Cornelia James was born Cornelia Katz in Vienna on 11 March 1917, the eldest of seven children of a family who ran a chain of grocery shops and a cold storage business. She left Vienna in 1939, immediately after having finished studying fashion design at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts. She left for Paris and then London, with "a suitcase full of the coloured leather".
Career
Katz arrived in London a refugee but soon set up in business making gloves. In 1947, she was asked by the dress designer Norman Hartnell to make the "going-away" gloves for the then Princess Elizabeth to take on her honeymoon, following her impending marriage to Prince Philip, and she made several pairs for the Princess's trousseau. Thus began her long association with the British royal family. Fellow royal couturier Hardy Amies also appreciated her colourful designs. In 1948, she became known as "the Colour Queen of England" after launching her leather gloves range in 100 different shades. Her first workshop was on Davigdor Road in Hove, near Brighton, and was established by 1947. The business peaked in the 1950s, when she was known as "the Queen's favourite glovemaker" and had between 250 and 500 workers in her factory in a former dairy in Brighton; but the popularity of wearing fashion gloves declined. Her products were still popular with royalty, though, and Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother, the Princess Royal and Diana, Princess of Wales all wore her gloves—as did members of the Belgian, Dutch and Swedish royal families. The firm of Cornelia James finally became Royal Warrant holders in 1979, and they are the Queen's official glovemaker. In a 2012 interview with The Telegraph, Cornelia James admitted that Lady Di used her gloves a lot to hide her bitten nails.
Personal life
On arriving in London, she had hoped to get a United States visa, but met Jack Burnett James and married him six weeks later in 1940. Their son Peter James is a best-selling writer of crime fiction. Their daughter, Genevieve Lawson, runs Cornelia James.
Death
Cornelia James died at the Martlets Hospice in Hove, Sussex, England, on 10 December 1999. She had been an active supporter of the hospice and other charities throughout her time in Sussex.
