Celeb-Loved British Luxury Women’s Clothing Brand ME+EM Opens at Dallas’ NorthPark Center

Modern luxury women’s clothing brand ME+EM recently opened its first Dallas store at NorthPark Center, making it the British brand’s fourth store in North America. Prior to the Dallas location, ME+EM opened three brick-and-mortar locations in New York as part of the brand’s ambitious store expansion strategy in the United States. In designing their stateside stores, ME+EM aimed to pair British craftsmanship with an American design sensibility.

For founder Clare Hornby, the creation and evolution of ME+EM happened organically. As a young adult, Hornby worked at Harrod’s in London. Everything she wanted to purchase seemed too expensive, even with her employee discount. Believing that women shouldn’t have to choose between quality and cost, Hornby founded the brand in 2009 on a singular, guiding principle: flattering, functional, forever clothes at a fair price.

With more than two decades of valuable consumer insight under her belt, Hornby adopted a direct-to-consumer business model early on, explaining it was the “only way to get the price right.” Reflecting on her first collection, Hornby tells PaperCity, “I don’t even know how I did it. Naiveté was my forte.”

The new Dallas location allows customers to discover curated monthly edits of accessories, footwear, and ready-to-wear, which includes everything from 100 percent silk dresses and cashmere knitwear to the label’s iconic side stripe trousers. So far, so good, as business in the new location continues to exceed expectations and projections.

For Hornby, “Customer strategy is [her] favorite part.” That explained why opening a store in Dallas made sense. The data said so! The brand aims to dress “busy women globally.”

“Dallas women are busy and travel a lot,” Hornby says, making the brand an ideal fit for clothes they can both function and look great in.

Hornby self-deprecatingly calls herself “the least fashion-y person in fashion.” She tells us about the several tenets of the brand’s ethos, including texture clashing, hi-low styling, feminine v. masculine, “sporty-smart,” and color clashing. She says, “Trousers are the draw, and then people build an outfit around that.”

“We obsess over details and tailoring, and we genuinely care about clothes that will be a solution in your life,” she says.

Celebrity fans of the brand include everyone from members of the British Royal Family to Katie Holmes, Margot Robbie, Lupita Nyong’o, Olivia Colman, and Helen Mirren.

American architecture and interior design firm Janson Scuro designed the 2,245 square-foot space, which is now open on the entrance floor at NorthPark Center. The brand also operates storefronts in London, Edinburgh, and New York.