Founding Principles with Kajsa McLaren and Laura Burch of Smock London

Brands of Tomorrow is Walpole's business mentoring programme for emerging luxury brands. Over the course of a year, we take up to 12 carefully selected, early-stage brands through a twelve-month programme of workshops and professional mentoring that will help develop their business skills and set them on a path to growth. Discover all of our Brands of Tomorrow 2025 here

Walpole: What is your career background – and how did that lead to launching your company?

Kajsa McLaren: Laura spent her early career in homewares, travelling the world and collaborating with artisans to create stand-out homeware brand sold all over the world. With a love for the craftsmanship of East Asia and an enviable book of artisan connections, she is a fiendish treasure hunter with an unerring eye for the stylishly colourful. She can always be found on the trail of the next gem. 

Laura and I met at university, where we bonded over a shared love of colour and craft, passions that have taken us round the world in many shared adventures ever since. We started our business, Smock London, in 2019 after each having our third child, with a mission to bring the ancient and exquisite craft of hand-smocking fizzing, whizzing into the 21st century.

Laura Burch: Kajsa started out in advertising and branding where she helped global names find their creative voice in London, Paris, New York and Brazil. A brand planner by day, a milliner by night and a colour junkie from birth (who would only wear smocked dresses as a girl), she is a colour fanatic, fabric obsessive and story teller, who can usually be found amongst a happy chaos of swatches and threads. 

Our mutual passions, complimentary skill sets and different backgrounds merge and meld in Smock London – a business and brand fuelled by immense fun and our lifelong friendship.

Tell us about your company…

LB: Smock London is the artisan fashion brand on a mission to modernise the art of hand smocking for the 21st century. We reinvent smocking to be as bold and brilliant as women and girls today. With pieces for women and girls, as well as matching 'mummy and me' styles, our smocks are made to rock: handmade works of art that leap off the dress in a technicolour twirl of hand stitched joy. All our pieces – from dresses to blouses to lampshades – are individually smocked by hand; they are designed in London using the finest threads and fabrics, and hand-stitched by artisans in very limited numbers. Every order supports our makers through a donation to girls and women in need in their community.

Why was launching this company important to you?

KM: I was four when my mother made me a hand-smocked dress with Liberty of London fabric, lace trims, lavender threads and glass buttons. It was the stuff of little girl dreams. I adored it and it cemented a lifelong love affair with smocking.

However, when Laura and I set out to find new smocked heirlooms for our five daughters (three for me, two for Laura),  the examples we found felt old fashioned and dated – completely at odds with the bold little fireballs at home. And so began our mission to bring this ancient and exquisite craft into the 21st century; to cast off the craft’s dusty 'pretty princess' image and celebrate it as a fashion-forward embellishment full of modern colour and pattern. In an age of forthright and fabulous femininity, we wanted to give smocking its own transformation: a dose of the brilliance and exuberance we could see in the women around us.  

LB: Traditionally, smocking blends into the garment. We do the opposite: using dramatic graphic motifs in exquisite contrasting colours to make these exquisite hand stitches stand out and sing from the roof tops. From publishing a new book on smocking to recognising and celebrating its artisans, from taking hand smocking into womenswear to unleashing its charm into new categories such as homeware, our mission is to reinvigorate smocking, safeguard its future, and share its joyful potential with the world.

How does your company represent the future of British luxury?

KM: Hand smocking is more than an embroidery technique, it's a living expression of British heritage — an ancient craft woven into the very fabric of our cultural identity for over five centuries from its first recorded mention in the Canterbury Tales. Originating as a form of practical adornment for rural workwear, smocking today has evolved into something far more precious: a testament to the beauty of handwork, the quiet power of patience, and the enduring skill of generations of women who have passed the art from hand to hand, stitch by stitch. All of these are qualities that make it uniquely luxurious.

LB: For us, true luxury lies in time and care — the time it takes to gather each pleat, to shape each row, and to craft garments that carry meaning as well as beauty. In a world increasingly driven by speed and automation, hand smocking stands apart. It speaks of craftsmanship over convenience, of considered design over mass production. It is this reverence for tradition, for things made well and made to last, that we feel makes smocking an important ingredient in the future of British luxury.

