A fashion designer’s glitzy Instagram page has sparked a feud with her aunts over the £5m proceeds from the family’s Grade I-listed farmhouse.
Jade Holland Cooper, 31, owner of the Holland Cooper luxury tweed brand, regularly posts selfies posing with her expensive products, well-groomed racehorses and her multi-millionaire Superdry founder husband, Julian Dunkerton, 53.
But the page appeared to rile her aunt, Deidre Goddard, 72, who along with her sister, 66-year-old Brigid Fairman, is in a dispute with their brother Oliver, 73, who is also Jade’s father, over the family inheritance.
Jade Holland Cooper, 31, posts regularly about her luxury life on Instagram. She is seen at a Halloween party at Laylow London on November 2 and wedding her Superdry Husband Julian Dunkerton in August (right)
Jade (centre) posted this photo showing the bridesmaids at her wedding on August 14
She appeared to be particularly angry after Jade posted about her appearance in the Sunday Times business section in May, writing sometime after: ‘Some of us know the truth about you, your family and money. Please don’t take us all for fools.’
Under dispute are the proceeds from the September sale of family manor Great Bricett Hall. The siblings’ father, Rupert Cooper, left the property and its 415-acre farm to Oliver when he died last year and also made him executor of his will.
The will also stipulates Deidre and Brigid would receive an insurance policy worth £50,000, while their younger brother John, 69, would get one worth £100,000, reported The Sunday Times.
The sisters were angry at this disparity, with Brigid saying last week it showed her father had a ‘Victorian notion’ of the role of women in the family.
But her Instagram post sparked a furious reaction from Oliver, who wrote an angry letter to his sisters declaring his shock that his daughter had been targeted as she had received ‘nothing’ from the estate.
In the letter, he demanded Deidre post a ‘detailed and unequivocal’ apology to Jade on Instagram and post another hand-written one to her house in the Cotswolds. In return, he would increase the amount handed to his sisters to £100,000.
But Deidre turned down the offer as a ‘bribe’ and said she had become angry at Jade boasting on Instagram about her luxury fashion business at a time – before the farm’s sale – that her father was claiming there was no cash to pay his father’s bequests.
Jade enjoyed a lavish Cotswolds wedding in August attended by Idris Elba and Craig David. That same month, her husband Julian Dunkerton donated £1million to the campaign for a second Brexit referendum.
Jade and her husband at the ‘crazy’ Laylow London Halloween party in London on November 1. Idris Elba was also tagged in the post
The fashion designer regularly posts on Instagram to promote her eponymous company,
Grade-I listed Great Bricett Hall in Suffolk (pictured in an undated photo) was built in the 13th century as the hall of an Augustinian priory
At the time she described her husband, who is worth an estimated £441million, as an ‘amazing human being’ and said she never thinks about the 22 year age gap between them. ‘I’ve never met anyone as inspiring,’ she added to The Times.
The designer set up her eponymous brand Holland Cooper 10 years ago, which specialises in sexy tailored tweed jackets, £599 leather trousers and luxurious fur-trimmed capes.
She started selling her designs at a stall at the Cheltenham festival ten years ago, in echoes of her husband who co-founded Superdry in 1985 from a market stall in Cheltenham.
Two years ago, Dunkerton sold £52 million of shares in the company to fund a divorce settlement with his first wife, Charlotte Abbot.
Earlier this year, he sold his last remaining stake for £71million and now focuses on his businesses in the Cotswolds where he owns a string of hotels and restaurants.
It was at one of these restaurants where he met Jade and the pair have known each other for years, but got together 18 months ago.
Suffolk farmer’s daughter Jade was educated at £14,322-per-year Ipswich School for Girls before making her demure public debut on Country Life’s ‘Girl In Pearls’ page.
Her mother was a designer and she couldn’t decide between a future in design or agriculture, eventually plumping for the latter, studying international equine and agricultural business management at the Royal Agricultural College in Cirencester.
Jade with Mike Tindall in a Marlborough Trench jacket on March 19 (left) and at another event on July 29 (right)
Jade in an Instagram photo showing a ‘winter workout’ on November 23, 2016
The designer opening a new store in Kildare, Ireland, on October 12 (left) and fishing on August 20
When she say everyone wearing the same ‘bog-standard, green, itchy, masculine tweed’, she realised there was a gap in the market for a more glamorous version.
She dropped out after a year and started designing her own clothes, even though she couldn’t even sew to begin with.
Now her clothing, which is entirely made in Britain, is a hit with celebrities and even royalty with the likes of Made in Chelsea’s Georgia Toffolo and Zara Tindall wearing her designs.
Despite her success, she admits she’s still afraid of failing and that she has no intention of resting on her laurels.
As for plans to have children, she insists she wants them with Dunkerton but has no idea how she will fit it all in, saying: ‘My mother will probably take over.’
Jade posing in a bikini in an Instagram post captioned ‘take me back to the sunshine’ on December 9, 2016
The entrepreneur’s father, Oliver, vigorously defended her in a letter to his sisters. Jade is pictured on March 22 and on a fishing trip on July 29