THE LONDON DOLLS - Making beautiful things happen

Beth Camilleri is the founder of ‘The London Dolls’; a salon based in East London that offers beauty and wellbeing services that include long lasting eyelash extensions, permanent make up, nails, massage, therapies and lifestyle products. The London Dolls are most well known for their semi-permanent lashes that improve the length, volume and thickness of natural lashes.

SERVICES:
• Brand strategy
• Brand name
• Visual identity
• Website
• Social
• Print
• Packaging
• Interiors
• Windows

Beth was keen to give the brand a fresh new look ahead of their big move to London Fields... from London Fields. The old studio had been a big success at Netil House, next to Broadway Market, but the time was right to take the next step up the beauty ladder. Around the corner from Netil House is a new development on Mare Street Called Monohaus. The new studio is three times the size of the old studio and will allow Beth to add to her team of beauty specialists to cope with the high demand for her services.   

We were given the challenge to refresh the brand so it appeals to new clients whilst not alienating the existing crowd of loyal customers. Beth was looking for a totally new way of presenting her brand. She wanted us to help her move The London Dolls up to the next level so that she would get on the radar of fashion and beauty journalists and bloggers.

The biggest challenge for us was the name. In this new era of female empowerment we didn't feel comfortable using the term 'doll'. We had real concerns that it was a derogatory term that was from another time, back when the east end of London was very much a man's world. We thought long and hard before we made the decision to change it. We floated the new name with some of the hard-core loyal customers and there was a unanimous reply... "Don't mess with our dolls"… not the reply we were expecting!
 

This gave us the next challenge... how do we call it The London Dolls without calling it The London Dolls?

The answer was staring us in the face - Doll is an old London slang word for a 'pretty young woman' so we found a more contemporary way of abbreviating The London Dolls with new London text speak - THE LDN DLS.

A simple twist of the existing branding that helped us get around the problem of having to use the word Doll everywhere. 

We created everything for the new studio launch, e.g. brand identity, brand message, business cards, printed material, website, social, window design and even some of the salon interior. The design of the salon was a huge job that Beth and her sister BB took on themselves, with just a little bit of our help. They were responsible for all of the heavy work, including flying to Morocco to source hand-made floor tiles and rummaging around vintage markets at 6am on cold and wet November mornings, we just helped them with the finer details of applying the new branding.

The new branding has been a big success. The studio had a soft launch in the Spring of 2018 and already the diary is full of bookings with existing and new customers. Beth will keep fine tuning the studio over the next few months as the business grows. The next job on the list is to help her with PR and marketing. 

LINKS:

Marketing Communication News

Logo Designer

THE LONDON DOLLS UPDATE SEP 2023: Beth has grown and diversified the brand whilst training to become a fully qualified nurse to enable the business to offer a wider range of specialist beauty treatments.