About the bonnie mob

How it all started

Hello, I’m Tracey, founder and designer of the bonnie mob, and a self-confessed knit geek.

My Granny taught me to knit at an early age and my Nana taught me to crochet, so it was no surprise when I ended up at Glasgow School of Art studying knitted and printed textiles, then took an MA in Knitwear at Central Saint Martins in the mid-nineties. I spent the first few years of my career playing on the newest Japanese knitting machines at a factory near Nottingham, honing my skills and feeding my love of the technical side of knitting and yarn development. Then I moved to Paris, and spent nearly ten years designing knitwear for Sonia Rykiel and other designer brands.

Tracey Samuel, founder and designer of the bonnie mob

It all started with a little girl called Alice Bee

In 2005 I was still in Paris, commuting back and forth from Brighton every week, when I found out I was expecting my daughter. A whole new world opened up, and with it a very clear thought — I knew exactly what I wanted my new baby to wear, and I was going to have to make it myself.

So I called my factories, drew up designs for a range of 100% natural knits, and we made a tiny capsule collection of beautifully soft cashmere and cotton baby knits.

The apple

One of those first sweaters carried an “apple of daddy’s eye” motif. Gwyneth Paltrow bought it for her new daughter, along with the rest of the collection, and we found ourselves in the press with that little sweater on celebrity babies everywhere. I took it as a good luck charm and made the apple our logo. It has been there ever since.

Mad about the boy

Skip forward a few years and my gorgeous son Rhys arrived, growing like a mushroom alongside a brand that was now thriving. We added jerseywear and baby essentials to the range and everything went a bit crazy for a while. the bonnie mob was stocked in department stores and beautiful boutiques all around the world, and life with two little ones and a business was full on, and a lot of fun.

our story

Tracey with her children Alice and Rhys, photographed in 2018

Colour first

Every collection begins with colour. I am a colourist before I am anything else, and there is nothing I love more than a rainbow — the kind of colour that makes you happy. I design all the bonnie mob jersey prints myself, hand drawing the motifs and playing with the colourways. Colour has been rooted in the design DNA of the bonnie mob since the very first sweater, and it is the part that has never once changed.

At the knitting machines, where the bonnie mob's knitwear has been made since 2004

How it's made

Knitwear is the one discipline where you make the cloth and the garment in the same moment — you choose the yarn, the colour and the stitch, and the fabric comes into being as the shape does. There is no other way of making clothes where the designer has that much say. I still find it exciting, which is why every factory visit has to include a trip to the machines and a chat with the technicians, who are extraordinary and who I learn something from every single time. I design many of the bonnie mob yarns from scratch too, with the space dye knit a current favourite.

The same factories have made our clothes since 2004, running the same Japanese machines I first learned on, and I have known many of the people there since my days in Nottingham and Paris.

Quality in knitwear comes down to two things, the yarn and the knitting, and there is no way to be generous with one and careful with the other. It is slow work. A fully fashioned piece knits slowly and is shaped on the machine stitch by stitch rather than cut from a length of cloth, so nothing is wasted and the shape holds for years — and getting that right, every time, takes people who know the yarn, the tension and the machine in their hands. Ours have been doing it for over twenty years. That is what you are buying.

GOTS certified organic cotton, no AZO dyes, and every piece machine washable at 30. Before I will use a yarn at all it has to answer four questions: will it knit well, will it wash well wear after wear, will it last, and is it sustainable.

the bonnie mob has been designed in Brighton since 2005. We were named Best Baby and Kids Clothing and Accessories Brand at the Marie Claire Sustainability Awards 2024, and our collections are stocked by Selfridges, Harrods and Bergdorf Goodman.

gots certified and marie claire sustainability awards

Buy once, buy well, pass it on

That has been our motto since the very first collection, and it is the brief every piece is designed against. Most of our kidswear is made with turn-back cuffs, so the sleeves can be let down as a child grows and one size fits for far longer. There is nothing I love more than hearing from a customer that a cherished bonnie mob piece bought for their first baby is now being worn by their third or fourth. That is the whole point of it, and it is still the only measure I care about.

Our story

Why we're changing

For over twenty years we designed large seasonal collections twice a year, because that is what the fashion calendar asks for. It has been asking for more and more, at a moment when the planet very plainly needs less. I found myself growing more and more disengaged from the fashion system, and I no longer believed in it.

So we have decided to step away from the seasonal cycle. From here, the bonnie mob makes smaller, more considered drops — fewer pieces, each one we truly believe in, designed to be kept rather than replaced.

And a family store

That decision made room for something I had wanted to do for years. Customers have always asked me what else I would recommend — what socks, what sunglasses, what to take in the pram, what to buy a friend having a baby. I have always had an answer, because I know these people.

So the bonnie mob family store is our own knitwear alongside a small and growing group of brands I have hand picked: Dotty Dungarees, Etta Loves, Collegien tights, Babiators, Oli & Carol and Zoe de Pass Eyewear. Most are run by people I know, several by friends of many years.

The rule for anything joining us is the one I apply to my own work. Beautifully made, honest about how it is made, and good enough to be handed on.

Come and have a look around.

Tracey
Founder & Designer, the bonnie mob