Cornelia James

Cornelia James was a Viennese refugee who fled Nazi persecution, arrived in England in 1939, and by 1946 had set up her own glovemaking business — starting, as the company's own history page puts it, with color at a time of postwar austerity, work that got her called "the colour Queen of England" by Vogue. In November 1947, Norman Hartnell commissioned her to make the going-away gloves for Princess Elizabeth's wedding to Lieutenant Philip Mountbatten; that connection held long enough to earn the firm a Royal Warrant in 1979 as "Glovemaker by Royal Appointment" — a warrant the company's own site says it held "from 1979 until the death of the Queen in 2022" — a historic appointment.

The business survived the moment that broke most of the mid-century glove trade — Jean Shrimpton's bare-legged, glove-less, hatless appearance at the 1965 Melbourne Cup, which the company's own history credits with ending gloves as an everyday essential almost overnight — by diversifying into scarves and swimwear rather than closing. It has since recommitted to gloves as its core identity. Cornelia James died in 1999 at 82; her daughter, Genevieve James Lawson, has run the firm as director and creative lead ever since, making it a three-generation family business by the company's own count.

Today the house still hand-cuts and hand-sews from an atelier in Lewes, East Sussex — each pair, per the maker's own description, carrying 96 inches of stitching and the individual glovemaker's signature. The current catalogue spans leather, suede, cashmere and silk gloves, bridal and evening styles, driving gloves, and touch-screen-compatible models, sold through a working e-commerce site that ships internationally with duties and tariffs covered. The London-founded glovemaker has kept making and selling gloves, without a gap in production, for eight decades.