It started with a bunny
Long before there was a hoodie, a logo, or a website, there was a stuffed bunny. Worn soft at the edges, missing a bit of stuffing, patched back together more than once. That bunny belonged to Baja Bear, a Chesapeake Bay Retriever who loved that thing more than anything else in the world.
Baja carried that bunny everywhere. Napped with it. Guarded it like it was made of gold. It got chewed, dragged through mud, stitched back up, and loved right back to life more times than I can count.
That kind of love — a little rough around the edges, a little imperfect, completely unconditional — is exactly what Dead Cute Studio is built on.
From a bunny to a brand
After Baja passed, that bunny stuck with me. Not just as a memory, but as an idea. What if that same feeling — patched up, well-loved, still here — could be something people wore? Something that said it’s okay to be a little worn down and still be worth loving?
That’s where Mr. Stitches came from. He’s not polished. He’s not perfect. He’s got seams showing and a crooked little smile, and that’s the whole point.
My partner Kari was there for all of it — the early sketches, the terrible first drafts, the “wait, what if he looked like this instead” conversations that happened way too late at night. This brand exists because of a lot of people who believed a scrappy little stuffed bunny deserved to become something bigger.
Why “a little patched up, a lot loved”
That’s not just a tagline. It’s the whole philosophy behind everything we make. Every hoodie, every tee, every print — it’s for the people who feel a little held together by duct tape and love, and wear that proudly instead of hiding it.
Mr. Stitches doesn’t cover up his patches. He shows them off.
This is just the first entry in The Patch Notes. We’ll be back with more — process posts, product deep-dives, and probably way too many photos of hoodies. Thanks for being here from the start.
-Kent