Please Meet the New £155 Teddy Bear Possessing ‘Tolerance, Acceptance, and Curiosity’
By Lauren CochraneAnyone grown-up who sleeps with a cuddly toy has been vindicated this year, with various extremely clever and stylish women admitting they do so too. And now, such behaviour is set to be even more acceptable — nay, aspirational — with the arrival of Dolop.
Described by its creator Ali Bradshaw as “a premium plush toy brand”, this takes the adorable shape of a teddybear — but one designed for people who might also keep up with politics and have opinions on boxsets. Bradshaw previously worked with brands including The Row, Wales Bonner and JW Anderson and Dolop is the product of all this experience. It is made from organic brushed cotton, available in four fashionable shades — cream, neon green, pastel-purple, and grey — at a Harrods pop-up this summer and costs £155. The bear can also be dressed: its little grey sweatshirt, which can be hand-embroidered in Harrods, costs £30.
All in all, it’s a lot of pocket money — but Dolop was inspired by the changing demographic of toy buyers. “The soft toy industry has grown 58 percent since 2021 with a quarter of the consumers aged 12 plus now,” says Bradshaw. With Labubu fever this summer — seen everywhere in the queues outside the Popmart shop on Oxford Street to Dele Ali’s hotel room — this is set to continue. Although Dolop’s Harrods pop up will be opposite the Labubu concession, Bradshaw is keen to distance herself. “Labubu feels quite disposable,” she says. “It’s a wonderful thing to add personality to a handbag, but it’s not the same thing as a teddy bear that has such meaning.” Instead, she says she took inspiration from bears like Winnie the Pooh and Paddington, with Build-A-Bear on the moodboard for the clothing element.
Dolop, Bradshaw says, has a personality worthy of a dating app profile: “thoughtful, somewhat eccentric, an enduring optimist, a window seat enthusiast, and a fashion aficionado.” “Dolop is from London, and I really want Dolop to define what it truly means to be a Londoner — so tolerance and acceptance and curiosity.”
It doesn’t take much to track the rise in cuddlies for grown-ups with a need for comfort in a scary world — we wrote last year about how they’re becoming emotional support objects, with a more-is-more childish approach to adding critters to bags. Fast forward to 2025, and the arrested development has continued. Bradshaw says the toy boom is “also about ownership…[fewer and fewer] people can afford to have a house so to have this thing that is yours, that you can personalise, it’s nostalgic and it’s joyful, that’s comforting.” Substituting the property ladder for a luxury take on cute and cuddly objects might not be everyone’s idea of heartwarming but perhaps that’s where we are — with the usual symbols of adulthood out of reach, childish things are both the consolation prize, and status symbols. “Your choice in soft toy says something about you [just like] your choice in hand wash in your bathroom,” says Bradshaw. So if you find a Dolop on your friend’s sofa the next time you pop round, you’ll know they have exquisite taste — and that they’re probably still renting.
Lauren Cochrane is Senior Fashion Writer of The Guardian and contributes to publications including The Face, ELLE, Service95, Konfekt and Mr Porter. Based in London, she writes about everything from catwalk shows to footballers’ style and the linguistics of Love Island. She is author of The Ten: The Stories Behind the Fashion Classics, and the football and fashion newsletter, Style of Play.
You can read all of Lauren’s writing on Something Curated here. Header photo courtesy of Dolop.