. The collection grew to include skirts, aprons and found and reworked vintage pieces of furniture. Sustainable long before it was fashionable, it's hardly surprising that Carrie Johnson chose to wear one of the company's red shift dresses (Lola) to the Conservative Party Conference in 2021 – and Kate Middleton, Helena Bonham Carter and Victoria Beckham have all been photographed in her clothes. Cabbages & Roses' old-fashioned frilly collars, woollen jumpers, berets, dungarees and A-line dresses are shamelessly copied. The appeal is broad. 'Teenagers buy it but so do 45-year-old lawyers and 65-year-old retired nurses,' says Strutt. 'What Christina has created with Cabbages & Roses is a brand with a huge heritage, deeply loyal customers and a business surrounded with a lot of love,' says brand consultant Isabel Spearman. 'They really don't have a competitor.' Former Vogue fashion editor Lucinda Chambers is equally glowing, saying that the company 'has such a unique and particular point of view that is singular and very, very original'. Half-Italian and half-Venezuelan – the daughter of a doctor and nurse – Strutt has had a blissfully chaotic career. At 16, having dropped out of comprehensive school in Highgate, she found a job as a secretary at Vogue Living magazine. When told that her department was moving to Chiswick, she said she wasn't and w){kind=link}
The entrepreneur behind the vintage chic brand Cabbages & Roses says she is turning her imminent end into an excuse for a celebration
People often talk about a “good death”. It wasn’t until I sat down with Christina Strutt, the 67-year-old co-founder of the lifestyle brand Cabbages & Roses, that I understood what the expression actually means. Seated at her kitchen near Bath in Somerset, a half-empty bottle of morphine in full view, Strutt is giving what will likely be her last interview. She is dying (of small-cell lung cancer) and probably won’t make it to Christmas, but judging from the endless flow of people coming in and out of Brook Cottage, which is filled to the brim with rose-patterned china and prints, you could be forgiven for thinking you’d walked into a party.
Strutt was diagnosed on Oct 4. She had a persistent cough, which worried her family enough to persuade her to go to her GP (her husband, Mark, a former Grenadier Guard, had recently had a stroke, so doctor’s surgeries weren’t exactly her favourite destination). After several X-rays, biopsies and scans, she was sent to hospital, where they broke the news: she only had a few months to live.
Her response? Joy. “I was elated,” she says.
Really?