just the stage of life we were at as well. I think Sydney for me feels a little bit more like hustle, workday/weekend, whereas in Melbourne it felt like all one vibe.

KATIE: Yeah, from my experience. It would really depend on what you do for work or where you are living, but I felt a little bit more community in Melbourne, especially because I moved down there, so I was kind of searching for that new community and so were a lot of people that I met. They were all from different parts of Australia and we all kind of became each other's family. Whereas in Sydney, we all have our own families on the weekends and on the holidays we go see our families. In Melbourne we just hung out with our friends all the time.

KATIE: The cold. I hated the cold. I was working in a warehouse space in winter. There was no heating. My hands were freezing. I was sewing all the time and I was huddling over a tiny little heater. I don't actually think Melbourne is as bad as what it is in my head because I was working every day in such a cold environment.

If Melbourne and living in the Netherlands in winter have taught me something, it's being really grateful for Sydney winters.

KATIE: As much as I hate it, (1) I’m checking my phone. I'm starting to put my phone at the other side of my room.

ELLY: How’s that going?

KATIE: It changes each day. I like to listen to sleep podcasts sometimes at night, so then it's annoying because then I can't hear it at night. I'm still figuring out the logistics.

(2) Definitely cuddle my dog. She sleeps in my room with me. She's like my baby.

In a perfect world, I'm going to Pilates every morning. I love hot mat Pilates. I feel like sweating in the morning just lights a fire in me and gets me ready for the day, but realistically, I'm probably only doing that three times a week.

(3) If I'm just getting straight out of bed, I'm probably coming downstairs. If there's sun, I'm definitely trying to focus on the sun and then make my coffee and start my day.

KATIE: Probably the fact that I live and work at home, so I really have to make note mentally of when I'm kind of switching over from being at home to work.

KATIE: Having a coffee, I feel like that's probably, everyone's answer. Almost just more as a ritual thing. I love making my coffee or I'll go for a little walk and get a coffee with my dog just so she can get outside as well, because sometimes I'm at my desk all day, so it's nice to get outside of my house.

KATIE: This is niche, but I love the Aero bars.

ELLY: Wow. Throwback.

KATIE: It's really weird of me. I just like how they're airy, so they're a little bit lighter, but that's just at the moment I feel like it changes each month.

KATIE: I’m such a structure and discipline girl. I need to have my Google calendar perfectly laid out and my to-do list checking things off. I feel like you kind of have to be when you're working with a team as well, now I'm delegating a lot of tasks and if I don't have the time to give feedback or go over something and approve something, then what's the point of even giving the task to someone else?

It's definitely I think been a really strong trait of mine growing the brand because I do have that structure and yeah, I can always go back to that.

KATIE: It’s amazing. It's so much fun. It's definitely added a level of stress for me just in growing the business, but at the same time it's been so cool to share what we're building with other people because it's just been me for a while.

I’ve had no manager experience before, so it's quite interesting for me to just show up as a boss now because I haven't been for the first four years of my brand. It's been a big challenge, but it's been a really rewarding and fun challenge because I'm creating a world where these girls get to also grow with me which is really fun and we can share the wins together. Also maybe the losses are less intense because it's all of us working towards something. It's not just me berating myself for doing something, even though I always will more than them because it is my business. It just makes things a little bit easier and sharing the load with everyone as well.

KATIE: I hired a girl called Jazz who's still with me. She's actually been working casually with me for two years, but she started full-time at the start of this year. She started as almost like a brand assistant intern, but her role's really grown with the business. Which has also been really rewarding and fun thing to see because I'm seeing her grow with me as I'm growing. But yeah, now she looks after all of our e-commerce, stock and customer service, so her role's really growing with her.

KATIE: Absolutely, yes. I think it's not normal to not feel that. I love how people share their businesses and their work online, but the one thing I don't like seeing is this idea that everything's perfect and I wake up every morning and I do the same thing and I’m always the best version of myself. I think when I look at that, it makes me feel like there's something wrong with me. That is not my reality at all.

There's definitely some days where it's all too much. The business is growing, I have to make hard decisions, I have to be hard on people or do things that feel really uncomfortable to me, which makes me just kind of retreat and go like, I don't want to do this today. But I think I'm learning that the more I push that away, it's never going to go away in business and in life. I just have to deal with it every day. That's just the only way you get through things and the only way you grow as a person

KATIE: I definitely think doing some exercise because that's the only time in the day where I feel like my brain is not mine. It is like I don't think like myself. I think it's a really nice kind of meditation for me. Well, I think sweating out my problems is how I deal with things. Going for a walk as well. If it's the middle of the day and I'm just really overwhelmed by everything is a really good quick tool to use.

