The Agency
RAVEN was born in the summer of 2019. With more than a little urgency, our founders, Sophie and Yasmin, launched the business in ten days. (If you don’t know our story - and it really is an excellent story - you’ve only to ask).
In need of a name for our slightly premature baby, we turned to a second-hand copy of Patti Smith’s Collected Lyrics and the answer lay, as most answers do, with Patti. What began with a song title (Ravens, 1996) led to much greater meaning as we discovered true spirit-animal status. Turns out the raven is nature’s problem-solver, with a second-to-none sense of cunning and extraordinary communication skills... Smart birds, indeed.
Back to 2019: Four months in, with a starting pistol still ringing in our ears and with almost thirty events already under our belts, we delivered The Fashion Awards at The Royal Albert Hall. Populating a stage with legends, vital new voices and history-making pairings (please see: Janet Jackson, Tyler The Creator and Rihanna), we demonstrated our unique understanding of the talent landscape, and the ability to ‘divine the moment’ in the fashion and beauty space.
We started out as a boutique agency, with a roster of real friends and fierce allies, and that ‘family-first’ spirit continues to define us as we build our business. Uncompromising clothes are our first love, and we believe our edit stands for something. That to be represented by RAVEN says something distinct to the wider fashion community.
We’re image consultants - as publicists, we think like editors. We believe in the primacy of brilliant communications talent. We’re more than just executors of somebody else's’ vision: we’re ideas people, and we work with partners who celebrate that. Our team are forthright, funny and completely obsessed with contemporary culture - in ways which leads them to unlock clients’ potential to define the ‘now.’
We uniquely protect, incubate and advance young talent. We recognise the faults and failings of our industry, just as keenly as we uphold belief in fashion’s role in culture. We embrace change: the proximity we have to pioneers and true fashion revolutionaries has afforded us that. Much of what makes us special is our passion for finding, extrapolating and accelerating narratives. The word ‘storytelling’ is horribly overused, but there’s no better one to define our practise. We’re believers in the seduction of language; it’s the beating heart of what we do.
Sophie & Yasmin