INTRODUCINGCornelia James

Cornelia James had studied art and design in Vienna and arrived in England as a refugee in 1939. After the war, in a world made drab by rationing, the leather gloves that she made in a huge range of colours became fashion essentials. Vogue magazine profiled her as “the colour Queen of England” and Cornelia quickly established a thriving business supplying gloves to couturiers and leading stores. In 1947 Norman Hartnell asked Cornelia to provide the gloves for the 'going-away' outfit he made for Princess Elizabeth after her marriage to Lt. Philip Mountbatten. It marked the beginning of a long association with the Royal Household marked, in 1979, by the granting of a Royal Warrant. Today it is Genevieve James, Cornelia’s daughter, who holds the Warrant as glove manufacturer ‘by appointment to Her Majesty the Queen’.

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