NOW THAT’S RAGS TO RICHES!
Will.I.Am is a really good mate… we FaceTime nearly every day
EVERY inch of Umar Kamani’s sprawling office is a different shade of garish, improbable pink. The rooms are pink, the retro-style telephones are very pink, and motivational messages imploring staff working at his online clothing giant, Pretty Little Thing, to channel ‘good vibes only’ are blazoned across the walls in neon candy hues.
A gigantic winged unicorn in one corner has been artfully dressed for the festive season in a series of oversized pink bows and strings of glittering diamante. Elsewhere are flamingo-themed meeting rooms, winged unicorn wallpaper and a pink golf buggy which distributes treats to staff on Fridays.
Subtlety, it seems, has no place here, in the headquarters for what has swiftly become a global retail phenomenon. But then 31-year-old Kamani, the millionaire British entrepreneur who created it all, is not one for understatement – much like his unlikely inspiration,
Walt Disney. ‘Disney is a place where everyone smiles,’ he says, enthusiastically, gesturing at his pastel-coated empire.
‘It’s a happy place, and that’s what I have tried to do in the office with unicorns. You get a feeling of happiness without anyone telling you to be happy.’
Even the playlists in his fleet of cars – which includes two RollsRoyce Phantoms, a £300,000 Lamborghini Aventador, a £92,000 customised Mercedes Gclass and a high-end Range Rover – are Disney.
Singing along to the Lion King hit Hakuna Matata – which translates from Swahili as ‘ no troubles’ – is a particular pleasure, he admits, unabashed.
Certainly charismatic Kamani, the son of Mahmud Kamani – billionaire founder of fellow internet fashion giant Boohoo – has little to trouble him. The success of Pretty Little Thing since it launched in 2012 has been phenomenal, with £374 million in sales last year alone. By 2022, the company – part-owned by Boohoo – is forecast to be worth around £2.1billion.
There are no high street stores – instead it advertises prolifically across social media. Its fashion is fast and affordable, aimed at glamorous, style-conscious young women on a budget. Dresses range from £ 6 for a basic T- shirt style, to £100 for a diamante-mesh outfit that would not look out of place on a Kardashian’s Instagram page.
This weekend, Kamani expects the annual Black Friday sale to shift one million pieces of stock, generating the company’s biggest payday to date. In preparation, he’s filled its warehouse to the rafters, a photograph of which went viral at the beginning of last week.
Little wonder, then, that society magazine Tatler named Kamani its eighth most eligible bachelor for 2019, alongside the Duke of Roxburghe and former One Direction star Harry Styles.
Kamani’s lifestyle is decidedly jetset, with his contacts book brimming with A- list stars such as Jennifer Lopez, rapper P Diddy and actor Denzel Washington. Such is his self-belief that when he wanted to launch PLT in the US three years ago, he offered a six- figure sum to reality TV star Kylie Jenner, half- sister of Kim Kardashian, to appear in one of his £15 orange dresses.
‘It’s all about the hustle,’ he says, with a shrug. ‘I knew I wanted to be in those circles because I’m obsessed with power.’
Power duly followed. The Kylie Jenner coup led to sales increasing tenfold and allowed him t o buy a seven-bedroom mansion in the Hollywood Hills, complete with basketball court.
Flicking through his Instagram account reveals the very caricature of a playboy – lunching at Nobu in Malibu wearing Gucci slippers, hanging out with P Diddy at the Grammys and Kylie Jenner at Coachella music festival, and posing at the wheel of a yacht on Italy’s Amalfi Coast.
‘A l ot of these people are my friends,’ he says. ‘Will.I.Am is a really good mate – we FaceTime nearly every day – as is P Diddy. I was at the LA Lakers game with Denzel Washington a few weeks ago too.’
P Diddy gave him an apparently invaluable tip – to have a videographer by his side, 24 hours a day. Most might consider that an intrusion too far, but Kamani is so keen to record every moment of his gilded life that he has even moved a cameraman into his Cheshire home, deep in the footballer heartland of Alderley Edge.
‘P Diddy said he’d had the most amazing experiences in his life,’ Kamani explains. ‘He said he wished he had filmed them, and told me to do it. So, I have someone filming my important moments, big meetings, that kind of thing.
‘Who knows what I will do with it but I have it, and to make sure nothing is missed, he lives with me along with others who work with me.’
It’s clear that he has a soft spot for J.Lo. The pair met at producer LA Reid’s Grammy party in LA, and she now designs her own PLT range.
The pair have become so close that Kamani even threw her a star-studded 50th birthday party in July at Gloria Estefan’s luxurious Miami villa, and took his mum Aisha.
But the pink office, the glamorous lifestyle – it’s all for show, Kamani insists. He claims he ‘parties with purpose’ to further his business interests and that he’s home by midnight.
Once, before the business took off, he was an amateur boxer and playboy, who cared only about partying and chasing women.
Now, dating is ‘a distraction’. He split with girlfriend Amy Reddish, who works as head of brand at PLT, in the summer. He is also teetotal, all the better to focus on his venture. Certainly the man sitting opposite me could not be further removed from those glossy shots.
