Warm & Wonderful

Warm & Wonderful is a British knitwear brand best known for designing and creating the original sheep sweater worn most famously by Diana, Princess of Wales. Founded by artists Joanna Osborne and Sally Muir in 1979, Warm & Wonderful began as a humble market stall in London’s Covent Garden.

The brand quickly became known for its sheep sweaters: wool jumpers knitted with rows of little white sheep, and one proverbial “black sheep.” “As artists, we've always identified with black sheep ourselves,” write Joanna and Sally. The now-iconic sweater seemed to resonate among other “black sheep” of the era too: David Bowie, Shelley Duvall, Andy Warhol, Penelope Keith, Anthony Andrews, and, of course, Lady Diana Spencer.

Since Diana’s first public appearance in the bright red sheep jumper — at a polo match in 1980 — she and the design have been inextricably linked. As Princess of Wales, she wore the sweater on several other occasions, always eliciting a great deal of press commentary and making the design incredibly popular in the U.K. and around the world. “We never imagined that our sheep jumpers would bring so many people so much joy, though we always had fun ourselves,” write Joanna and Sally. Warm & Wonderful sweaters are worn by grannies and supermodels, and have been carried in department stores from New York to Tokyo.

The Warm & Wonderful sheep pattern, designed by Osborne and Muir when they were in their twenties, is often imitated, but there is only one original. The Victoria & Albert Museum — Britain’s national archive of textiles and fashion — even features a Warm & Wonderful sheep jumper in its permanent collection: a fitting tribute to the ongoing influence and importance of this iconic British label and its creators.