Creating Your Ladder

At 17, Adam Raillard sent 350 cold emails to get into London Fashion Week. A year later, he was presenting his own collection there.Adam is the founder of streetwear brand The Kong Is Dead. With no sewing experience, a tiny pink sewing machine and YouTube tutorials, he made six looks in a month for his debut show, Minus One. We talk about how to break into fashion, why he walks straight up to the scariest person in the room, finding out he had ADHD at 17, and why he’d rather people love or hate his clothes than feel nothing. If you’ve ever wanted to break into an industry where you don’t know anyone, this one’s for you.In this episodeHow a spreadsheet and 350 cold emails turned into a backstage role at London Fashion WeekWhy talking to the scariest person in the room first makes every other conversation easierThe difference between meeting 70 people in a night and actually building relationshipsGoing from backstage helper to presenting his own collection a year laterGrowing up with undiagnosed ADHD, and why he chose not to take deadline extensionsWhy goals change when you’re young, and why that’s normalAdam Raillard is a designer and the founder of The Kong Is Dead, a streetwear brand he launched while studying at London College of Fashion. He presented his first collection, Minus One, at London Fashion Week in February 2026.Follow AdamInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/adamraillard/The Kong Is Dead: https://thekongisdead.com/Thanks for listening. If this conversation helped, share it with someone who's working out their next step, and follow Creating Your Ladder so you don't miss the next one.See more of Creating Your Ladder at: ⁠https://creatingyourladder.podcast.di-rico.com/⁠If you'd like to send through suggestions or advice, email [email protected].SupportIf anything in this episode has affected you, you don't have to deal with it alone.Spark UK's resource hub: free mental health videos, toolkits and resources, ⁠https://resources.sparkuk.co.uk/⁠Shout: text SHOUT to 85258, any timeSamaritans: call 116 123, any timeIn an emergency, call 999

Alice Mazón has spent five years campaigning against Big Food, and she still finds walking into a school assembly terrifying. We talk about being dismissed at a conference because of her age, volunteering in Calais at 18, why McDonald's has become the youth club of today, and the two years she spent with a Nokia instead of a smartphone. If you've ever felt too young or too inexperienced to speak up, this one's for you.

In this episode

• Why McDonald's has become the youth club of today, now that real youth clubs have closed
• What happened when someone at a conference lost interest once they learnt her age, and her mum's reframe
• Why she spent her gap year volunteering in Calais at 18, and how she handles the white saviour question
• How Forced to Flee helps young people talk about migration without it turning into a row
• Why she spent two years with a Nokia, and what it taught her about boundaries
• Why everything is a lot more low-stakes than you think.

Alice co-directs Forced to Flee, an international NGO with 50 volunteers across 23 countries. She has campaigned with Bite Back for five years and studies Anthropology and Politics at the LSE.

• Alice on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alice-mazon-a61781217/
• Bite Back: https://www.biteback2030.com/
• Forced to Flee: https://www.forcedtoflee.co.uk/

Thanks for listening. If this conversation helped, share it with someone who's working out their next step, and follow Creating Your Ladder so you don't miss the next one.

See more of Creating Your Ladder at: https://creatingyourladder.podcast.di-rico.com/

If you'd like to send through suggestions or advice, email [email protected].

Support

If anything in this episode has affected you, you don't have to deal with it alone.

• Spark UK's resource hub: free mental health videos, toolkits and resources, https://resources.sparkuk.co.uk/

• Shout: text SHOUT to 85258, any time
• Samaritans: call 116 123, any time
• In an emergency, call 999