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When I meet Damson Madder founder Emma Hill at the brand’s Camden headquarters, the place is packed. The team has almost doubled in the past year, from 26 to 48 people, as the premium label entered hyper-growth. And it’s all systems go ahead of the Spring collectsion release this week.
Damson Madder is known for its bold prints, colors, and utility-meets-vintage aesthetic, which seem to resonate with older Gen Zs and millennials seeking a more distinctive style as quiet luxury fades. “We’re renovating a new office space downstairs,” the founder says, showing me into a meeting room, “We’ve run out of space.”
Before launching Damson Madder in 2020, Hill was a buyer at various UK high street retailers, which she prefers not to name. But she’d always dreamed of striking out on her own. “I was genuinely struggling to shop for myself,” says Hill. “It felt like the high street was looking a little bit samey, almost disposable and uninspiring. And [luxury] just was a bit out of reach. I wanted to work on something a bit more considered and bold, with distinctive design, but made more responsibly.”
She was onto something. In 2023, just three years after its launch, Damson Madder hit £4.5 million in revenue. This more than quadrupled to £19 million in 2024, and the brand is on track to hit £31 million in revenue for fiscal 2025. Wholesale represents a third of sales, and stockists include Selfridges, End, Galeries Lafayette, Nordstrom, and Revolve. It’s one of the top-selling labels at Selfridges, and will open a shop-in-shop at its London flagship in July. In September, the brand will host a special pop-up in Nordstrom, where Hill says it’s “selling really well”.
The versatility of garments is central to the brand’s success, Hill says. Many Damson Madder pieces can be worn in various ways, via detachable scarves, reversible jackets, or multi-layered tops, so consumers can get more mileage from their purchases, while boosting their perceived value.
“If you are elevating that price point from high street, you need to show people why they are paying that extra,” Hill says. “Innovation and creativity is so important. I really push the design team to go further. And I give them time to paint by hand, draw by hand, or to do embroidery. That’s what makes for a unique product.” Damson Madder T-shirts retail for around £45, knits for £95, and coats up to £195.
When we meet, Hill is wearing a blue and purple striped long sleeve tee, with a tank layered on top (sold as two pieces), which speaks to the brand’s overall vibe: bold colors and interesting silhouettes that can be worn in various ways. “It’s such good value, because it’s versatile,” she says. “We like having all these like little extras that just make the product really special and really unique.”
Today, Hill is grappling with such rapid scaling, as she invests in new categories and territories, and grows the brand’s wholesale footprint (already a third of the business). “Of course, we’ve experienced growing pains,” she says. “The brand’s potential has begun to outpace the speed in which we can scale operationally. We’re just really focused on keeping up with that growth, while protecting the secret sauce.”
This year, Hill is investing time and resources at the backend of the business, to ready it for the next phase. She is planning senior hires across departments, including the e-commerce team, to support website localization in the US and in Europe, performance marketing, and CRM management, which “all need refining”.
She’s also investing in new backend systems, like a new ERP price monitoring system for the buying and merchandising teams, as well as the factories they work with, so the business can better predict — and serve — demand. “Because I’m a product person, it’s easy for me to focus on the product. But now, I have to look at the bigger picture of the other departments within the business and how we have the same level of success across the board.”
Viral products and pop-up queues
For the first two years of Damson Madder, Hill’s best friend Rachel Vasdekys did the PR in exchange for some samples. Shortly after its 2020 launch, Vasdekys managed to secure a small section promoting the brand in daily London newspaper Metro, which is given out on the Tube. But on publication day, the UK went into lockdown. “I remember being so excited to launch this brand, and then that happened,” Hill says. “I was imagining stacks of Metros blowing across the street and nobody seeing them. And I was like, what am I doing?”
To fund the business, Hill partnered with a former colleague, who remains one of its biggest investors to this day (they prefer not to be named). “We didn’t have much money then,” she says. “It was a lot of working with friends, asking people to wear things, gifting friends of friends.”
For the first three years, Damson Madder relied on steady organic growth. Then came a string of viral products that catapulted the label to new heights and established its distinctive, maximalist vibe, including a Peter Pan-collared Romeo blouse, a leopard print gilet, and a leopard print cargo pant.
“We just couldn’t keep [the cargos] in stock. For us, we were three years old, so to buy a thousand units of something was a lot. But we would buy a thousand and they would sell out in a day, and then we’d buy another thousand, and they would be delivered eight weeks later and sell out in a day,” Hill says.