KATIE: Amazing. Do you want to come to my bathroom?

ELLY: Yes, I would love to.

KATIE: I'm very basic at the moment. I just use a moisturiser. I love my gua sha as well. It’s in the shower.

ELLY: That mean’s she really does it. If it’s in the shower.

KATIE: I use the Kit gua sha, which I'm loving, and I kind of switched between the oils that I'm using. I'm out of my favourite oil, but I've just started using this one because I just had it. It's the Drunk Elephant.

I use O cosmetics cleanser for in the shower. I feel like this is a niche brand, as in it's not in Mecca. I got this from my facialist actually. I get a facial maybe once every three months, but she put me onto this and I feel like it's really underrated, really good stuff. I'm sure it's like a multimillion, billion dollar company or something, it’s just not in Mecca.

KATIE: I’m a both gal. Oh yeah. I think a shower for me is a transforming thing. I really need to go from my day to night and my night to day.

KATIE: I’d say Welcome to my Island by Caroline Polachek. I'm really obsessed with her album at the moment. I feel like that's why I'm saying that, but it's just fun and a bit weird.

KATIE: (1) The Ilia concealer, you can see that's used and loved. (2) The Westmin Atelier contour stick as well is my favourite. It's just easy to apply. Oh, I also, I don't have this on today, but (3) Benetint can't beat it. It's just such a nice pop of red on the face.

KATIE: Definitely. I feel like that's normal just being a woman, but also in the fashion industry. I feel like I put a lot of pressure on myself to always be this certain person because sometimes I do want to be her, but sometimes I don't want to be her and I just want to wear jeans and not care about my style. Which I feel like is hard to say when you're in the fashion industry because people expect you to just always be wearing these crazy outfits and wearing your own brand and stuff.

KATIE: I think I had this really sweet spot of 18 to 21 when I was studying fashion. I didn't feel the pressure of the fashion industry and looking a certain way, but then I was also trying to be a little bit more unique. In the past few years, just with the way social media is set up and the media we're consuming, I'm finding it harder to feel your personal style and I feel like everyone is trying to dress the same.

I know this year for me, I'm making a very conscious effort to kind of change the media I'm consuming and go back to that sweet spot when I was a bit younger where I just dressed for myself. That's been a big goal of mine this year. I don't want to look outward for inspiration. I want to kind of look inward.

KATIE: Not all black, I've never been an all black girly, which in Melbourne everyone wears black, and I remember first moving there wearing fluro pink and everyone being like, what?

Some days I just want to wear jeans and a t-shirt, very casual, which I'm starting to put less pressure on myself and doing that when I'm just working. Then that gives my brain more time to be creative and show up in these cool outfits that I feel really myself in other areas of my life. I think.

KATE: Absolutely. It's my favourite room. Come on in.

KATIE: This is my beautiful home studio. It's very bright and light, which is my favourite space to create in. I've got the incense going always. I love a good smelling room.

We all work very close together, which is nice. It definitely changes look every day with how messy it gets. I do really like a clean space. I feel like to start my day off, I need it to be clean and then as I create, I can create mess, but I need that start and finish clean.

KATIE: So these are vintage patterns which I got from my grandma. Some of them are very, very old. You can see in the styles and the designs, how old they are. Yeah, I learnt to sew, sewing with my grandma.

KATIE: Yeah, I can. Inside you get basically the flat pieces of pattern paper that create a garment. You can kind of see here how you get all of the pieces and then it creates the design. So for me, learning to sew when I was younger, I just found this style really easy to learn.

Lots of little pattern pieces and I love this style and this way of sewing, so my next collection is inspired a lot off of this, and we've created packaging that will go with the design, which I'm really excited about. So it's like your dress is an old vintage pattern.

KATIE: I’m wearing it. Honestly, this dress has been so popular. I don't wear it as much anymore because everyone wants it and then I feel like I can't wear this colour way. We do bring it back in a lot of colour ways, but I wanted to wear it this morning. It is my favourite.

KATIE: Absolutely. I feel like that's the one thing to when people say sustainable fashion, I think it's such a hot topic and there's so many different factors that go into it. At the end of the day, if we're bringing new things into the world, we're not sustainable.

My take on that is I'm not designing on trend and I'm not designing for someone to buy something and then throw it out. I'm designing something that they'll buy and they'll keep forever. I'm really inspired by my mom's wardrobe because growing up she was very fashionable. I mean, she still is, but she had a lot of really cool pieces from the 90’s and I am obsessed with them now, and I think for me, that's what I want to create with my brand. I want to create something that you keep and that you pass down to your daughter.

