Nettie23 Blog （1）: The Woman in the Envelope

Nettie23 Blog（1）: The Woman in the Envelope

6th July 2025 | London

Saturday had been a grim affair. England’s Lionesses, usually so full of grit and spirit, looked half-asleep as they crumpled beneath the weight of France’s boots. It wasn’t the loss that stung—it was the silence. No drama. No last-minute glory. Just a soft sigh of disappointment settling over the city like heat haze on a windowpane.

Sunday came sluggishly, thick with London’s July humidity. The kind of day where even time seems too weary to move forward. I had a football match playing in the background—Norway vs. Finland, though I could scarcely tell who was who. Every pass, every tackle, felt like it was trudging through treacle. I lay on the sofa, a melting human popsicle, idly poking at emails on my phone, not expecting anything beyond promotions and automated receipts.

And then—
A subject line.
Two words: “Thank you.”

The sender’s name: Karen Wall.
Unfamiliar. Unassuming. But something made me click.

And that’s when everything changed.

“Dear Nettie,
I was sent your Nettie:23 yesterday as a gift from a friend, and wanted to say how incredibly excited I was. The scent is lovely – but my GG Auntie was one of the footballers in the original 1895 North team, so to see her pseudonym on the bottle and her picture on the little photocard inside is SO incredible I can't explain how it made me feel.

To bring the past into the present and make something tangible, just amazing!

Did you realise that many of the girls were also Music Hall performers? My GG Auntie was not only a footballer but also a contortionist called Lily Flexmore.

‘Born to Break Rules’ is incredibly fitting.

Thank you so much for honouring these girls. They were all (or mostly) working class girls, they would never have dreamed they would be remembered.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Karen xx”

I had to read it twice. Then a third time. And then I just sat very still.

Lily Flexmore.
What a name. You can practically hear it announced on a stage, can’t you?

A footballer in corsets and petticoats. A contortionist in a Victorian music hall. A girl who bent her body and broke the rules.

She was real. Not a character we dreamed up for branding. Not an abstract muse plucked from history’s margins. She was flesh, blood, laughter, bruises. She had a great-great-niece who still remembered her, and now... so do we.

When we created Nettie:23, it wasn’t just to bottle a scent. It was to bottle a spark.

March 23rd, 1895: the day the North played the South in what many consider the dawn of women’s football. We chose that date not simply because of what it meant then, but because of what it could still mean now. A defiant moment. A whisper of resistance. A line in the sand where the girls said, “We can play too.”

That’s why every bottle of Nettie:23 bears the name of a real player from that game. Why each one comes with a miniature photocard, their faces peering out from sepia-toned obscurity into the palms of women today.

And now, thanks to Karen, we know one of those faces.

We know her name.
We know her stage name.
We know her story.

And story is everything.

Nettie 23 was always meant to be the origin point.
A place where timelines tangle—1895 and 2025, laced together with notes of jasmine, pepper, and sandalwood.
A scent that doesn’t just smell beautiful, but means something.

And now we have our first story.
The story of Lily Flexmore.
Ballerina of the football field. Queen of the circus tent. Rule-breaker. Dream-weaver. History-maker.

She may not have dreamed of being remembered.
But today, across 130 years and four generations, her name was spoken again.

Thank you, Karen, for your letter.
And thank you, Lily, for lighting the match.

This is only the beginning.

– Team Nettie