Top 100: Former student’s fashion label reaches multi-million pound turnover

She started as a student at what became Cirencester's Royal Agricultural University and left to set up her own fashion label. Fifteen years later that business is turning over more than £26 million.

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Whether any of her fellow students saw the potential she did in tweed miniskirts is another thing, but when Jade Holland-Cooper’s designs went like hot cakes from a stall at Badminton Horse Trials she knew she was onto something.

As legend has it she had found her mother’s old design studio in a farm outbuilding and had 30 of the skirts, with leather and suede additions, made specially for the major equestrian event just down the road from her Gloucestershire college.

Shortly afterwards she had left her course at what became Royal Agricultural University in Cirencester to pursue her business full-time and in 2023 that company, Holland Cooper, published its best set of annual results.

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