♀️Swindon & Wiltshire’s Most Inspiring Women 2026 | Paige Cook
To mark International Women’s Day 2026, we’re celebrating Swindon & Wiltshire’s most inspiring women.
Through our website and social media channels, we asked our readers which women in our community inspire them and created a list of 20. The list will be featured in our Spring magazine and every weekday throughout March we are profiling and championing each of these fantastic women online and via our social feeds.
Today we put the spotlight on business owner Paige Cook from Swindon.
Tell us about you and your work…
Hey I’m Paige, I’m 26 years old and I own both Sweet P Beauty Salon & Patti’s Reformer Pilates, both based in Old Town, Swindon.
I started my beauty business from my Mums front room when I was 17, opened my first salon, Sweet P, at 19 and expanded to my current salon three years later. I then went on to open Patti’s in September 2024 with my partner, a totally new venture for us both and one we have been totally obsessed with.
At Patti’s we offer classes for both Reformer and Mat Pilates seven days a week, encouraging you to forget the outside world for an hour and focus on just your mind and body during the session. Balancing the nervous system and slowing down, whilst building strength, stability and flexibility. We also run monthly community events allowing you to build connections – we’ve hosted brunch mornings, a Pilates and Padel collaboration and a wellness morning complete with pilates, hot and cold therapy.
I am so proud to say Sweet P is an award-winning beauty salon where we offer a range of high-quality beauty treatments, always focusing on enhancing our clients’ natural features. I personally specialise in eyebrow and eyelash treatments and have a range of specialists offering treatments such as manicures, waxing, facials and makeup. These specialists are also building their own businesses under the roof we all call home here at Sweet P Beauty Salon. I will always do everything in my power to help them reach their goals and build a successful and busy business for themselves and their families too.
My main objective with both Sweet P and Patti’s has always been to create spaces where women can feel at home, where they feel welcome with no judgment, and most importantly, leave feeling a little lighter than when they came through the door. I feel so, so proud that we have achieved this and more with both spaces, with regular clients building friendships and a community with staff and other friendly faces who step through our doors too!
What are you most proud of?
I am so very proud to have created two spaces where women can feel accepted, trusted and build strength, both mentally and physically. Being in a customer-facing job, you often find clients will end up confiding in you and sharing the highs and lows of life. I feel honoured that people are trusting of us and our environments to share everything and anything with us, allowing us to celebrate, support and grieve with them depending on the situation.
We truly welcome anyone through the doors with open arms at Patti’s and Sweet P, with clients regularly bringing babies and even dogs along to their appointments too! We have clients popping in to use the loo whilst nearby at the park with their kids, or sitting in with us to wait for a taxi when in Old Town. I am so proud to have created a space where people feel both safe and at home.
My proudest moments of both businesses have to have been the launch party events we have hosted, an overwhelming ‘pinch-me’ moment every time. The launch party of the first salon was naturally very surreal. The second salon I had a two-week turnaround to move and get open, so that was a hallelujah moment that everything had come together (it always does!). For Patti’s, we took on a huge renovation project on an empty space, so seeing the studio finalised and jumping with people was just incredible.
How does it feel to be recognised as one of Swindon & Wiltshire’s Most Inspiring Women?
It feels completely surreal to me! I am honoured that through my work I have met so many lovely women over the years; women of all ages that, whilst supporting my work, have inspired me. To think that someone else would be inspired by me is an overwhelming feeling of impostor syndrome! I’m just here really and truly winging life one business at a time, as long as people leave their class or appointment feeling positive, then I have done a good job.
I am truly so grateful to have been recognised for this, thank you!
What does International Women’s Day mean to you?
International Women’s Day is something I have always been passionate about but it hits a little different for me this year. I welcomed my baby boy into the world just two months ago and I have a whole new respect for women, mothers and mostly those who yearn to be mothers too.
Becoming a Mama has really and truly opened my eyes up to how truly incredible women are, how intelligent our bodies can be and how dedicated we are to whatever we put our minds to. I feel so lucky to have been given the opportunity to grow and birth my little boy and now embark on this whole new journey of motherhood. Juggling parenting with running two businesses is going to be a crazy ride, that’s for sure. Three round-the-clock, 24/7 jobs, with one demanding tiny boss now on board!
International Women’s day gives us a chance to reflect on the success, passion and bravery of all women for all sorts of reasons and accomplishments.
A woman will be given a task to do and not be satisfied until it is perfected with sprinkles and a cherry on top. We naturally just go the extra mile to excel in what we do, whether that’s running businesses, creating families or building strong careers. We as women are courageous with a crazy amount of dedication and will power, and I will forever support, encourage and be inspired by any women working to give themselves and their families a great life. Showing strength, courage and bravery, doing it all with a smile.
This year’s IWD theme asks us to think about how giving benefits everyone. What’s an example from your work or community life where supporting another woman led to something meaningful in return?
I love this! Supporting and encouraging other women in their lives is something we can all do by simply showing kindness and sharing our knowledge with others.
At the salon, I have spent seven years supporting women in building their own beauty businesses. This has led to multiple of our specialists moving on to open their own spaces with a fully booked diary and a confident mindset. This truly means the world to me, knowing the impact and freedom this job will forever give them and their families.
At Patti’s, we have recently taken on a few new staff members who were once regular students of ours! We introduced them to Pilates and, after falling in love with the collaboration of movement and mindset, they have gone on to complete certifications in Pilates and move into a new career path that they are passionate about and aligns with them! Now, having them on our team as incredible instructors is a truly amazing full-circle moment for us.
There is room for everyone to be successful in all they are passionate about in this world.
On a smaller scale, I have also been blown away by the amount of gifts, cards and well-wishes from clients we have had since having our baby boy. Clients who have become true friends to me over regular classes and appointments, I hadn’t truly realised the impact these hourly sessions had been having on their lives until these thoughtful messages. That hour weekly, fortnightly or even monthly of chatting, putting the world to rights and ensuring we are uplifting one another can mean more to someone than we ever truly realise.
What piece of advice would you share with your younger self?
Slow down and enjoy every single moment. It’s so easy to rush through the days, always aiming to be productive. But if you slow down and look around, you’ll realise the small moments really are the big moments. It’s only when you look back and realise how incredible some of the little things were that you open your eyes to how lucky you are.
I don’t think younger me would believe how lucky we are in this little life and how many amazing people we have met on this journey.
This feature is sponsored by Goughs Solicitors. The team at Goughs believe in championing ambition, celebrating achievement and creating opportunities for women to connect, lead and thrive.
