Clare Hornby is not a household name but many people bandy about her personal pronoun. She’s the “me” in Me+Em, the highly successful British womenswear brand that has grown into a £150mn business since its founding in 2009.
Sold via its website, nine UK stores and three department-store concessions, its clothes have been worn by the Princess of Wales and Victoria Starmer, in C-suites and to weddings, across Europe and Australia. Increasingly, it’s being worn in New York, Dallas and Silicon Valley as the brand rolls out an ambitious retail programme in America. “I think whatever country our customers are in, what unites them is that they are busy women and they are looking for solutions,” says Hornby, 56. “And I’m passionate about finding them.”
Me+Em wool-blend Relaxed Shoulder trench coat, £595, hanging in Hornby’s home © Philip White
The founder and CEO is driving serious business underpinned by a price strategy that delivers quality with value. You can buy a white pinstriped three-piece trouser suit from Me+Em for less than £800, or a ruffled lily-of-the-valley-printed, 100 per cent silk dress for £550. “We’re direct-to-consumer luxury because we strive to hit this gap between the lack of quality at the lower end of fashion retail and the sheer expensive quality at the top. That’s our model,” says Hornby, a Manchester-born former advertising executive and retail marketing graduate. “You’re paying a fair price for what you’re getting.”
£25mn
Profit in 2024, up 24% on previous year
It seems to be working. Since 2022 profits have been rising steadily, from £15mn to last year’s £25mn, a 24 per cent growth on the previous year. In 2022, the company secured a £55mn investment led by growth equity firm Highland Europe to accelerate its international expansion. A major attraction, says Helena Richardson, principal at Highland Europe, was the brand’s customer retention. “We saw metrics we’d not seen anywhere else in the consumer market. That comes down to the product,” Richardson notes. “Customers were very loyal because the product fits incredibly well, sits in coherent collections and is phenomenal quality for the price point. And, in fact, [customers were] even increasing their purchasing activity over time with the brand.”
The Princess of Wales wearing Me+Em in 2023 © Jordan Pettitt-WPA Pool/Getty Images
In 2019, Me+Em launched e-commerce in the US. From 2022, the brand has trained its focus on a three-pronged growth strategy that has included scaled marketing in the US, and other countries such as Switzerland, France, Germany, Denmark, Canada and Australia. Last year it opened four stores in the US: three in New York (Madison Avenue, Mercer Street and East Hampton) and one in Dallas. More openings are planned, with Greenwich, Connecticut, slated this month, Los Angeles opening late autumn, and Stanford in 2026. Clearly, tariffs aren’t troubling them. “We spent a lot of time looking at the data,” says Hornby. “Combining that with instinct, as well as ensuring we’re being fair to our long-standing global suppliers, we made the decision to continue.” The Madison outpost opened in February 2024 and by year end in January 2025, net US sales were at $60mn. “The customer is as loyal as she is in the UK, so the repeat rate is pretty much in line,” Hornby says. “But it’s a bigger population and they spend more.”
With her conker-shiny hair, a light tan offset by subtle gold jewellery and white slubby T-shirt with caramel-coloured cargo pants, Hornby is the epitome of the stylish Me+Em woman. As she welcomes me into the Holland Park family home – enviable corner location – that she shares with her husband Johnny, a marketing agency executive and co-founder (with Jeremy Clarkson) of lager brand Hawkstone, and their two university-age daughters, she says: “I did think about what to wear”, as though admitting something surprising. They moved into the townhouse – with walls featuring a Sam Taylor-Johnson Suspended self-portrait and one of Nick Knight’s Roses – six months ago from a house in the same area and live here during the week, with weekends spent at their home in the Cotswolds.
Clare Hornby in her living room at home in west London. The artworks on the wall are by Tim Walker and Loulou Avenue © Philip White
Every working day in the brand’s White City HQ, every event, every work trip is a market research opportunity. June, the month in which we meet, has been a whirlwind of social occasions, the previous weekend involving “dress code shenanigans” for a day at Ascot and a Midsummer’s Eve party that demanded black tie “with a touch of enchantment”. Naturally, Hornby wore Me+Em. For the party, she chose a cream floral-embroidery maxi skirt, white silk halterneck top and a gold Chloé belt, with flat shoes because she broke her knee in a skiing accident last year and now avoids heels. For Ascot, it was a cream and black polka-dot silk maxi dress.
