18 years ago in an eccentric, fully furnished tent leaning on a cottage in rural England, cabbages & roses was conceived.    

‘let’s make a company that will preserve something of the past, before it is forgotten in the stampede for newness and lost forever’ is what I like to think I said.  

Technology was signaling a cultural change which unnerved me and still does. We printed a catalogue on a single sheet of paper, which, to save the forests, was sent envelope-less, folded and secured with a c&r sticker, addressed by hand and posted. We sent one to everybody we knew and as they say, the rest is history.

So on Thursday, we turned 18 and had a party, we gathered on a street in the middle of Chelsea, at the C&R HQ, and basked under white balloons, supplied by our friends Circus Circus, celebrated the enormous talent of Heidi Venamore with her beautiful botanical paintings, decorated our shop with an explosion of flowers and entertained ourselves and all the 127 customers and friends who visited us throughout the day.

We have so much to be grateful for, not least our beautiful cabbage roses, who ably look after our customers, create beautiful clothes and fabrics, wrap and post delicious parcels and all the while trying our hardest to have as little impact on the environment as we can.

18 years ago we were not, and we are still not sophisticated, and in truth we have no wish to be. We would rather not be wrestling with the now creaking, overwhelming, uncontrollable, terrifying world wide web but we do rejoice in making things that are available to the whole world and here we would like to thank all of our lovely international customers across the world who sent good wishes for our coming of age.

As always, we are overwhelmed by your kindness and gratitude, and thank you for ‘bearing with us’ whilst our beautiful new web site settles into an efficient, parcel posting, email sending miracle that is is supposed to be.    

xx Christina xx