Karen Millen teams up with Step Up Club to empower women

'Our mission is simple: to give you the confidence and inspiration to be your best self'

karen millen step up

'Our mission is simple: to give you the confidence and inspiration to be your best self'

Fashion campaigns have been killing it of late. For his first campaign for Diane Von Furstenberg, Jonathan Saunders celebrated diversity in New York, while Stella McCartney tackled environmental conservation with her autumn/winter campaign.

Now Karen Millen is the latest brand to embrace fashion with a cause, by teaming up with the Step Up Club (an advocate for female career development) to create its Women Who Can campaign, which is all about female empowerment.

The new initiative, which will live both online and in-store, aims at giving women the confidence to achieve their goals, by providing a two-way conversation between the two brands and its customers, through editorial content, social activations and in-store events.

Step Up Club founders Alice Olins and Phanella Mayall told us, 'Our Women Who Can collaboration with Karen Millen embodies a shared ethos of female empowerment, our mission is simple: to give you the confidence and inspiration to be your best self.

'The campaign was born from the realisation that we need to be talking about our jobs and lives with the same passion and exposure that we talk about food, style and wellness. Both Karen Millen and Step Up are strong, female founded brands with confidence at their cores - we know that women feel stronger and more empowered when we unite, share, collaborate and boost each other to greater things. What could be better than talking about confidence, careers and success in the same breath as fashion?'

Themes in the series will include unleashing confidence, growing resilience and defining success, and for the first campaign, Sharmadean Reid MBE, founder of WAH nails, will share her confidence tips.

Penny Goldstone

Penny Goldstone is the Digital Fashion Editor at Marie Claire, covering everything from catwalk trends to royal fashion and the latest high street and Instagram must-haves.

Penny grew up in France and studied languages and law at the Sorbonne Nouvelle University in Paris before moving to the UK for her MA in multimedia journalism at Bournemouth University. She moved to the UK permanently and has never looked back (though she does go back regularly to stock up on cheese and wine).

Although she's always loved fashion - she used to create scrapbooks of her favourite trends and looks, including Sienna Miller and Kate Moss' boho phase - her first job was at MoneySavingExpert.com, sourcing the best deals for everything from restaurants to designer sales.

However she quit after two years to follow her true passion, fashion journalism, and after many years of internships and freelance stints at magazines including Red, Cosmopolitan, Stylist and Good Housekeeping, landed her dream job as the Digital Fashion Editor at Marie Claire UK.

Her favourite part of the job is discovering new brands and meeting designers, and travelling the world to attend events and fashion shows. Seeing her first Chanel runway IRL at Paris Fashion Week was a true pinch-me moment.