The Black Sheep Jumper: A Warm & Wonderful Design Classic
Perusing Miss Moss I was reminded of a British design classic – that black sheep jumper! Miss Moss was actually featuring the wonderfully characterful dog paintings of Sally Muir, but it sent me straight back to the knitwear company she started with Joanna Osborne.
The V&A has one of the sheep jumpers in its collection, which rather confirms its place in design history. Warm & Wonderful began in 1979, with Sally and Joanna selling their knitwear from a market stall in Covent Garden.
Their sheep jumper in particular proved a hit: rows of little white sheep with one black sheep standing apart. A young Lady Diana Spencer wore the red version to a polo match in 1981 and it became inseparable from her image. David Bowie and Andy Warhol were amongst the other famous names who wore the design.
I can see why it struck a chord. Joanna and Sally tapped into something many of us recognise – that feeling of being the odd one out – and turned it into an incredibly simple piece of graphic pattern.
The jumper made a return in 2020 when Warm & Wonderful was revived in collaboration with American brand Rowing Blazers, and it is lovely to see that such a playful design still has life in it more than forty years later.
Since I first wrote this post there has been another extraordinary chapter too. The original jumper worn in 1981 was rediscovered in Joanna Osborne's attic and sold at Sotheby's in 2023 for $1.143 million. Quite a journey for a design that began with a market stall in Covent Garden!
And then there are the dogs, which are what brought me back to Sally Muir in the first place. Her paintings have such wonderfully quirky glances and not-so-innocent smiles. It feels rather fitting that someone behind one of fashion's most recognisable sheep should have gone on to make such characterful animal portraits. You can see more of Sally Muir's work here.
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