The bleached blond hair is, he confesses, a vain bid ‘to make me look younger’. Gone is the outré wardrobe – the baby pink or lime green suits, Louis Vuitton tracksuits and yellow basketball gear – in favour of a more casual, serious ensemble. The bright white out-of-the-box trainers are still startling, but the outfit is practical – a gilet and active-wear leggings.
He is almost relentlessly focused on his business. He is, it is said, a huge chess fan. And he fully intends to outmanoeuvre his fashion opponents.
Referring to his online image, he says: ‘I brand myself like that to make my rivals think I’m not a shrewd businessman. It tricks them and I like that. If they think I jet around the world, drinking champagne and hanging out with beautiful women – and nothing else – they underestimate
The man who built a BILLION pound firm selling £15 dresses me. I do put flash pictures up because that is my life, my journey, but I will always accompany the pictures with a humble caption. Really, I love nothing more than to have a cup of tea with my mum. Like, we left J.Lo’s party at midnight to go home and have one.
‘And when I get back from LA after a long time, I just want to go to Marks & Spencer, push a trolley round to buy some of their food and pyjamas. I am playing five-a-side football tonight with my oldest friends. I like that, normal.’
After all, it is his family – and particularly his father, Mahmud – he credits with his work ethic.
His grandparents, who were originally from India, arrived in Manchester from Kenya in 1969 when his father was just two years old.
Mahmud’s career began in the rag trade with a market stall selling handbags. But he invested his money wisely in property and began a wholesale business, Pinstripe, sourcing garments from India.
By the early 2000s, the company was selling £ 50 million- worth a year to high street brands such as Topshop and Primark, which led to Mahmud setting up the Boohoo brand in 2006.
The family lived in a large home in Chorlton, Greater Manchester, with several generations – grandparents, uncles, cousins – all under the same roof.
The Boohoo brand is now worth £3.7billion and has sponsored ITV2 reality show Love Island. But Mahmud was determined his children should not be spoiled – and made sure to instil a strong work ethic in Umar and his younger brothers, Adam and Samir. ‘ At the time I didn’t understand,’ Kamani admits. ‘Dad used to shout at us, wake us up, bang on our doors like a headmaster. He said we should get up early and get our minds working.
‘All those things he drilled into us have been worth it for me and my brothers – none of us put our feet up, ever.’
Still, it is clear Kamani has always had his own ideas. He was expelled from £ 12,000- a- year Stockport Grammar School for being ‘rebellious’, which led to a stint at Rydal Penrhos boarding school in Wales.
The discipline and self- sufficiency he learned there put him ‘in very good stead’, he admits – he had to ‘get his own milk’ and ‘polish my own shoes’ for the first time. ‘There were 19 of us at home,’ he shrugs. ‘There was always someone to do things for you.’
He later studied business at Manchester Metropolitan University but remarkably, he admits he never took his degree – and even mocked up his graduation photograph to give his parents the picture they’d always wanted.
‘In my third year I got really into going to the gym and stopped going to uni, but Indian parents are very proud,’ he says.
‘ I knew my mum wanted that photo of me in a gown and hat so I thought the best thing to do would be to hire a costume and get someone to come and take the pictures.
‘Then I told my parents that graduation day was when I knew they would be away. I didn’t admit it for about two years.
‘The picture is still there, though, because my mum likes to show off.’
While Mahmud may not have wanted to spoil his children, he did help Kamani set up PLT with a multi-million pound gift. But it was Umar who grew the brand, aiming at girls and women between 14 and 24.
In the beginning, the website received only one order a week. But within a few years the website was supplemented by an app, and Kamani had tapped into the US market and a new world of celebrity endorsement.
There are now PLT offices around the world in LA, Miami, New York and Paris.
‘I want to keep moving forward,’ he says. ‘If I just took what my father gave me and didn’t grow or move forward then I would feel like a failure.
‘ My biggest fear is failing, so going teetotal has kept me sober. I want to be an inspiration for young people, to give them dreams and ambition, so I have a responsibility to behave properly.
‘I used to go out and really enjoy myself but the bigger the business has got, the more I have to tighten the bolts.’
That his father was a huge influence is not in doubt, and Boohoo now owns 66 per cent of PLT.
But the far more unlikely role model in Kamani’s life is one rarely cited by thirtysomething entrepreneurs.
Kamani’s Disney obsession stems from the business model Walt Disney created, he says, and the legacy he left behind. He loves the films, the music and the theme parks.
‘It makes people smile and I love that. I also like that it delivers the right messaging to young girls through its stories, it has a wonderful moral code.
‘In fact, I am going to Disneyland in Florida for a week at New Year with my family; my mum, dad, brothers and my sister-in-law – no kids, just us.
‘We can’t wait. There will be fireworks on New Year’s Eve and we are going to go on all the rides.’
He may see his young customers as princesses – and for Umar Kamani, too, the fairytale is very much alive.