I am well over-due introducing Romy, who joined our little team last October and is looking after all our lovely stockists. She is a little ray of sunshine, as well as being super capable and we are so happy to have her on board!

We farewelled Robin today, who is leaving the nest after three years. It's been a big three years, and we wish him the very very best for all his future endeavours.

I did a 'lil Q&A with the lovely Burp Boutique last week...
Click here if you wanna see...

The Sample Sale was a huge success, thanks to everyone who came down, it was lovely to meet you all. Connie legged it early on because it was too busy and she had the better offer of a Christmas party with her friends! Frankie and Harvey stuck it out and were little stars, handing out flyers, and showing early signs of entrepreneurial tendancies driving hard bargains selling off books and toys.
A massive thank you to Melanie and Silas of Suzzle Cafe for providing such a lovely venue, not to mention the fab coffee and brownies!
I'll be doing another one at the end of January, and promise to give plenty of warning this time.xx

The big Oh Baby London Sample Sale is on this weekend!
SAT 15TH DECEMBER - 10-4PM
Venue: SUZZLE, 47 Brick Lane, E1 6PU

100’s of super cool Oh Baby London samples in sizes 0-3m - 8years - from 50p!
BUY 3 ITEMS GET ANOTHER ONE FOR FREE!

PLUS: Kids bric a brac and books - Frankie and Connie were desperate to have a little stall and are selling off a load of their books and toys...

Suzzle Cafe makes great coffee and Melanie makes delicious gluten free cakes. They are also patrons of street art and have fantastic artworks for sale.

Tel: 020 7247 4949 / www.ohbabylondon.comfacebook.com/ohbabylondon162

So here we are, all set up at A Most Curious Kids Fair yesterday in Bethnal Green. Frankie and Connie showed amazing tenacity, staying with me all day, helping set up, handing out cards, doing the hard sell and blowing up our faaabulous foil balloons (with air, NOT Helium). There's a Helium shortage, don' cha know, and it's needed for MRI scanners. So we think it would be a bit wrong to use Helium, and we have also discovered that a balloon blown up with air will last three weeks! Whoop!
They had a ball plus Connie got to have a chat with Santa - and that's gotta be good.

Visit our shop at 162 Brick Lane, London, E1 6RU. Click here for a map!
We're open 7 days a week up until Christmas from 11am-7pm and you can call 0207 247 4949 with any queries. We're here to help!




It's on Brick Lane, the edgy East End's fashion and creative capital. Best place to be on a Sunday to soak up atmosphere, eat bagels and spend the day wandering through historic streets and markets getting inspired by the hundreds of talented people putting themselves and their wares out there.

I've suddenly realised I haven't shown any pictures of the shop. How very rude of me. It's a small shop, "tiny" might be more like it. Or as my landlord said when proposing it to me "a little shop for little things", and you know what, I think it's perfect.



I love having a shop, I love meeting my customers, I love seeing first hand the overwhelmingly positive reaction people have when the discover Oh Baby London. It's kind of my reason for being.


I am not of the minimalist school of retail design, it's more like maximalism (I picked up that phrase from an interview with Dolce and Gabbana, so it can't be a bad thing). It's a work in progress and is ever evolving - as fast as time and budget permit.

Come and see us there, have a chat, buy some gifts or just have a look.
Would love to see you.

So, finally, here's the first part of the AW12 Collection, on sale now. We have made in limited numbers so it probably won't be around for long but we love it.
And we love Freddie, the happiest baby in the world, and star of our mini photoshoot...

Close but no cigar... not that I smoke them anyway. Disgusting habit.
Anyhow the news de jour is that we were Highly Commended in the Baby Designer Fashion category at the Junior Design Awards 2012. Prestigious awards from the fabulous Junior Magazine.
So we are proud, but most of all we're all fired up because we suddenly realise something - WE WANNA BE THE BEST.

We say a big welcome to Nathalie, who has just joined our 'lil family. She'll be looking after after our flagship store and giving y'all lovely customer service with her extraordinarily sunny disposition. We're really happy to have found you Nathalie.

We have a position vacant that we hope has your name on it!

JOB BRIEF:
Full Time Team Member needed to assist us in the smooth, efficient and happy running of our mini flagship store on Brick Lane.

We are looking for an über organised, reliable and motivated person with a positive attitude to join our team. We're a small team, but growing nicely so there will be opportunities for the right person to move within the company as other positions arise.
Excellent verbal and written communication skills as well as experience in retail or customer service are essential.

Main Duties & Responsibilities:
- Store Operations / Customer Service / E-commerce fulfillment
- Carrying out opening and closing procedures which will include receiving deliveries, opening tills, cashing up and banking at the end of the day, ensuring the store is left in a clean and secure state.
- Regularly replenishing the store ensuring that best sellers are continually available and the store is merchandised to the maximum.
- Maintaining excellent housekeeping standards both on the shop floor and behind the scenes.
- Contribute ideas for displays and store merchandising to maximise sales opportunities.
- Deliver enthusiastic and genuine customer care at all times.
- Understand and follow all Oh Baby London standards, delivering consistent and outstanding customer service.
- Using appropriate questioning and active listening skills to help identify customers needs and source the correct gift/product.
- Ensuring all customers are thanked for stopping in and warmly invited to return again soon.
- Working closely with all colleagues to increase every sales opportunity and communicating effectively to ensure continuity.
- Demonstrating flexibility and a willingness to participate in all tasks.
- Embracing ownership of tasks delegated by their manager and displaying pride in achieving new goals.
- Fulfilling e-commerce orders daily.
- Responding to all email enquiries on the same day.
- Basic content management for commerce site, making sure stock is marked out of stock/in stock when applicable.

