Her eye for fashion started as a 15-year-old when her Dad took her to Oldham Market, now she runs a highly-acclaimed brand loved by millions of women
08:36, 03 Aug 2025Updated 08:38, 03 Aug 2025
ME+EM fashion label founder Clare Hornby, who is originally from Saddleworth in Greater Manchester.(Image: Me+Em)
When fashion entrepreneur Clare Hornby opened the latest branch of her fashion brand ME+EM on Manchester’s King Street last weekend, it marked a full circle moment.
Clare grew up in Greater Manchester, and went to university in the city, and has now gone on to build an incredible fashion empire with her brand which is known and loved by women across the world for its “affordable luxury” designerwear and praised for its “innate sense of what busy women want to wear”.
In the past financial year, ME+EM has registered a turnover of £120million, with sales across the world online, and with standalone stores in the US and the UK.
But Clare’s passion for fashion – and entrepreneurship – started at a very young age when she took a stall on Oldham Market at the age of just 15.
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Clare, who grew up in Saddleworth, tells the MEN: “I worked on Oldham Market selling second hand shoes as a 15 year old. They were Italian shoes with small faults, and it was a friend of my Dad’s, he said ‘If Clare wants to try and sell these she can’.
“So Dad took me down at 6am in the morning, I queued for a stall… and I sold my first range. I worked out what people liked, the price they would pay, so I selected some more, and it went from there. I think I maybe always had the entrepreneur in me.”
She had also established a keen eye for fashion with her Mum as a teenager too.
Clare says: “I used to make clothes with my mum, we used to buy Vogue patterns, buy fabrics, and I’d stand for hours in front of the mirror making trousers. That’s probably where it all started, because we have now been called the “trouser whisperers” and I suppose I’m a trouser geek, I’ve got an obsession with trousers.
“We’ve now got a substantial trouser business and then we build outfits from there, we moved into tailoring, three piece suits, outfit building and then build in prints, dresses.
“But I first cut my cloth with my mum aged 14, with her in her sewing machines, and me directing on pockets.”
The new ME+EM store in Manchester features the classic styles the brand is known for(Image: Me+Em)
After those early days of selling on Oldham Market, Clare established an early dream was to become a fashion buyer at posh department store Harrods. After studying at the old Manchester Polytechnic (now MMU), she moved to London having secured a place on the Harrods Graduate Training Scheme.
The inspiration for her own fashion label came while working at Harrods. She recalls: “I was working at Harrods but I had no money, but it was a place awash with beautiful designer collections, I used to wander around in my lunchbreak and wish that I could dress like that.
“But I could never understand why everything cost so much money. When they had their sales, I used my staff discount in the sale, and I got a taste for what beautifully cut clothing and fabrics did for your confidence, and that was when the penny dropped – why did you have to spend SO much money to get that level of quality?”
The first suit she bought in the sale, a black Armani suit, she credits with helping her to get her next job, in advertising.
Clare Hornby has steered her fashion brand to worldwide success(Image: Me+Em)
She says: “That suit gave me such confidence, I got my first job in advertising because of that suit. I always remember that moment, and I think if a woman feels confident in what they’re wearing, they’re no longer thinking about what they look like any more.”
She started her won fashion brand from scratch in 2008, laughing now: “Naivety was my best friend, I didn’t know a single supplier, I designed the first collection myself – but now, 16 years later, we’re now at 400 people in the company.”
She knew that investing time and money in “great fabric and flattering fits” would make her fledgling brand stand out from the crowd. “Sticking to those principles of quality, flattering fits and thinking about women broadly has in allowed us to grow the business,” she says.
ME+EM may not be quite a household name, but the brand has “quietly grown under the radar” with growth in the US too, and has become a huge favourite in fashion circles.
Daisy Edgar-Jones pictured wearing ME+EM(Image: Me+Em)
It’s also been worn by a host of A-list stars, including Leighton Meester, Bella Hadid, Olivia Colman, as well as royalty with Princess Catherine choosing one of the brand’s pretty pink summer dresses for a visit to the Chelsea Flower Show, seeing it swiftly sell out.
Clare says: “As an entrepreneur you never feel like you’ve got there, we’ve all got imposter syndrome.
“But when it starts to really take off is when it starts to pay for itself, as soon as it became profitable and that’s around £10mn revenue mark which was eight years ago. That’s when you feel real, when you’re generating cash, that’s the financial moment.
“Then you have all the other moments, when you have big press articles or a celebrity wears it, or when you see people at airports in other countries, or see people in all walks of life wearing it that’s all your favourite moments.”
Me+Em now has ten stores in London, five in America, one in Edinburgh as well as stores within stores including at Selfridges and back at Harrods where she first started out.
Clare chose King Street for the new Manchester ME+EM store(Image: Me+Em)
But the prospect of a first standalone store back on home turf in Manchester was too good for Clare to miss. Clare now lives in the Cotswolds with her husband Johnny, and is mum to their two daughters as well as stepmum to Johnny’s three grown up children too.
She says: “We’ve had a lot of requests to open here, and I’ve wanted to open in Manchester for a long time.
“My daughter has just started at uni in Manchester, and you’ve just had the Chanel show, Soho House is opening in Manchester, media businesses are moving here. It’s so exciting to have a strong, northern city.
“I spent as much time looking for the right place in Manchester as I did in New York. With King Street – we could just feel that there’s great things happening there. This site it’s a prominent corner site, next to Blank Street coffee, it’s got good visibility, well laid out with big windows. Quite often it’s just about getting a good feel and we could see the street going from strength with some of the other arrivals there.”
Clare is meticulous about planning each new store, designing the space to reflect the clothes. She says: “It’s the subtlety of colours and materials, an element of Britishness, some of the fabrics have been made by people in Manchester so we try and localise it too.
“Behind our tills we have a book shelf with inspirational books and designs. Something local and I sign off every single tiny detail.”
Clare has a close eye on every detail(Image: Me+Em)
Clare, 52, knows the juggle of family life with growing her own business, particularly as her husband Johnny also runs his own business too.
She said: “The multi-tasking going on is endless, there’s often no time to think. To build a business you’ve got to have the patience of a saint, so much has to align for it to actually grow.
“So many things come and knock you sideways, whether its’ financial or political turmoil, the world throws a lot at you.
“But we always think of our customers as being highly discerning and very busy, so we try to meet their lifestyle needs. Most of our feedback is how surprising the quality is for our price.”
And finally, what would Clare’s advice be to any other would-be Greater Manchester fashion entrepreneurs out there?
“I think the first thing is make sure why you need to do it, what’s your vision, don’t just make clothes, understand what the gap in the market is, and most importantly why they need you.
“Whatever that gap is, follow it fastidiously and never give up on it. Authenticity eventually wins over. But don’t do it because you want to make money, do it because you genuinely believe in it.”
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