CAVE OF WONDERS - The Mermaid Cave, Margate
Zoë Lower tells Marijke Hall of her journey to create immersive and eco-friendly festival fashion brand The Mermaid Cave
After just 30 minutes speaking to The Mermaid Cave’s Zoë Lower, all I want is a face full of glitter, some nipple tassels and a visit to her travelling den Dori.
Her energy when describing the sparkly, environmentally-driven business is catching and I’m sold.
She’s admittedly got an insatiable appetite to create things and a passion to push the eco-message through everything she does.
This, in her own words, is to offer a unique and immersive festival fashion and beauty experience, turning us mere mortals into beautiful mermaids and mermen while protecting the ocean.
For the cynics, she may sound a bit hippyish. But we can assure you, she’s not.
She’s got a bonafide successful photography career shooting for the likes of London Fashion Week, Burberry and Vivienne Westwood.
Her business sense is nothing to be sniffed at, either, starting out in 2014 with a festival clothing brand called Zola while working the circuit doing glitter makeovers out of a backpack.
This led to where she is now. She’s got a transformed vintage caravan called Dori, which she takes to festivals, photoshoots and private events to do glittery, sustainable makeovers. She also creates unique and beautiful clothing from second-hand fabrics.
Then there’s her studio in Cliftonville’s trendy Northdown Road and she’s just opened a hotel in Margate. Yes, a hotel.
Through The Mermaid Cave (@themermaidcave) she’s proving you can look good, have fun and even create a dream place without it costing the earth. Literally.
The self-confessed water baby says it was a trip to Bali back in 2017 that sparked her passion for ocean conservation.
“I was going swimming with manta rays and got into the water for what should have been the most incredible experience of my life, but within a few minutes I had to get out,” she says. “It was as if someone had ripped 10 bin bags and emptied them over the side of the boat.
“I was being hit with empty Pot Noodles, my feet were getting tangled in plastic bags - it was so traumatic to see the extent of the waste.
“I want to create a colourful world for people to escape in and so there’s not just one specific thing that we offer”
“When you’re in a city your connection to the planet is quite limited, but when you’re right on the edge of natural beauty and you see that every move you make has a direct impact on sea-life you open up to the reality of the situation.
“So once I’d seen that, I knew I wanted to be part of the changing tide. It was a catalyst for me.”
Zoë had already been somewhat eco-minded, feeling conscious that her Zola brand produced new items rather than recycled.
She’d also already started using biodegradable glitter before the eye-opening Bali trip, having previously been using the standard stuff as well as plastic gems.
“It makes my skin crawl to think that I was creating part of the issue, but you’re only as good as the information you have and so as soon as I realised, I put away all the plastic bits we had,” she says.
“Every move I make with my business, all the set design for example, is upcycled pieces of furniture that I’ve found.
“It’s just working with materials that are already existing.
“That’s how we’ve done our hotel as well. It’s rescuing stuff that would have been going to landfill and now considered to be beautiful again.”
Beauty runs throughout her products and all reflect the look of the ocean with blues and greens.
Those who visit her pitch at festivals get to experience the full impact of her creativity, with Dori decked out with CD mosaic scales, shell-encrusted windows, a hall of mirrors and glow-in-the-dark aquarium. Don’t worry, there’s no fish in there.
She takes it to festivals, private events, kids’ parties and photoshoots and she and her talented team transform people with sparkly makeovers while they sit in her immersive ‘underwater’ oasis.
“I love transporting people to another world when they come into our pitch and that’s probably become a bit of a signature for me,” she explains.
“We do bespoke looks, so every time someone sits in your chair you’re doing something new.
“We’ll have people coming in on the fourth day of a festival saying ‘Help, sort me out’ and we’ll braid their hair, do their makeover and they go off ready for another day of fun with a big smile on their face.”
Over the years, Zoë has added a seemingly endless list of other things to The Mermaid Cave.
She admits that any creative feelings she’s had she’s put into practice, including making nipple tassels, crystal jewellery and even learning reiki in the jungle in Australia. She’s now a qualified practitioner.
“It’s all basically one big extension of anything I want to try my hand at,” she says.
“I want to create a colourful world for people to escape in and so there’s not just one specific thing that we offer.”
She says her heart is really in the kimono pieces she makes using second-hand fabrics and Indian saris she finds on eBay.
“When I made the Zola stuff it was really on my conscience that I didn’t want to be producing anything new.
“I didn’t want to be contributing to anything damaging the planet and so now everything is about working with existing fabrics.
“Someone might have bought a sari for an Indian wedding and it’s been sat in their cupboard for years, and now it’s getting this new lease of life.”
She admits she loves the nipple tassels, too.
“Girls at festivals will come over, I’ll help put them on and then they have a run around Dori to get comfortable before going off feeling empowered. Or they might just wear them for themselves under their clothes.
“It’s all about empowerment and inclusivity. My brand is about empowering not just women but anyone who identifies with the brand.”
As well as Dori, Zoë has her studio in Cliftonville, sharing the space with Sea Vintage (@seavintage).
And if she wasn’t busy enough, she’s just launched The Tides (@the.tides.margate), a hotel next door to the Albion Rooms on Eastern Esplanade.
“Every room is themed on a different country and it’s all maximalist design with minimal impact, which is our tagline.”
How she fits it all in is quite something, but she insists she’s not a workaholic.
“I’m a creator-holic. This is like a big amalgamation of what I do creatively.
“I haven’t had to pick one hat - I get to rotate the hats depending on my mood.”
The Mermaid Cave will be donating 3% of all earnings to ocean conservation projects on a visit to Indonesia this autumn.
INFO: the-mermaid-cave.co.uk