$60mn
US net sales since it launched in 2019
The races were yet another public-opinion poll. “I was walking around with one of our investors and he was trying to tell me which horse to back, but I was too busy clocking who else was in Me+Em,” she says. “I didn’t see two dresses the same and that was really nice. When you first start out, you’re longing to just see one of your dresses somewhere and then a few years later you’ve got the opposite problem of seeing the same one everywhere. So then you have to change that.”
That comparatively pleasant issue of over-saturation was solved with a drop strategy in 2023, delivering monthly collection “edits” in smaller production runs but with a broader option count, focusing on a wider variety of shapes. But event dresses are a relative come-lately to Me+Em’s success. “Tailoring is what gets people in the door,” Hornby says.
Me+Em Luxe Cord Sharp Shoulder blazer, £395 © Philip White
Me+Em merino and cashmere Relaxed Stripe Knit Henley T-shirt
Price: £175
Me+Em Eco-fabric Perfect Workwear Man pant
Price: £185
She put her money on pyjamas originally. After leaving advertising firm CDP – where she met Johnny – Hornby went on to launch Pyjama Room in 2007 with her friend Emma Howarth. Me+Em was founded two years later with Howarth, who left the business in 2012. For the first two years, Hornby designed the lounge-focused line – her original black palazzo pants remain a bestseller. Then, in the mid-2010s, the brand broadened its offering to add tailored trousers. “I’m a trouser-obsessive so I was having a field day. I began working with a pattern cutter who is still with us now – she’s German and she can stick with precision for as long as you want. Suddenly we started getting recognised for our trousers,” Hornby recalls. “Once you own that, and if you keep committing to it, you earn your authority to do other categories.” Its signature Man Pant has a repeat-buy rate of more than 60 per cent.
Recently, they’ve been “cracking” the oversized jacket, with the Intelligent Oversized blazer. “I can’t wear the big fashion triangular shoulder look. I’m too small and look ridiculous,” Hornby says (she’s 5ft 6in with a petite frame). “But I like that masculine look. So our jacket fits off the shoulder but doesn’t look comedy. And then we put a scrunch in the sleeve, so that it’s not hanging over your hands.” I’m unsure what she means by “scrunch” until I try on Hornby’s own black version, fetched from the wardrobe, and discover the elasticated scrunchie inserted into the lining of the sleeves, so that when you hoick them up, the hoick stays put.
“The tailoring does something really clever but you don’t realise until you put it on,” says the broadcaster and Me+Em customer Emily Maitlis. She particularly loves a white trouser suit she has worn on several occasions, including to interview Tony Blair earlier this year. “This sounds weird but it’s calming. You put it on and think, ‘OK, I’ve got this right; now I can think about the content.’” Maitlis also has a red suit that is “quite poppy – I like it for doing American news”. But her “best” piece is a black midi dress she wore to do The Late Late Show in Dublin. “Piers Morgan walked into my dressing room and just went, ‘Wow!’” She laughs. “I know Piers Morgan is not infallible – but that instant reaction? I’m going to go out on that stage walking three inches taller.”
Me+Em Sharp Shoulder pinstripe blazer, £350 © Philip White
Me+Em Italian cotton-mix twill Fit And Flare maxi dress
Price: £395
Me+Em silk Polka Dot maxi dress with corsage
Price: £595
Confidence is something that Hornby wants sewn into all of her products. “Can I sit at that conference and not worry about whether my trousers are all creased when I stand up? Is my button gaping? Are my shoulders sitting straight? If you’re thinking about that you can’t relax,” she says.
60%
Repeat-buy rate of the signature Man Pant
Although Hornby no longer goes on sourcing trips, she personally checks every fabric with a “scrunch” test; she’s fastidious about creasing. The aforementioned Oversized Blazer is made in lightweight Italian-made wool with a fluid, drapey quality. Suppliers are in Italy, Portugal, Turkey, India and China. “We repeat the shapes and blocks but we re-spin them. We disguise it in such a way so you don’t feel like you’re getting the same again because it’s not a menswear business,” says Hornby. “The customer loves newness.”
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In service of this, Hornby has, she says, entered a new stage of life “where I walk around very hot cities an awful lot”. To understand the American customer prior to store openings, Me+Em held a series of trunk shows and private events. “Data can only tell you so much,” she says. “Before opening Madison I went seven times. I walked up and down that street at every time of day, at weekends, just to see the flow of the customer and where she goes.” She is now an expert on hi-tech trainers (for the record, she rates On and New Balance), how to pack a carry-on for three days, and what to wear to deal with air-conditioning. “Air-conditioning is a gift,” she says. “Because we can see that even in Dallas, they’re buying a lot of jackets.”