This scarcity created even more hype, but it wasn’t by design, she adds. “I just wasn’t confident enough to do a big buy, and didn’t necessarily have the money either.” The brand had a total of 15,000 sign-ups for that leopard cargo, which retailed at £100. “We don’t design to go viral,” Hill says. “We don’t work that way. We just want to make beautiful and unique pieces.”
This year, Damson Madder’s viral products are all outerwear pieces, Hill says, including the Jerry, a reversible trench that comes with a scarf, which had 45,000 sign-ups in the summer when the brand launched it with a 300-unit run.
In addition to outerwear, Hill has invested heavily in knitwear, and witnessed an exceptional season after introducing wool, cashmere, and mohair iterations. Accessories and bags also saw a big lift last season, she adds, while the brand’s brightly colored and patterned ceramic homeware, though a small part of the business, is growing off the back of a marketing push. As we speak, there’s a selection of pink and blue painted mugs and bowls on the table. “It completes the world-building of Damson Madder,” the founder says.
Reconciling responsibility
Since its inception, Damson Madder has made responsibility a key part of its messaging. The brand aims to source differently from high street labels, predominantly through using organic cotton for 90% of cotton pieces, and ensuring end-to-end supply chain transparency across its suppliers in Türkiye, China, and India. Of course, it’s difficult to reconcile being a more responsible label with reaching its current level of scale. “It is a challenge,” Hill admits, flagging that sourcing conversations must happen at the very beginning of the design process. “We’ve worked with all our factories and mills to ensure they are certified, and now that we are bigger, it’s kind of easier when some of those more responsible fabric bases lead to economies of scale.”
One of the most important things is ensuring factory partners are “fully on board”, and can scale production adequately without compromising on materials or conditions. “They need to upscale their practices as we do, so we ensure there’s transparency across the board,” says Hill. “We have really longstanding relationships with our factories. And it’s really important to me that we look after and nurture those relationships. We visit them two to three times a year, and we offer continuous support.”
Damson Madder hired a head of sustainability last year, to help it navigate the next phase. They are in “constant contact” with factories, and will complete the brand’s first sustainability impact report this April, which will explain more about the brand’s production practices. “It will help us to evaluate [sustainability] year-on-year and improve year-on-year, establishing a standard,” Hill says.
Sights on the US
While the brand has been a viral hit over the last two years, Hill isn’t worried about consumers moving on, because “Damson”, as she calls it, is built on a strong community of brand fans and influencers. Community pop-ups are a key driver of the business. The brand has staged several activations over the last six years, starting in London in February 2024, and held its first New York pop-up in 2024, as an introduction to the market. While Hill “expected it to be dead”, there were constant queues and “hundreds of people”.
Celebrity placements have also boosted sales, particularly in the US, which is the brand’s fastest-growing market and an area of focus for 2026. When Olivia Rodrigo wore the Damson Madder Bora dress eight months ago, the entire 400-unit run sold out in a day. Rodrigo hadn’t even tagged the brand.
The US represents 25% of Damson Madder’s direct-to-consumer (DTC) business, but 60% of wholesale. And following the first New York pop-up, sales increased over 600% on the brand’s website, Hill says. The momentum has continued: last September, the brand held a presentation inNew York with a local grassroots chess community, Club Chess, featuring chess players wearing the brand and competing. The brand will hold its first West Coast activation in April, with an LA pop-up, focused on high summer, heavy on swim and sunglasses, Hill says.
Of course, scaling in the US means greater exposure to Trump’s trade tariffs. Damson Madder focused on growing wholesale instead of DTC, with the help of a new head of wholesale who joined from JW Anderson. The brand also continued with paid ads, still seeing return on investment, despite taking tariffs into account. The biggest challenge is maintaining brand DNA as the label expands internationally. “We want to go global without compromising on our vision or values,” says Hill. “I see brands just diluting to suit a market. That’s not what we want to do.”
After the LA pop-up, the next stop is Paris, where Damson Madder will hold its first standalone showroom in June. It will then turn into a consumer pop-up, following the sales period, culminating in a party for Paris holiday Fête de la Musique. The brand will also be at Galeries Lafayette during Paris Fashion Week in September. European DTC sales grew 30% in 2025, with France up 85%, so Hill is “excited to meet the Paris community”.
All these retail activations are helping Hill work up to opening her own store in the UK. “This year is about focusing on creating those moments where we can connect with and celebrate all of the amazing people that make Damson Madder what it is,” she says. “Bringing our community into our pop-ups and into our retail spaces, but also giving us a chance to kind of learn about retail before opening our own in the future. I need to learn more.”
