Born in Vienna, Austria, to a Jewish family, James emigrated to the United Kingdom during the Second World War and founded her eponymous firm of glovemakers in 1946, which now holds a Royal Warrant.

Cornelia Katz was born on 11 March 1917,[1] in Vienna, Austria, the eldest of seven children of a family who ran a chain of grocery shops and a cold storage business.

In 1947, she was asked by the dress designer Norman Hartnell to make the "going-away" gloves for the then-Princess Elizabeth to take on her honeymoon, following her marriage to Philip Mountbatten.

[2] The business peaked in the 1950s when she was known as "the Queen's favourite glovemaker"[2] and had between 250[3] and 500[2] workers in her factory in a former dairy in Brighton; however, the popularity of wearing fashion gloves eventually declined.

[6] After emigrating from Austria, she originally hoped to get a United States visa, but subsequently met Jack Burnett James and married him six weeks later, in 1940 (despite the fact that she had been engaged before leaving Vienna.)