Full Time: 40 hours per week, including one weekend day and four week days Tues-Fri.

Please email your CV to hannah@ohbabylondon.com

I haven't written a blog post for a month. Because Robin posed the question "do you think anybody actually reads your blog?"
Admittedly this was when I was using the blog as a procrastination tool when I had more important but less fun things to do. Those things that if you don't do them the whole world will fall apart but you still can't do them. Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway and all that.
Anyhow, it kinda crushed my smurfin' spirit.
But I am made of sturdy stuff, so I can box up this realisation that maybe nobody cares and put it where the sun don't shine.

Today we found out we're in Time Out London's Best Shops 2012. Hurray!
For the record we were one of Time Outs Best Shops in 2011 too.
They have excellent taste, doncha think?
Come on down and see us before Christmas, we have the best Christmas window on Brick Lane... Laura, Kate, Robin and I worked on it last Thursday night like little Christmas elves. Slightly drunken ones, but hey.... the season is the reason.

I love birthdays, even as the numbers get bigger and bigger. Always have. And today is a beautiful day as I turn forty (ahem) two. Of course that's not true, I'm really 24... in my mind.
I have already been spoilt today with presents and breakfast in bed made by my two little lovelies... What's not to love:



An 8km run around London Fields, Haggerston and Weavers Field, presents from the wonderful Oh Baby London team, and it's time for cake and champagne now methinks...

So we did the the first shoot for the AW11 collection today, with little tough guy Vincent and his lovely friend Romey.
I'm back doing the photography, like I did on a smaller scale when Frankie and Connie were babies, and I have to say I am loving it!
I wanted to be a photographer when I was a kid, about ten or eleven. Our next-door neighbour Jim Francis, who went on to become one of my mentors when I started Oh Baby London, gave me an Asahi Pentax and a telephoto lens, and under my Dad's guidance I started taking pictures.
Dad had a dark room set up in our attic and taught me how to develop photographs, and I had a fine time working on my fledgling career.
Enter Olivia, my little sister, who I love dearly but who shattered my hopes of a professional career by coming up to the dark room with me and putting fixative in her mouth while I was looking elsewhere (I swear!), resulting in complete mayhem and my being banned from the darkroom by my mother.
I never quite got back to those glory days, so it feel fan-frickin'-tastic to be back behind the camera properly.

Vincent and Romey were little dream boats, and their gorgeousness shines through in these pictures, doncha think? The new collections not half bad either, if I do say so myself...

We welcomed the lovely Laura to the Oh Baby London team last month. Here she is sleeping on the job after a hard day at London Zoo circa 1990 (OMG... I was twenty then... sigh.... but, you're as young as you feel, and to be honest I feel younger now than I did then - and that's not the botox talking).
So Laura is now part of our team, she's a Fashion and Textile Management student and is interning here for a year, after which she will know the workings of a small fashion business inside out. She has already made herself indispensable with her positive, can-do attitude and impressive work ethic. She's gonna go far and we love her.

I found some lovely vintage patchwork while I was on holiday, can't wait to re-work it into some gorgeous baby blankets and cushions with luxe faux fur backing. I will have to have one myself, to put away for either my next child (unlikely... very unlikely), or my first grandchild. I can't wait for grandchildren (no pressure kids) but not for at least another 20 years please.

So here's our latest Vivienne Westwood for Melissa baby shoe. The black Star Shoe. The thing about these shoes is that they just smell sooo damn good! One sniff and I'm back in the stationery shop in Khandallah Village as an eight year old choosing another delicious rubber (er, eraser for the non-antipodeans) for my rubber collection. Mm-mmmmm.
The only shoes that come with built in memories.

Now Melissa have also released their Mini Melissa Ultra Girl shoe in black and wine, I want them just for their name. And they rock, big time. Why, oh WHY don't they go up to a size 12 for Connie? I mean really... she neeeds them or was that me?




Sizes 4-9 UK available now, in really quite limited availability, sorry kids.

Our brand new gold 'Too Cool for School' shopper is all kinds of fabulousness in a non-plastic bag, and is yours FREE with every purchase for the month of June.

Yes, we thought that was pretty cool too.

Champagne brunch at the gorgeous 45 St Martin's Lane Hotel....Why not! we said.
Well, maybe because you have tonnes of work to do.
So we went for the WGSN trend edit and slipped away before even a drop of champagne touched our lips.
It's true!
Brownie points all-round.
Anyone who saw us having Lunch at Carluccio's later is lying.

