by Whenever the Prince and Princess of Wales share portraits of Prince George, Princess Charlotte or Prince Louis, as they usually do to mark the children’s birthdays, there is one aspect that Sophie Mirman always looks forward to seeing: a their clothes. Don’t ask her to pick a favorite.
“They’re great little models that I can’t,” says Mirman, co-founder of Trotters, the British children’s clothing brand behind some of the most iconic looks of the young royals: the Prince’s blue-and-brown checked shirt George. with an embroidered elephant, worn to meet Sir David Attenborough; Princess Charlotte’s blue floral dress from her fourth birthday portrait; Prince Louis puppy sweater for his first birthday portrait, and more. “Every time they wear our clothes, it’s amazing.”
When you see the Princes or the Princess dressed in Trotters she is “extremely proud. I feel like my mother is sitting on my shoulder somewhere saying, ‘Great!'”
For Mirman, who opened the first Trotters store in London’s Chelsea almost 35 years ago, the royal connection is a family tradition. Her mother, Simone, was a milliner who counted the Queen Mother, Queen Elizabeth II, Princess Margaret and Princess Diana among her clients. “Now this is the fifth generation, because we are dressing Princess Diana’s grandchildren.”
Simone Mirman designed some of the late Queen’s most iconic hats, including the tudor-inspired butter yellow hat she wore during Prince Charles’ investiture as Prince of Wales in 1969, and the pink hat with bells which she wore to celebrate her Silver Jubilee. at St Paul’s Cathedral in 1977.
Mirman’s father was also instrumental in post-war British fashion, having introduced Christian Dior to the UK in the 1950s. The family home in Chesham Place, Belgravia was bustling with fashion activity, with Simone’s showroom, workroom and stock room dominating the ground floor. “I remember looking down through the banners at these amazing fashion shows my parents used to have,” says Mirman. “It was all very big.”
She joined since she was young. “My main concern was cleaning out the thread drawer, which was always a mess. I liked organizing them by color,” she says, a shopper since day one. She earned pocket money by making hat deliveries. Including, once or twice, to Buckingham Palace. “I went through the back entrance. It was great – I loved it.” She never met the late Queen or the Queen Mother, but she has vivid memories of Princess Margaret.
“My mother was very talented, very talented, and she always said that it was Princess Margaret who pushed her to think outside the box. And using very unusual fabrics. One of the hats she created for her was a pillbox made from a Turkish kilim carpet, which was extremely difficult to work with. She also made a trilby out of a chair canal for Lord Snowdon [then Princess Margaret’s husband].”
Despite the glamor of the family business, finances were tight. When Mirman finished school, she could not afford to go to university. She took a shorthand typing class and went to work as a junior secretary to Lord Sieff, the chairman of Marks & Spencer. She worked her way up through the business and left after six years to launch Tie Rack, where she met Richard Ross. They married and launched Sock Shop together in 1983, making it an international business.
By then she had young children. Around the time Sock Shop went into administration, Mirman had two experiences with her children that provided the germ for Trotters’ idea: a haircut when her son William was afraid of the barber, and a shoe shopping trip when her daughter Natasha, three people year old, she was “crystal clear” to discover that the store had run out of the specific pink and green shoes that had set her heart on. “It seemed to me that both ways were unfriendly to treat children,” she says.
Mirman felt sure she could do better. She decided to open a store aimed at children that brought everything they could need under one roof: clothes, shoes, books, toys – even haircuts. They called it Trotters after a fictional character called Dunwoody Trotter, an animated pig who appeared as the owner of the shop. She and Richard opened the doors to their King Road store in 1990; since then, they have grown to five stores, a website, concessions in Harrods, Selfridges and Liberty and a booming online business. Turnover is £20 million a year. “It has changed a lot since we first opened, but the concept is still the same: to make it fun for children. Because if kids have fun, they’ll bring their parents in.”
On the day we meet in the Knightsbridge shop, a little boy is getting his hair cut in front of a wall-sized tank of tropical fish (“the poor hairdressers have to try to remember the names of all the fish”), a toddler Turning. in a pair of dress shoes and two types of grandparents discussing over a wall of smocked little dresses.
Mirman describes the Trotters’ look as “British heritage with a twist”, and “dressing children as children, and not dressing children as mini-adults”. That translates into tiny dresses in Liberty print fabrics with puff sleeves and smoky bodices and short-and-shirt sets, perfect for page boys at summer weddings. The recent Peppa Pig collection straddled the line between traditional and animated – there was just enough Peppa to satisfy wearers and their Peppa-weary adults. The brand also designs for more casual moments, as in the case of Hampton Canvas plimsolls the royal children (and the Princess of Wales) have worn in settings as diverse as a polo match and a royal tour of Pakistan.
Her team works closely with Liberty, licensing prints from the archive or recoloring time-tested prints for a junior audience. Everything is produced in Portugal and Spain, mainly in small, family-owned factories. The burgundy velvet coat that Princess Charlotte wore to church on Christmas Day 2022 was made in a small factory in Portugal that Mirman imagines as a couture helicopter, “in that one person does every step, from cutting the fabric to sewing on the label at the end”. While dresses remain a key category, the brand sells more shoes for boys than girls (“boys are as rough on their shoes as they are on scooters and football,” says Mirman).
Mirman never knows when members of the Royal family might wear Trotters’ designs in a photograph. But she doesn’t shout about it when they do. “We are very discreet. But somehow, people find out.” The impact of young royals wearing Trotters is “huge and immediate”: when Princess Charlotte wore one of the brand’s light green Liberty dresses for her fourth birthday portrait, the style sold out overnight, with strong sales in the American market. “Americans love anything to do with the royals.” Wait until they hear about the fish tank.
