Alexandra Maclaren runs upmarket children’s pyjama company Turquaz in Dorset, and when it comes to designs for children she certainly has form – or at least her family does.

It was Alexandra’s grandfather Owen Maclaren, MBE, who first came up with the idea for a collapsible lightweight buggy – the Maclaren buggy – as the must-have replacement for the unwieldy prams and pushchairs of the 1960s.

In fact, his eureka moment came while watching his own grown-up children, as harassed parents, struggling on and off a plane with his grandchildren, without the help of the lightweight, folding pushchairs we all take for granted today.

Owen, who by then was a retired aeronautical engineer, had designed the Maclaren folding undercarriage for the Supermarine Spitfire (a hugely important development as it allowed planes to land in cross-winds, something no plane had previously been able to do).

Deciding to put this knowledge to another good use, and using the same engineering principles, Owen came up with the folding mechanism that is essentially the same one in use today for all children’s folding buggies.

The rest of course is history and the resultant first buggy then led to the founding of the eponymous Maclaren Company that is still the market leader in buggies and strollers throughout the world today.

That was the ’60s, and in the 1990s Alexandra Maclaren, one of the grandchildren who inspired Owen Maclaren’s eureka moment, decided to became involved in designing and manufacturing products for children herself, but this time in the form of sleepwear.

“I really admired my grandfather,” says Alexandra.

“For the way in which he identified a problem and came up with a solution that worked so well and which has stood the test of time. I can’t pretend that what I do is anything like as important or ground-breaking as what he did, but in my own small way I went through the same kind of process.

“I had a dozen or so godchildren to whom I wanted to give nice traditional pyjamas as presents and I simply couldn’t find any that I liked. There was a lot of mass-market stuff that was emblazoned with superhero comic book characters, but that was not what I wanted at all, and then there was the special stuff that I liked but that came with a special price tag, with nothing in between. Frankly, there didn’t seem any alternative but to do it myself.”

Turquaz is now in its 15th year of business and still going strong. Stockists of its products over time have included John Lewis, Harrods and Selfridges as well as small boutiques up and down the country. Turquaz also exports to the Middle East and the USA.

Over the intervening years Alexandra has become a mother to Anna, six (and Owen’s first great-grandchild) and Jamie, three.

“Everything that we design has now got to meet with the approval of my six-year-old daughter and three-year-old son as well as a host of mummies,” says Alexandra.

Like her grandfather, Alexandra is a stickler for detail and wants everything that her company produces to be the best that it can possibly be in terms of design and manufacture.

All of the early design work is done in Dorset, where Turquaz is based, and this is then refined and tweaked on site at the company factory in Kerala, south-west India.

“This is a very beautiful part of the world but also one in which poverty and deprivation are impossible to ignore. I believe that if we are to benefit from the skill and dedication of our workforce in this area then we must also put something back. By ensuring that our factory is fully SA8000 compliant we are able to guarantee the working conditions at the factory are as good as in the West and through making regular donations to the SOS Village for orphans and abandoned children we are making a modest but life-changing contribution to the wider community. All Turquaz products are also fair trade.”

Reflecting on the legacy of her famous grandfather, Alex says: “My grandfather was a huge inspiration to me and I like to think that he would be very proud of what I have achieved with Turquaz. As a company we have sometimes experienced challenging trading conditions over the years but I like to think my grandfather’s fighting spirit is always there. His values and strong principles are part of our family tradition and I’m incredibly proud of him and his inspirational design, which basically revolutionised the way in which we travel around today with our children.”

  • turquaz.co.uk