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
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