Burnt Soul has seen celebrities don its iconic catsuits for the best part of a decade, but then the Gladiators came calling. Founder Robyn Lythe chats to us about seeing her designs on TV, helping people feel body confident and her dreams of dressing Dolly Parton.
“Contenders, you will go on my first whistle. Gladiators, you will go on my second whistle!” This famous line from Gladiators’ referee John Anderson was a staple of British Saturday night TV in the 90s. Joined by roaring crowds donning huge foam fingers, dramatic theme tunes and tanned muscles, Gladiators was a reason to stay in and marvel at everyday people taking on mammoth physical challenges in a time before reality shows dominated our screens.
BBC One has revived the format, bringing some much-needed nostalgia back to Saturday nights. The show is currently mid-season, airing until the end of the month. But aside from some comforting family-friendly fun, there’s another reason we should be tuning in, and that’s to check out the outfits worn by the new generation of Gladiator athletes, designed and made by Bristol fashion brand Burnt Soul.
Prior to this gig, Burnt Soul’s Lycra designs were a familiar sight on the festival scene, with people buying its brightly patterned catsuits to transform into their alter-egos across a long weekend.
“I always say that this is when Barry from accounts becomes Barbara for the weekend,” says Robyn Lythe, Burnt Soul’s founder who made the switch from bridalwear to Lycra creations when demand for her homemade catsuits boomed.
Body positivity
If you’re reading this thinking, “Catsuits?! I could never see myself in one,” then it’s time to step outside your comfort zone. Lythe’s designs are deliberately inclusive, aimed at all shapes, sizes and ages with one aim in mind: to feel fantastic. “At the end of the day, if you’re wearing spandex, there’s nowhere to hide,” Lythe notes. “When I first started looking for fun outfits, I could never find anything that ticked all the boxes. I’m quite tall, so found things ill-fitting. Or not brightly coloured and only aimed at a very slim physique. You want to put something on and feel amazing, then almost forget about it; you can go out and concentrate on having fun, being in the moment and not worrying about what you’re wearing.”
It’s so important for Lythe that everyone feels comfortable in Burnt Soul’s outfits. “I get most of my joy from getting emails and messages from people saying that they never thought they would be wearing a catsuit anywhere, but that they feel amazing. The goal for me is to always make things that that in mind, and to give people freedom to wear what they want.”
Burnt Soul has been doing just that, ensuring everyone has the chance to feel like a popstar. It was probably inevitable then that the brand would end up dressing world-class music acts for the stage, too.
Celebrity projects include making a disco ball catsuit for Miley Cyrus, dressing Ella Eyre for her Feline tour, creating outfits for a Marina tour (then known as Marina And The Diamonds), and having not one, but two Spice Girls wear Burnt Soul catsuits.
Can carpet fibres become catsuits?
Burnt Soul was born in Bristol, and every part of the production process happens in-house at the team’s new council-owned studio among other creative enterprises at Filwood Green Business Park (BS4). The team designs and releases small runs of vibrant clothing to be as sustainable as possible.
Our prints go onto a Lycra that’s made from recycled plastic”
“Rather than using virgin yarns, our prints go onto a Lycra that’s made from recycled plastic,” Lythe explains. “Eighty percent of the fabric is made from recycled products, like carpet fluff and plastic bottles.”
This innovative and sustainable fabric is available for the printed sections of the outfits, and as Burnt Soul was keen to implement a sustainable approach to its business to help combat fast fashion’s effects on the environment, this forms a major part of its action plan. Other sustainable initiatives from the company include sourcing locally for stationary and office supplies; using fully-recyclable packaging; recycling all scraps to businesses and community projects; and becoming the official sponsors of ocean activists Surfers Against Sewage. Keeping the design and production process located within the city helps in more ways than simply lowering the carbon footprint, too.
“One of the reasons I like having everything in-house is because you can have a bit more control over what you make,” Lythe says.
“If I were ordering from China, I’d have to pre-think all of my numbers a year in advance, and then that’d be that and any stock I had left over would be sold really cheap. And there would be leftover waste. That’s why we release very small runs of designs, then if they’re popular we can remake them. We’re meeting peoples’ needs rather than over-creating everything. It’s a lot more expensive that way, but I just can’t bring myself to look at the business like a profit-making scheme in that regard. I want to create clothes that are going to be sustainable and last, and create jobs for my staff.”
I’d love to dress Dolly Parton and Cher”
From Glastonbury to Gladiators
Lythe and her team were busy dressing the stars and festival crowds when she received a call from one of the directors at Hungry Bear, the production company behind the new Gladiators series. They were a fan of the figure-hugging designs seen at the likes of Wilderness and Glastonbury, and floated the idea with Lythe about creating outfits for the Gladiators to wear on the BBC series.
“We’d never done anything like this before,” Lythe explains. “TV is a whole different ball game and process. Plus, the athletes have insane body proportions – the sizes of the guys’ thighs were similar to my hips! It all happened very quickly. We needed to make up mock suit samples for the fitting, which had to be in bright pink leopard print of all things, as that was the only fabric we had spare at the time. I remember one of the Gladiators ‘Giant’ being quite taken with the pink print! It was such a quick process that we just had to go for it and not second guess ourselves.”
Thankfully, the production team didn’t want to “taint” Lythe’s design process, so kept the brief vague: red and blue, and not too skimpy.
“We sell to some pretty hardcore festival-goers who love to slide around on their knees, so we already knew our outfits get good wear, but seeing what they’d be doing on TV was on another level,” she remembers.
A few design tweaks were made to give the Gladiators more support and extra protection under the bright arena lights – preserving their modesty while filming a prime-time show. The shiny suits have been a hit, and apart from a minor issue during a pre-production photoshoot when they proved a little too shiny for the cameras (nothing some dulling spray couldn’t fix), the Gladiators have been ideal models to show how far the Burnt Soul brand has come from its early festival days.
“We have had amazing messages and such a good response to the show now that it’s aired,” says Lythe. “It’s always a little bit nail-biting, especially on such an epic job, but the feedback has been amazing, everyone seems to love them.”
Lythe’s team got to see their outfits in action last summer during filming at one of the semi-finals: “It was amazing, the whole production was insane; breath-taking. Then seeing it on TV at home was when it really hit home, seeing the very things we’d been making live. It was on another level.”
For now, the focus is back on designing new prints and launching new collections, with 2023 eaten up with Gladiators and moving studios. But Lythe still dreams of dressing her idols: “I’d love to dress Dolly Parton and Cher. We did actually send a parcel to one of Dolly’s stylists before Christmas. That would really show we are for everyone – for every age as well as all shapes and sizes. I would love that.”
You can watch the new series of Gladiators on Saturday evenings, BBC One. Catch up on episodes you may have missed on BBC iPlayer. burntsoul.com
