Warm & Wonderful

Early history

Osborne and Muir began selling their jumpers from a market stall in London's Covent Garden in 1979. Osborne and Muir are both professional artists (Osborne a sculptor, and Muir a painter), and both have had work featured in the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition.[4] They have also published a series of knitting books for adults and children.

The brand's earliest designs included a jumper knitted to look like a brick wall, which customers could personalize with knitted "graffiti," and a grass-green jumper covered in knitted rows of white sheep and one black sheep.[1][5]

The "black-sheep sweater" (as it came to be known[1]), which Osborne and Muir subsequently introduced in other colours, proved to be a favourite among London's Sloane Ranger set, as well as artists, entertainers, and even royalty: David Bowie, Andy Warhol, Shelley Duvall, Penelope Keith, Anthony Andrews, and Princess Diana.[1][6][7]

About the black-sheep sweater, Osborne and Muir have stated:"As artists, we've always identified with black sheep ourselves: because of a recessive gene, black sheep are born with black wool in flocks of otherwise white sheep (in a flock of a hundred, there might only be one black sheep!). We never imagined that our sheep jumpers would bring so many people so much joy, though we always had fun ourselves.[8]"

Diana, Princess of Wales

The brand received international attention when Diana, Princess of Wales (then Lady Diana Spencer) wore a red Warm & Wonderful sheep jumper in 1981.[5][2] Photographs of Diana wearing the sweater were circulated widely in the international media. Many members of the press speculated that the sweater was a metaphor, signaling to the world that Diana felt like the "black sheep" of the Royal Family.[1][9] Diana wore the Warm & Wonderful sheep jumper again in 1983, eliciting further media attention.[1][10]

Re-launch

In 2020, American designer Jack Carlson helped to revive the label in partnership with Osborne and Muir. Together, they re-launched the original sheep sweater for the first time in over twenty-five years (initially as a collaboration with the brand Rowing Blazers) and then re-established the Warm & Wonderful brand in its own right with Carlson serving as the label's creative director.[5][11][12]

Since then, Warm & Wonderful has been featured in Vogue, ELLE, The Telegraph, The Times, Tatler, Harper's Bazaar, People, The Financial Times, Town and Country, Vanity Fair, and The New Yorker.[13][14][15][16][5][11][12][17][1][18]

In 2021 and 2022, Warm & Wonderful launched collaborations with luxury British luggage manufacturer Globe-Trotter and with heritage footwear company Sperry Top-Sider, featuring luggage and handbags, and canvas sneakers, respectively, emblazoned with its famous sheep motif.[19][20][21]