Whenever the Prince and Princess of Wales share portraits of Prince George, Princess Charlotte or Prince Louis, as they usually do to celebrate the children’s birthdays, there’s one element Sophie Mirman always looks forward to: their outfits. Just don’t ask her to pick a favorite.
“They’re such perfect little models that I can’t,” says Mirman, co-founder of Trotters, the British children’s clothing brand behind some of the young royals’ most-replied looks: Prince George’s blue-and-tan checkered shirt with an embroidered elephant, worn to meet Sir David Attenborough; Princess Charlotte’s blue floral dress from her fourth birthday photo; Prince Louis’ puppy sweater for his first birthday photo; and more. “Every time they wear our clothes, it’s amazing.”
When she sees the princes or princesses in Trotters, she is “hugely proud. I feel like my mother is sitting on my shoulder somewhere saying, ‘Fantastic!’”
For Mirman, who opened the first Trotters store in London’s Chelsea nearly 35 years ago, the royal connection represents something of a family tradition. Her mother, Simone, was a fashion designer whose clients included the Queen Mother, Queen Elizabeth II, Princess Margaret and Princess Diana. “Now it’s the fifth generation, because we dress Princess Diana’s grandchildren.”
Simone Mirman designed some of the late Queen’s most memorable hats, including the butter-yellow Tudor gable-shaped hat she wore at the investiture of Prince Charles as Prince of Wales in 1969, and the pink bell hat she wore to celebrate her Silver Jubilee at St Paul’s Cathedral in 1977.
Mirman’s father was also a major player in post-war British fashion, having introduced Christian Dior to the UK in the 1950s. The family home in Chesham Place, Belgravia, was a hive of fashion activity, with Simone’s showroom, workroom and storeroom on the ground floor. “I remember looking down through the balustrades at those great fashion shows my parents used to put on,” says Mirman. “It was all very grand.”
She helped out from a young age. “My main responsibility was to tidy up the thread drawer, which was always a mess. I liked to sort them by colour,” she says, a shopkeeper from day one. She earned pocket money by delivering hats. She also went to Buckingham Palace once or twice. “I went through the back door. It was great – I loved it.” She never met the late Queen or the Queen Mother, but has vivid memories of Princess Margaret.
“My mother was incredibly, incredibly talented and she always said that it was Princess Margaret who really pushed her to think outside the box. And to use very unusual fabrics. One of the hats she made for her was a pillbox from a Turkish kilim rug, which was incredibly difficult to work with. She also made a trilby from chair cane for Lord Snowdon [then Princess Margaret’s husband].”
Despite the glamour of the family businesses, finances were tight. When Mirman finished school, she couldn’t afford to go to university. She took a shorthand course and went to work as a junior secretary for Lord Sieff, the chairman of Marks & Spencer. She worked her way up through the company, leaving after six years to set up Tie Rack, where she met Richard Ross. They married and together founded Sock Shop in 1983, which they built into an international business.
By then, she had young children. Around the time Sock Shop went out of business, Mirman had two experiences with her children that sowed the seeds for the Trotters’ idea: a haircut in which her son William was terrified of the barber, and a shoe-shopping expedition in which her daughter Natasha, then 3, was “disappointed” to discover the store was out of the specific pink and green shoes she’d had her eye on. “Both of those seemed like unkind ways to treat children,” she says.
Mirman was sure she could do better. She decided to open a shop aimed at children, offering everything they needed under one roof: clothes, shoes, books, toys – even haircuts. They called it Trotters, after a fictional character called Dunwoody Trotter, an animated pig who would come to be seen as the shop’s owner. She and Richard opened their shop on the King’s Road in 1990; since then they have expanded to five stores, a website, concessions in Harrods, Selfridges and Liberty, and a thriving online business. Turnover is £20m a year. “It’s changed dramatically since we first opened, but the concept is still the same: make it fun for kids. Because if it’s fun for kids, they’ll bring their parents.”
On the day we meet in the Knightsbridge store, a little boy is getting his hair cut in front of a wall-sized aquarium of tropical fish (‘those poor hairdressers must be trying to remember all the names of the fish’), a toddler is spinning in a pair of dress shoes and two grandparent-like types are deliberating over a wall of little pleated dresses.
Mirman describes the Trotters look as “British heritage with a twist” and “kids dressing like kids, not like mini adults.” That translates into little dresses in Liberty print fabrics with puff sleeves and smocked bodices and shorts-and-shirt sets, perfect for pageboys at summer weddings. A recent Peppa Pig collection walked the line between traditional and animated – just Peppa enough to please both the wearers and their Peppa-weary adults. The brand also designs for more casual occasions, such as the Hampton Canvas plimsolls, which 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 archives or recolouring tried-and-true prints for a younger audience. Everything is produced in Portugal and Spain, primarily in small, family-run factories. The burgundy velvet collared coat that Princess Charlotte wore to church on Christmas Day 2022 was made in a small factory in Portugal that Mirman compares to a couture atelier, “because every step is done by one person, from cutting the fabric to sewing the label at the end.” While dresses remain a flagship category, the brand sells more shoes for boys than girls (“boys are so rough on their shoes with all that scooting and football,” says Mirman).
Mirman never knows when the royals will be wearing Trotters designs in a photo. Nor does she shout about it when they do. “We’re very discreet. But somehow people find out.” The impact of a young royal wearing Trotters is “huge and immediate”: When Princess Charlotte wore one of the brand’s pale blue Liberty-print dresses for her fourth birthday portrait, the style sold out within a day, with sales particularly strong in the U.S. market. “Americans love anything royal.” Just wait until they hear about the aquarium.