Esme Young

Esme Young (born 1949) is an English fashion designer and television presenter.

Early life and education Emma Young was born in 1949 at Bedford Hospital, Her brother Jeremy is a documentary film producer. and was a career officer in the RAF. a Commander of the same order in 1960, and a Commander of the Order of the Bath in 1972. In Series 8 of The Great British Sewing Bee, Young revealed that her father was captain of Wasps RFC in the 1950/51 season. Her mother, Patricia Josephine Cole, was a secretary who worked as a nurse during the Second World War. Young has told interviewers she was "partially deaf" as a child due to otitis media, which affected her reading development and still impacts her life.

Young began attending boarding school at age five. She went on to Saint Martins School of Art. When a tutor mispronounced her name as Esme, she began using that instead.

Career Swanky Modes In 1972, Young, along with fellow fashion designers Judy Dewsbury, Melanie Herberfield, and Willie Walters, founded a shop in Camden Town called Swanky Modes. Young told an interviewer the group opened the shop because they "couldn't buy anything we wanted to wear in shops, so we made whatever we wanted to wear".

The house was known for "raunchy body-con dresses". A transparent macintosh that was one of the company's early designs was photographed by Helmut Newton for Nova. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s Swanky Modes clothing appeared in Vogue, Honey and The Face. The company's lycra Amorphous dress is in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum. She designed the bunny costume worn by Renee Zellweger in Bridget Jones's Diary.

Academic career Young teaches at Central Saint Martins and is involved in a project called "Exploding Fashion" which highlights the importance of pattern cutting.

Writing

Young published her autobiography in 2022: Behind the Seams: My Life in Creativity, Friendship and Adventure from the star of the Great British Sewing Bee.

Personal life In the 1970s Young squatted in a West London terrace. Young lives in Islington in a rent-controlled Peabody flat she started renting in 1983. She owns a beach hut in Kent.