PIGLET IN BED · THE GINGHAM COLLECTION · SS22 ONWARD
Gingham
Piglet in Bed's first patterned product. Now the brand's #1 US seller.
CLIENT
Piglet in Bed
COLLECTION
The Gingham Collection
CATEGORY
Linen / Linen Blend / Cotton Bedding
STATUS
Continuity range - SS22 → ongoing
BRIEF:
Piglet in Bed launched as a plains brand. Bold colours, no pattern. By 2021 the question was whether the brand could carry pattern without losing what customers had bought it for in the first place. Gingham was the first attempt: a simple woven check with deep heritage and obvious lifestyle pull, brought into Piglet in Bed's colour world.
IDEA:
The construction is as old as the pattern itself — a single colour woven against a white or cream ground. Gingham is one of the most enduring textile patterns there is, and that was the point. Nothing about it is trend-dependent. What needed to change was the colour, not the structure.
I worked the colourways out of the brand's existing seasonal palette so each gingham felt like a recolour of something already in the range. Botanical greens, berry hues, warm blues, warm clay. The scale was set medium: small enough to read well on a phone screen and large enough to layer convincingly against the plains. Every plain linen colour from then on was designed with gingham in mind as a companion.
RANGE:
Launched SS22 in 100% linen. Expanded later into a 55/45 European linen / long-staple cotton blend and 100% cotton (SS23, most accessible tier). Across the full bedding range plus accessories. Yarn-dyed, OEKO-TEX certified, woven in Portugal.
New colourways added every season since launch — Pistachio, Elderberry, Pink Bloom, Honey, Sage Green, Indigo, Mineral Red, Mushroom, Rhubarb — each drawn from the season's plain linen palette so the range layers with itself.
OUTCOME:
Piglet in Bed's first ever patterned product
By SS24, the #1 US destination in the range — 25% of linen bedding sales from 14% of options
Botanical Green went viral on Pinterest — "cult-favourite" across multiple seasons in press
H2 2023: Gingham Continuity +37% YoY; Botanical Green +65% YoY
Primary driver of US growth in H2 2023 — US revenue +101% YoY
2026 top colourway revenue: Botanical Green £117K, Warm Blue £99K, Elderberry £87K
Continuity every season since launch. Extended into a comforter programme for AW26
25% of linen bedding sales from just 14% of options — by SS24
REFLECTION:
This is the project I think about when people ask how a brand starts doing something new. Piglet in Bed had three years of plain linen behind it and a customer who had bought into colour, not pattern. Gingham could easily have landed as a one-off.
What made it stick was treating it as continuity from the start, letting it compound season after season instead of replacing it with something louder. Everything that came afterwards — the stripes, the florals, Colour Drenched Gingham, the Morris & Co collaboration — was built on the back of this one.
