Mystery backers pour £400k into SamCam fashion label

STYLE-WATCHERS were surprised when Melania Trump ditched Dolce & Gabbana last October in favour of wearing a £295 frock from Samantha Cameron’s Cefinn label.

Is the American First Lady’s endorsement encouraging David Cameron’s wife to broaden her horizons? For I can reveal that SamCam’s chi- chi fashion company has been given a £400,000 cash injection, with friends speculating that the money might be used to fund an expansion overseas. She launched her ‘contemporary designer’ women’s brand at Selfridges last year. The latest batch of funding takes the total invested in Cefinn to £770,000. The value of her business has also risen, with shares being bought for £38 — a

£5 increase on the price paid in past share allocations. A Cefinn spokesman declines to comment on the identity of the investors, but the former prime minister’s wife previously sold shares in her business to well-connected backers.

One of her investors is the Old Etonian chum of her husband, her former boss Mark Esiri, who was chairman of stationery firm Smythson where she was paid a £400,000 salary as creative director.

Another investor is Cameron’s Oxford University tennis partner Andrew Feldman, who was made Tory Party chairman and elevated to the peerage.

His investment could be controversial because of his links to Macedonian Jordan Kamcev, who owns the factory where Cefinn’s clothes — including its £110 T-shirts — are made. Workers there are paid little over £1 an hour. Kamcev has faced allegations of tax evasion and illegal employment of workers, but has never been prosecuted.