KATIE: Honestly, from my past designs, for example, this top, we pulled this shape and the tightness around the body because we've got that fit kind of down packed.

Then just re-imagined it and added new things. A lot of the vintage patterns as well. I feel like a lot of those old shapes really inspire me or just design features from old styles that are still relevant today. I also get very inspired by fabric, so if I find an amazing fabric, I feel like that speeds up the design process a lot quicker.

KATIE: Well, I'll start with my high, definitely the pop-up activations we done. They’re incredible. They spark so much inspiration, joy and drive in me because I actually see in person how people react to the clothes, how people love the clothes or love the brand we're building. We had one in Melbourne last year and it was the best weekend of my life. So dramatic, but it really was, the team is all having the best time. I love seeing the girls also really loving their jobs, and I feel like it's just a really magical time for a brand when most things are online.

I think my low is just when I get quite stressed or overwhelmed and then I dive back into work and then not look after myself. I think that's a pretty common thing that people do, but I'm really seeing how my mental health impacts the business and how they go hand in hand. In saying that, I kind of needed to go through those times to know that I actually need to put myself first a lot of the time and look after my health before the business because then the business will do better because I'm in a better position to do that.

KATIE: Yeah, it's been fun. I love them. It's just quite intense for me to have it all in one space. We're about to move out into a studio, which is really exciting and I'm so excited for hopefully not just what that brings space wise, but also mental space. I think I'm going to be able to separate work and life a little bit healthier because right now it's all in one, but it's really fun. There's no complaints here. It’s a good vibe.

KATIE: We honestly, all this makes us sound really antisocial, but we're all headphones in. I need to lock in because otherwise I feel like we just yap all the time. I saw some business implementing a quiet hour of the day and I was like, maybe we need to do that. Sometimes we're just constantly yapping.

Some of the girls do work from home some days and everyone says they are so much more productive and I also really feel that when I'm alone, I'm a lot more productive. So yeah, it's headphones on for me when I'm locking in.

KATIE: Don’t do it if you're not prepared to work hard and be constantly hit with no’s. You need to be so resilient. I wouldn't be here if I didn't have the passion. It's not that I think people are more talented or more skilled in certain areas. I seriously just think it's the resilience that has gotten me to this point. There's been so many times where it's been really hard where I think a lot of people maybe would've been like, I don't love this enough to keep going. So you really need that passion and love.

Owning a business is very glorified online at the moment, but people don't show the true things that go into that, and I think I at least want to shine a little bit of light on the unglamorous side of things because it's not all just fun and pop-ups and designing. I was on the phone at two insurance for three hours yesterday, which was not fun. There's so many things that go into that, so just being prepared to just work hard.

KATIE: Sunday Stephens. A few of my rings are from them. Just really cool chunky jewellery.

KATIE: That's a great question. I guess it's nice to see a lot of small brands taking up a little bit of space. I don't know if that's just my algorithm because I am a small brand, but I feel like a lot of people who are interested in the fashion space are actually pulling through and buying from the small brands. Not just saying I love small fashion brands, but then buying from other places. I do really feel the support from the consumer.

KATIE: This would be a really hard one to change, but we are just so far away from everything. I just feel like we're never going to be Paris or New York. It just feels like sometimes we're just a very small little fish. Just being more fashion forward in Australia would be really fun. I feel like a bit irrelevant wearing a cool outfit sometimes in Sydney because I'm like, why am I doing this? The fashion girlies aren't around to see this. They are there, I feel like we just need to all collectively come together.

KATIE: Confident and supported. I don't want people to feel uncomfortable in the clothing and I feel like these dresses are just kind of the core of that. I feel like you just put the dress on and you're like, I look great, let’s go. I think that's the kind of sentiment I want in the clothing.

KATIE: Baba’s Place. Love Baba’s Place.

KATIE: Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo. I don't know if I said that right, but that is the best book I've ever read.

KATIE: Big Small Talk. They talk about politics and pop culture, and I just think they're doing an incredible job at talking about things that, two different areas that people care about just as much.

KATIE: What am I listening to at the moment? I feel like I have a really weird eclectic taste in music. Actually. I will say yesterday I put on Vienna by Billy Joel. That is one of my all time favourite songs. It's in that suddenly 30 movie when she's moving too fast in life, and that just evokes so much feeling in me sometimes when I'm overwhelmed.

KATIE: I feel like it's just me. Oh, now I have to describe myself. I think loud and confident, but also a little bit messy and real, not this perfect person. I never want to be this polished, perfect brand. I want to be real and authentic.