What Mulberry is known for
British luxury leather goods — the Bayswater bag, Alexa, and heritage craftsmanship from Somerset. The most British of luxury accessory brands.
Roger Saul founded Mulberry in 1971 with £500 of his twenty-first-birthday money, a kitchen table in Somerset, and his mother Joan sewing alongside — and built from it the definitive English leather-goods house. The tree logo and the county stayed: The Rookery in Chilcompton and a second Somerset factory still make the classic bags, the largest luxury leather manufacturing in Britain, complete with apprenticeship schools.
The Bayswater, launched 2003, is the house in one object — postman's-lock practicality, heritage leather, the English It-bag that outlived the It-bag era — flanked by the Alexa (named for Alexa Chung, satchel of an entire decade) and the Lily's chain-strap charm. Country codes — saddlery stitching, waxed leathers — anchor even the trend pieces.
Ownership sits with Singapore's Challice, and recent years brought restructuring and a "Back to the Mulberry Spirit" refocus on Britishness, craft and repair — the Lifetime Service Centre restores decades-old bags. Somerset leather, London polish: England's everyday luxury, still made where it started.
How ORBIS reads this city
Best for — Bayswater bags and British leather heritage
Made in England
More in London
- Alexander McQueen — London
- Augustinus Bader — London
- Budd Shirtmakers — London
- Burberry — London
- Cad & The Dandy — London
- Charles Tyrwhitt — London
- Drake's — London
- Emma Willis — London
Where next
- Ettinger — London
- Aspinal of London — London
- Carl Friedrik — Paris
Hand-curated for ORBIS · no paid placement