This week’s episode is with the eponymous founder of Karen Millen, Karen herself. Her story is an interesting one…she founded her brand with her husband Kevin Stanford in 1981. Using a £100 loan they purchased 100 metres of white cotton which she whipped up into stylish shirts and they sold party-style to friends. From this they gradually grew a retail empire founded on their commitment to affordable luxury and making investment pieces accessible. In 2004 they sold Karen Millen to Mosaic Fashions under an SPA for £100m. The terms of the SPA prevented Karen Millen from using her name in connection with any similar businesses or competition in the future…challenging for any eponymous founder and she later challenged this in court but lost. Unfortunately she also lost millions in the collapse of Kaupthing Bank…but in true Power Woman style she swivelled and followed her love of interiors culminating in creating an online interiors business called Homemonger.com.  

However her passion for fashion was reigniting …In 2019 the Boohoo Group bought the Karen Millen brand and in 2022, in a full circle moment, and in an attempt to inject some of the original DNA back into the brand, Karen was invited to create The Founder Collection, a capsule collection of 30 signature pieces. The huge popularity of the first collection saw her invited to create a second collection which launches this week…

I loved chatting to a fellow fashion brand founder about what had driven her designs, how she has dressed through the decades including as she says a moment when she had become “rich” and how that impacted her style…not necessarily what you would expect…but amusing and insightful!

I hope you enjoy the episode as much as I did creating it… thank you Karen.

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