Since she was a design student, Sandra Ney longed to own a company with a purpose. A driven woman with a servant’s heart, Sandra knew her talents and her passion for design were meant to serve a greater cause.
After college she took a job as a designer for the Beverly Hills Polo Club. The position allowed Sandra to gain a tremendous amount of experience, but she still felt that pull to design with a purpose.
“It was discouraging to witness how cutthroat the fashion and design industry can be,” she says. “My heart ran deeper than that.”
Also during this time, Sandra had her first son and soon discovered a problem within the children’s clothing industry: baby and toddler clothes with too many embellishments. If an outfit wasn’t held together by a combination of snaps, buttons and zippers, it was covered in toy trucks and big, colorful dinosaurs. She, like other moms and dads, needed simple, go-to pieces she could seamlessly throw on her squirming two-year-old in the morning.
Fast forward a few years and a few more kids and Sandra has finally built the beginnings of her own children’s clothing company, Will & Ivey, reigniting her passion for creating.
Her designs for Will & Ivey are classic with a modern touch, paying attention to details in branding and quality; the collection is full of comfortable, go-to pieces that are easy to get on a fidgeting toddler and simple for children in potty training to pull on and off. Working with a manufacturing company here in Tennessee, Sandra’s fall and spring collections include baby jeans in shades of denim, soft t-shirts, the sweatshirt, the shift dress, skinny jeans, leggings, the infant gown and mouse hat.
Most importantly, though, Will & Ivey serves several philanthropic purposes. Partnering with ToolLife, a Nashville-based nonprofit, Sandra has helped establish a sewing micro-business in Honduras, using men’s shirts to make girls’ dresses. She is also working on another partnership (details to be announced soon) to design quilts for foster children, a purpose that Sandra has a personal connection to.
“The heartbeat of the company is to help orphan and foster children,” she explains. “My mom was abandoned on the streets of San Francisco when she was young. I’m here and my siblings are here because someone rescued my mom through adoption. Her story is redemptive for children who feel like they have no hope.”
The Will & Ivey mission is this: to provide peaceful apparel for the fashion-forward consumer inspiring them to take on the day with purpose, sparking a chain reaction of opportunity and hope in the world’s most desperate places.
Sandra has been able to use her talents, her passion and her resources to design something truly beautiful and inspiring: a company with a purpose.
See the Will & Ivey collection at Vignette in Brentwood located at 130 Wilson Pike Circle,Brentwood.
