We, Charlotte Day and Rose Bamford met while doing our M.A.s in Painting at the Royal College and Chelsea School of Art respectively. Our joint love of colour, sharing clothes and scouring Portobello for flea market treasure, and the classic early Rod Stewart album, drew us together.

As our lives moved forward and we had families our children then re-ignited this passion through their clothes. Out of frustration with current trends in kids clothing we set ourselves a project in the summer of 2004 to print t-shirts for our kids in Cornwall where Rose now lives.

The first t-shirts were hand dyed [in the washing machine] and screen printed with LOVE! Then we had no idea that what we were doing would become a business. But very early on friends expressed such enthusiasm for our stuff.

The first shop to show interest was The Cross who ordered straight away and others followed. Serendipity has played its part many times; Philip Start from Start Boutique, who loves what we do, introduced us to our Portugese agent where the t-shirts are now made and dyed. Some hand dyeing is still desired, we find it hard to edit colours out. Being colour fans has its price!

Production being tucked away in Cornwall has had its lucky breaks too. Whilst David Sims was shooting there for W Magazine recently he offered to take some shots for us in exchange for t-shirts for his family. Dandy as we are now called produces a range for babies, kids and ladies. We are constantly working on new designs, fabrics and styles of t-shirt perfecting the cut and feel. We are not ruled by the seasonal calender, we still feel like artist not designers and want to create timeless, fresh optimistic pieces and enjoy our lives with our families too. We are now making the t-shirts we were looking for down Portobello all those years ago.