Warm & Wonderful

In the early days of the company's history, Osborne and Muir sold their jumpers from a market stall in London's Covent Garden. Their 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 proverbial black sheep.[1][3]

This latter design, which Osborne and Muir subsequently introduced in other colours (including what is now its most famous colour (red), 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][4][5]

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.[6] They have also published a series of knitting books for adults and children. They 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.[7]

It was Princess Diana – at that time Lady Diana Spencer – who brought the design to international fame when she wore a red Warm & Wonderful sheep jumper for the first time in 1981.[3][2] Photographs of Diana wearing the sweater were circulated widely in the international media, with many in the press speculating that the sweater was a metaphor, signaling to the world that Diana felt like the "black sheep" of the Royal Family.[1][8] The Princess wore the Warm & Wonderful sheep jumper again in 1983, eliciting even greater media attention.[1][9]

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.[3][10][11]

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.[12][13][14][15][3][10][11][16][1][17]

Actress Emma Corrin, portraying Princess Diana, wore a Warm & Wonderful sheep sweater on the Netflix series The Crown.[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.

Aside from its famous sheep sweater in a range of colours, Warm & Wonderful has offered other knitwear designs over the years, ranging from other humorous or country-themed graphic jumpers to solid-colour Shetland, cashmere, and cotton knits. The label has also created accessories and other apparel featuring its sheep motif, including its collaborations with Globe-Trotter and Sperry.[11][19][20]

Warm & Wonderful knitwear has been sold at Saks, Henri Bendel, Barneys, Bergdorf Goodman, Neiman Marcus, Liberty, Isetan, Mitsukoshi, Le Bon Marché, and many other stores over the years; and since 1982, Osborne and Muir have operated shops in Wandsworth, Primrose Hill, and Brighton — most recently opening a pop-up shop in London's Seven Dials district, very near the original market stall in Covent Garden in 2021.[21]

The Victoria & Albert Museum, Britain's national archive of textiles and fashion, features a Warm & Wonderful sheep jumper in its permanent collection as part of Britain's national cultural heritage.[22][18][2]