Barjis Chohan
Founders who survive past year ten face a quieter problem than the early-stage one. The brand that got them here, the values, the small-team intuition, the personal taste, becomes harder to defend as the business scales, capital comes in, and supply chains stretch across borders. Holding commercial discipline and original ethos together at scale is the real test, and most do not pass it.
Barjis Chohan is the founder of BARJIS London, a designer-entrepreneur who has built and sustained a values-led luxury fashion and interiors business across UK and Gulf markets for more than two decades.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Barjis Chohan
- A founder’s view of brand discipline built over more than 25 years. She has run a designer label long enough to have seen the failure modes of growth, dilution, and trend-chasing, and to speak credibly about the cost of each.
- Hard-won sustainability substance. Seven years rebuilding supply chains, materials, and product lifecycles inside a working business, not a sustainability practice attached to a marketing function.
- A bicultural commercial perspective most boards do not have access to. She has financed and sold into the GCC, manufactured in the UK, and served Muslim, Western, and luxury hospitality clients inside one operating model.
- Verifiable entrepreneurial credentials, including Designer in International Trade from the Financial Mail on Sunday, Entrepreneur of the Year (London, Shell LiveWIRE), and the Global MSME Champion Award from the Global Council for the Promotion of International Trade.
- Inclusion content with a practitioner’s edge. Her work on identity and cultural difference is shaped by running a multicultural business, not by a corporate DEI mandate.
Biography highlights
- Founder and CEO of BARJIS London, established 1999, with bespoke luxury rugs preceding the womenswear line launched in 2011.
- Luxury hospitality clients include Marriott Hotels, IHG [CONFIRM], The Montcalm (Autograph Collection), Emirates Towers Dubai, Japan Airlines, and K+K Hotels.
- Studied fashion design at London College of Fashion and Central Saint Martins; interned with Vivienne Westwood before founding her label.
- Award record includes Designer in International Trade (Financial Mail on Sunday), Entrepreneur of the Year (London), Business of the Year (Islam Channel, 2019), and the Global MSME Champion Award from the Global Council for the Promotion of International Trade.
- Featured in Vogue and profiled by The Guardian; subject of a London Film Academy documentary.
- Work exhibited at Fashion Weeks in London, Paris, and Dubai, and in museums in New York, Frankfurt, and San Francisco.
Biography
Most fashion businesses that survive their first decade do not survive their second with the same ethos intact. BARJIS London is an exception. Founded in 1999 with bespoke luxury rugs, the brand extended into womenswear in 2011 and has operated continuously across UK manufacturing, GCC investment, and hospitality clients including Marriott and Emirates Towers Dubai, with a sustainability programme rebuilt inside the business rather than added to its marketing.
Chohan trained at London College of Fashion and studied at Central Saint Martins. She interned with Vivienne Westwood and worked with a French fashion house in Monte Carlo before founding her own label. The Guardian described her as a Westwood prodigy. Her early commercial decisions, including writing to oil companies for investment at seventeen and travelling to the Middle East with a young family, set the bicultural pattern her business has followed since.
Recognition has come from credible bodies. She holds the Financial Mail on Sunday Designer in International Trade award, Entrepreneur of the Year (London), Business of the Year from the Islam Channel, and the Global MSME Champion Award from the Global Council for the Promotion of International Trade. The Barjis Initiative, launched in 2018, supports creative entrepreneurs and enterprise education in schools.
Boards and leadership audiences book her for the operator’s lens, not the celebrity-founder presentation. Her talks examine brand erosion under growth pressure, creativity as a managed discipline rather than a slogan, and the specific commercial value of cultural fluency in markets where most British brands struggle to operate. Audiences at JP Morgan, the London School of Economics, Fonterra, and the Ministry of Culture of Colombia have heard versions of the same argument: ethos is a commercial asset, but only if it is defended structurally as the business scales.
Key speaking topics
- Brand integrity and ethos at scale
- Reinvention and resilience in founder-led businesses
- Failure and risk in team culture
- Creativity as a growth discipline
- Sustainability in product, supply chain, and operations
- Cultural identity as commercial strength
- Modest fashion and bicultural consumer markets
Ideal for
- Founders, CEOs, and senior brand leaders in consumer-facing businesses
- L&D and talent leaders running leadership-development days, graduate schemes, and high-potential cohorts
- CMOs and creative directors managing brand dilution risk under growth
- Heads of sustainability and product development in fashion, retail, and luxury
- DEI and people leaders looking for practitioner-led content on cultural inclusion and belonging
Audience outcomes
- A healthier relationship with failure and risk that changes how people decide under pressure
- A working definition of brand ethos that holds up under commercial pressure
- A founder’s view of where sustainability programmes succeed and where they stall
- A reframing of cultural identity as commercial capability rather than compliance
- Reference points for entering GCC and modest-fashion markets without misreading them
Talks
Draws on more than two decades of running a design and fashion business to show what failure teaches that success cannot, and how a team builds a working relationship with risk.
Key takeaways:
- A reframing of setback and risk that removes the fear stalling calculated decisions
- What failure inside a real business reveals that polished success stories hide
- A shared vocabulary for discussing mistakes that changes how a team behaves
Argues that cultural background and personal difference are commercial assets, drawn from building a business across UK, European, and GCC markets as a British-Pakistani founder.
Key takeaways:
- Where people quietly suppress the traits that would set them apart at work, and what it costs
- How cross-cultural fluency changes the way distributed teams work together
- A case for belonging built on capability, not box-ticking
From a carpet brand started on a kitchen table to specifications in hotels across Europe and the UAE, a founder’s account of adapting to change without losing what matters.
Key takeaways:
- How to meet disruption with clarity instead of anxiety
- What separates people derailed by change from those defined by it
- What keeps a brand’s core intact through a pivot in product or market
An honest account of what building resilience actually costs, and how confidence is rebuilt after rejection across a long career rather than in a single moment.
Key takeaways:
- How genuine confidence is built and rebuilt, not performed
- Ways to process setback so it produces growth instead of paralysis
- Habits that sustain resilience across years, not a single hard season
Shows how organisations release the creative capacity already inside their teams and turn it into commercial results, from someone who has run on a creative compass as designer, entrepreneur, and speaker.
Key takeaways:
- Why creative thinking is the differentiator left once competitors share the same technology and data
- How to build the team conditions that generate and sustain new ideas
- How to work with the constraints most organisations treat as blockers