KM: We are thrilled to be igniting a movement to reinvigorate and safeguard this precious craft. At the heart of this revival are the hands of skilled craftswomen whose quiet artistry breathes life into every piece. Through training, apprenticeships, and a commitment to fair, meaningful work, we are helping to ensure that hand smocking continues to inspire future generations. Because the future of luxury is not just about what we make — it’s about how we make it, who makes it, and the stories stitched into every seam.

What’s an important value for you that you’ve ensured is part of your business?

LB: Joy is the value we fight to keep at the heart of our brand. For Kajsa and I, joy is more than a feeling — it is the thread that runs through everything we do. It shapes how we design, how we work, and how we do business. Joy informs our aesthetic — found in the colour of the threads, the play of fabric, the way a dress moves as it swirls around your ankles. But it also goes deeper: it's the feeling we want each piece to carry and the delight that comes from wearing something thoughtfully made and uniquely beautiful.

Joy is also the principle behind how we do business. We believe the way something is made should reflect the way it makes you feel. That means valuing people as much as the product — recognising the women who stitch our smocks by hand, honouring their skill, and creating a business that supports their craft and their communities. From donating a portion of every sale to artisan initiatives, to championing at-home craftswomen gathered in shared creativity and conversation, we are building something joyful — not just in what we make, but in how we make it. Because joy, to us, is not just the outcome. It is the starting point, the process, and the purpose.

Tell me about an obstacle you’ve experienced in establishing your business, and how you overcame it?

LB: The greatest challenge we’ve faced as a brand has also been one of our proudest achievements: evolving from a childrenswear label into a fully-fledged womenswear brand. The transition has been less of a hurdle and more of a speed ramp. What began in 2019 as a reinvigoration of nostalgic childhood smocks, has grown into something bigger. Mothers, drawn to the charm and craftsmanship of our girl’s pieces, began asking for their own grown-up versions. So we listened; and each capsule collection kept selling out. What followed wasn’t just a shift in scale, but a massive leap of belief — in our craft, our community, and ultimately our capacity to grow.

KM: The transition hasn’t been straight forward: its required huge investment in new patterns and proportions, in retraining our artisan partners, evolving the brand identity and in expanding the possibilities of what hand smocking could be. Today, we are one of only two brands offering hand-smocked womenswear at any kind of scale, bringing this extraordinary craft to a new generation of women and to new corners of the world. Our children's styles remain, now as joyful companions to the women’s collection, but our purpose has deepened. We’re no longer just reimagining childhood classics, we’re redefining what it means to wear something made with time, skill, and soul. And we’re only just getting started.

What is your ultimate goal for your business? What’s the dream?

LB: In a nutshell, to see the ancient craft of hand smocking not only preserved, but celebrated, renewed, and reimagined for a new era. We exist to champion the hands behind the stitches — to honour the craftswomen whose quiet artistry has carried this tradition through centuries, and to ensure their skills are recognised, supported, and passed on. Hand smocking has a 600-year-old heritage, and our mission is to safeguard it by making it modern, relevant, and filled with fresh possibility.

KM: We want everyone to experience to joy of hand smocking. From timeless children’s dresses to unexpected silhouettes and future collaborations, we see hand smocking not as a relic of the past, but as a living, evolving language of beauty and craftsmanship. Our goal is to secure a vibrant future for this time-honoured skill — one that offers meaningful work, inspires creativity, and connects people through pieces that are made with care and worn with joy. This is our dream. And every gathered pleat is a step towards it.

What’s a key piece of advice you’d share with another entrepreneur that you’ve learned or been given on your journey?

LB: One key piece of advice we’d share with another entrepreneur is to stay resilient. Your vision will be challenged constantly. There will be moments of doubt, setbacks, and unexpected turns. But there will also be big and small wins that confirm or affirm you’re on the right path. Let those moments fuel you. Staying positive in the face of challenges, and taking time to celebrate the successes along the way is crucial. That balance is what helps you keep going when things get tough — and it’s what makes the rollercoaster journey worth it.