What’s in a name? If Elizabeth Wallace is anything to go by, quite a bit, actually. The mini Ayrshire empire, which re-opened early last month with new safety precautions, has many strings to its bow: dress cleaning (under the guise of The Dress Cleaning Company), alterations (taken care of by the OG, Elizabeth Wallace), a flower girl line and, latterly, headpieces, jewellery and veils, a branch of the business now rebranded from Accessories by Elizabeth Wallace to the snappier Eliza Loves.
“When our accessories really started to take off, we felt that they deserved their own separate brand,” explains Nicola McCormick. “We took the original website and tailored it to a whole new theme and name. ‘Eliza’ was a nickname of our owner and director, Liz, when she was young and we thought it was so quirky and fitted so well with the collections. It feels so much more fun!”
And as if that’s not enough, over lockdown, things were as hectic as ever in the alterations wing, as the seamstresses transformed the bridal studio into a busy production line, whipping up scrubs for our NHS heroes.
“In partnership with For The Love of Scrubs, we were making scrubs for both the NHS as well as working with donations from local, Ayrshire suppliers to produce yet more scrubs for independent and private organisations (such as nursing homes, mental health facilities etc.) that were in desperate need,” says Nicola. “Even though all of the girls were on furlough, we volunteered to come in as it was such an amazing cause and an opportunity we just couldn’t turn down.”
Is there nothing these lot can’t do?