First pics of the SS11 collection. My heart melted when Connie and Frankie loved (with a capital L) the hawaiian print smock dress and space invaders t-shirt. They pull no punches when telling me what they really think, and I got big points for these.
Woohoo!
Am uploading the first part of the collection now....

And by the way, is it sad that I feel the need to say my fridge has not been through a house fire? It's just a myhipstamatic app photo effect...

It may not come as a surprise to you to know that Robin only came to India for the Rich Men's Beauty Treatments. It's sad but true. Every morning, it's like "what shall I have done today". For god's sake Robin, we are here to work! And exactly how much botox can one face take?

But those of you who know Robin will know that (pretty much) the opposite is true. He's making himself indispensable.

So Robin and I are in India, meeting with our factory there to oversee production. I love India, haven't been here for ten years, but the smells, sounds and landscape feel so familiar. They transported me back to a fabulous four months I spent in South India with my husband way back when... way back when I had no responsibilities except myself. What a trip that was. But that was another lifetime. Can't see myself riding on the back of an Enfield in a bikini, barefeet and no helmet these days.

This time it's business. And I must say I'm happy to be doing it here. I don't want to gloat, but weather is important to me and this weather is positively balmy. The people are friendly and seem so much more relaxed than us in London where we're cold, stressed and too busy to breathe. Or is that just me? Oops. Am realising I need to sort myself out when I get back. just take more breaths and walk a bit slower.

And to hell with leaning to drive. I think I'll get me a cow.



I miss my little darlings though.

Here's a lovely bit of Great Eastern Street graffiti Robin and I came across yesterday on our way back from yet another unsuccessful Indian Visa expedition.
Yes, it felt like groundhog day as we came away after waiting for 2.5 hours to be told my passport wasn't valid for long enough and well, a whole bunch of other stuff was missing. Did we feel very silly and unprepared for the second day in a row?
Yes.
Should I be talking about this, letting the universe know of my bureaucratic inadequacy?
Probably not.
Contrary to how it looks, Robin and I are very capable individuals, we just have too much to do in too little time.
Really truly, we do.

Here we go! It's sale time...

We've got the festive spirit and put on a Christmas Sale!
Get 20% off everything simply by using the code "HAPPYXMAS" at checkout until 21st December...
Nice and easy does it.

So...we are now only days away from getting the elusive Biker Playsuits in our hot little hands. My word, this has been the most frustrating delivery I have ever, and I mean EVER experienced.
When we put them up on the site for pre-order we gave what we had been lead to believe was ample time. Sadly the delivery date kept getting changed, with myself, Robin and the whole Oh Baby London team getting more and more stressed by the day.
At the crux of the issue is the fact that we are changing where we make our garments, for a lot of really good reasons, one of which being the lack of communication and level of misinformation we received when we had a problem with anything.
The thing was, I felt it just wasn't working. I believe firmly that we should be a team, us at our little HQ and our factory, and we should all have the same basic values - to want to make great quality clothes and be honest, open and transparent in our relationship, and I was not feeling the love if you know what I mean.
I think it was in Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie that he wrote about a woman who made pickles, and she was so bitter that her pickles were too (that's a bit basic, but hey, it was more than 15 years ago I read it I'm sure..).
That idea is one I really believe in, that your spirit shows through in everything you do. I try to put love and energy into every single detail of Oh Baby London, because I think our customers can really feel it. You may be able to tell now that I am not from a business background, (hmm, pretty obvious you reckon). But I am focussed, single minded, determined and passionate about my business. It's growing steadily - not at breakneck speed (it did a few years back and to be honest that nearly killed it - at the time I thought 'over-trading' sounded pretty good, how wrong I was...). I want my whole business, from the designs to the day to day running, not just the 'marketing material', to incorporate the whole Oh Baby London philosophy, which is all about realising your potential, feeling free to do what you love and therefore doing well, not making judgements, having fun, learning, giving love and experiencing joy. All things that to me are so closely linked to having a baby.

That's why this Biker delivery has really got to me. I mean really. I am so bummed out. I hate the fact that some of our customers will be feeling let down. And I want to just reassure those who have been waiting that we have been doing absolutely everything we can to get those bikers in. We will be making it up to you if it's the last thing we do.
xx

Here are the behind the scenes shots from our shoot yesterday around the corner from Oh Baby London HQ on Brick Lane. We've shot around here many times over the years, but thanks to the ever changing street art it always looks like a new location.
A big huge thank you goes out to our gorgeous models; Pearl, Bingo, Stanley, Flores, Luna and of course Frankie and Connie. You guys were little stars.xx






A big thank you also to Kyriakos, our photographer, for being so cool calm and collected in the face of half a dozen little wild ones runing riot!

We're all off to The Shoreditch Ball on Friday, am looking forward to glamming up and having a ball.

I hear there are still a few tickets left, if you're quick...

It's another day, another birthday here at Oh Baby London HQ. And today we celebrated Joey's 22nd Birthday with prosecco and a 'colin the caterpiller' cake. Mmmm. Consequently not a lot of work's gone down, but a lot of laughs been had.
Happy Birthday 'lil Joey - have a stupendous party weekend... See you bright eyed and bushy tailed (not) on Monday morning...