I’m Karen and I usually take care of the website, social media and product and lifestyle artistic styling and photography.
Michael is the one with the head for figures and planning and spent many, many hours online researching beautifully made sustainable products and small batch makers in the early days of setting up G.A.S Life Store and was instrumental in shaping our opening line up of independent brands.
Michael has a wealth of experience in project management within the events industry, kitting out gigs, festivals, tv and corporate events with the relevant audio visual kit required to bring these large scale happenings to life. Needless to say, this all came to a crashing halt with the onset of the pandemic in 2020 when the world came to a standstill and we were forced into a global lockdown.
In contrast, my creative background is in Interior Styling. After studying Fine Art at university, I fell in to freelance work as a stylist and continued to enjoy the creative opportunities and flexibility this presented for the next twenty or so years. Most of my styling work was in the new homes sector, however, my passion has always been for older, more historical homes and I am always intrigued by the wealth of stories that lie within a well-loved interior full of character and how these reveal traces of its former life.
Over the years we have spent many holidays in France browsing the brocantes and picking up curios and handmade French soaps. (You've probably noticed some of the vintage pieces from collection popping up in some of our instagram shots. Being a bit of a magpie, there's quite a lot to choose from!)
We often talked of how we might turn our passion for modern rustic and vintage décor - a style the French do so well - into a way of life. When the need to do something different became more pressing as the pandemic endured and our regular work was thin on the ground, the idea for a lifestyle store began to burn away inside us. We talked of fusing our interests and creating a space where you could shop natural, thoughtfully made and cruelty free lifestyle products alongside a curated edit of vintage and handmade pieces for the home, including my hand made ceramics.
Being animal lovers, we have always insisted on buying cruelty free products, whether it was skincare or cleaning products, but we have always found this a very confusing market. It’s often not immediately clear if a product is cruelty free, particularly with the larger, mainstream players. Sometimes a brand widely believed to be cruelty free might actually be owned by a much bigger parent company, that cannot lay claim to the same ethical standards. I’ve wasted a LOT of time in shops, googling to see if a a product or brand is cruelty free before feeling confident enough to pop it in my basket.
As far our preference for natural products is concerned, this really arose as a result of my sister Helena’s diagnosis with Breast Cancer at the age of 36, just three weeks before her wedding day. Following her diagnosis, she threw herself into researching what she could do to improve her well being and one of the changes she made was to adopt a more natural lifestyle, including reassessing what she was using on her body and inside her home. She immediately made the switch to completely natural products containing no parabens, toxins or other potentially harmful ingredients.
Naturally, we followed suit. We started to consider the ingredients in the products we were using as well as the way in which they had been made. This would often involve a lot of hunting around online to find natural, cruelty free alternatives to the products which were essential to our everyday self-care and housekeeping routines. Invariably this also involved purchasing from many different places and therefore often incurred multiple postage costs. We thought it would be good to change this and create a shopping space for sustainable, considered lifestyles, bringing together a range of products, carefully made by small, independent brands.
So, I guess you could say our little Green and Sustainable Life Store came into being as a kind of natural destination, a place at which we arrived through a combination of fate and circumstance.
We do not claim to be experts in the field by any means - we continue to learn from the wonderful work of our independent brands and small batch makers. We believe that doing something is better than doing nothing. We can’t always do everything but we can endeavour to make small improvements along the way.
We champion sustainability alongside beautiful and thoughtful design and we ALWAYS insist our products are cruelty free.
Sadly, my sister Helena lost her battle with cancer at the age of 44, after defeating it the first time around and then, devastatingly, having to face it again seven years later. She was brave and relentless to the very end in her fight to survive, and, following her first diagnosis, equally resolute in her pursuit of a more authentic, balanced way of life, focusing on enjoying life’s simple pleasures above all else.
The tragedy of losing her at such a young age has taught us to appreciate every moment, to be more mindful and be grateful for the little things. Life is busy and the idea of a slower way of life seems out of reach for most of us, but we can all make small changes here and there which can have a positive impact - on our sense of well being, our day to day lives or indeed, on the planet.
We hope that in this little space we have created we can offer you simple ways to evaluate and elevate your everyday rituals - whether that’s with a beautiful handmade soap, a wonderfully scented candle or a naturally formulated laundry detergent.
Our collections will grow and change as we move forward, and as we discover new artisans and makers. We have lots of plans for G.A.S Life Store, and hopefully this is just the beginning. We hope you will join us on our journey.
Karen & Michael x
Well done if you made it all the way through to the end. I do go on a bit ;-)