Fashionista faces two years in jail after confronting boutique boss

An international fashionista is facing up to two years in jail over ‘forgery’ findings during a £1.6million court fight with her boutique boss former friend.

Ekaterina Barrett was sued by Bridget Hutchcroft, whose Pandora Dress Agency boutique was a favourite of Princess Diana and Hollywood stars, for failing to repay cash she had borrowed to get through a costly divorce.

Ms Hutchcroft, 63, claimed that when she asked for her money back, Ms Barrett responded: ‘The next time you ask, I’ll not pay you for a hundred years.’

In 2022, she secured a judgment against Ms Barrett, 67, for more than £1.6million – including interest – but accused her of repeatedly lying about her wealth in a bid to avoid paying.

Now Ms Barrett is facing as much as a two-year prison sentence after a High Court judge found she had put forward a ‘forged’ document to try to get out of stumping up the cash.

Finding her in contempt of court, Mrs Justice Heather Williams said Ms Barrett had produced a ‘settlement agreement’ – purportedly signed by Ms Hutchcroft – saying Ms Barrett only owed £800,000.

But that document was in fact ‘forged’, said the judge, adding that he was ‘quite sure’ Ms Barrett was ‘responsible’ for the document.

The Pandora Dress Agency has been a successful fixture in Knightsbridge in west London fashionistas since its establishment more than 70 years ago, just after the end of the Second World War.

From its base behind Harrods, the boutique sells second-hand modern designer clothes, all seasonal and less than two years old, from labels such as Chanel, Hermes, Versace and Prada.

The two women originally met when Ms Barrett began visiting Pandora seven years ago while she was living in a plush £4.2million Mayfair flat and driving around town in a Bentley.

They became close after Ms Hutchcroft bought up some of her ‘high-end’ designer fashion items to sell in her shop, and took a shine to her two greyhounds.

But after her former friend failed to repay when asked, Ms Hutchcroft sued her over the debt, claiming in court documents that she was the victim of ‘fraudulent misrepresentation’ at the hands of her ‘exploitative’ pal.

Ms Hutchcroft accused her of posing as a ‘multi-millionaire’ with riches ‘equivalent to a Rothschild’ in order to cajole her to hand over her cash.

She said she understood her friend’s grandfather had set up a substantial family trust for her in Liechtenstein, but that she was temporarily unable to get her hands on the funds.

The pair eventually reached an out of court settlement over the missing £1.3million, but in October 2022 – with the money still outstanding – Ms Hutchcroft secured a High Court judgment against Ms Barrett for £1,665,560, covering the unpaid £1.3million loan plus interest.

In her defence, Ms Barrett had initially denied borrowing the cash, insisting that the transactions related to the sale of designer clothes.

With the £1.6million court bill still unpaid, Ms Hutchcroft and her company went back to court in a bid to pin Ms Barrett down about the extent of her wealth.

And in a short High Court hearing back in June 2023, Ms Barrett insisted that she is not a wealthy woman and ‘that her lifestyle is funded entirely by her family’.

However, Ms Hutchcroft’s lawyers claimed she lied about her wealth, masking the fact that she owns a home in Monaco worth millions.

On top of that, Ms Barrett had faked a document with a forged signature in a bid to prove that the case against her had been settled long before reaching court, they claimed.

In an email sent by Ms Barrett in May 2024, she wrote that she understood that ‘the case had already settled at a meeting between me and Bridget Hutchcroft’ for £800,000 – attaching the settlement agreement supposedly signed off by Ms Hutchcroft.

James McWilliams, for Ms Hutchcroft, described the document as an ‘obvious forgery’.

He said: ‘The signature on the alleged settlement agreement is transparently not that of Ms Hutchcroft – as even a cursory comparison between the document and formal documents signed by her in these proceedings will show.’

It was also ‘fanciful’ to suggest that Ms Hutchcroft and Pandora would have struck a settlement deal with Ms Barrett for £800,000 when they already had a court judgment against her for more than £1.6million, the barrister argued.

In a two-day hearing this week, he urged the judge to find Ms Barrett in contempt for producing a fake document and for giving ‘false evidence in relation to the nature of her interest in and connection to a property in Monaco referred to throughout the examination as ‘Saint Andre’.

The home had been described in her evidence that it was not her property but her brother’s’.

In an ‘extraordinary’ twist this week, Ms Barrett’s barrister claimed Ms Hutchcroft had made fresh overtures to his client, ‘instigating’ a meeting at Harvey Nichols beauty salon on the morning of the last day of the hearing – just hours before Mrs Justice Williams was due to give judgment.

During the alleged meet-up, Ms Hutchcroft made an offer to ‘settle the proceedings’, claimed Ms Barrett, although Ms Hutchcroft denied agreeing to meet or making a settlement offer.

‘Ms Hutchcroft said she was sitting having her eyebrows done when she was accosted by Ms Barrett and that there was no discussion about a settlement’, said the judge.

Ms Barrett’s solicitors had also exhibited pictures taken of the two women at the salon, but the judge said the photos simply showed Ms Barrett standing nearby, while Ms Hutchcroft was being groomed.

‘The two women are not speaking to each other, are facing in different directions and there’s no separate evidence to say that they are discussing a settlement’, she added, refusing permission for Ms Barrett to testify about the salon encounter and ‘derail’ the case.

‘In the circumstances, where the evidence is not capable of being probative, I’m not prepared to allow the proceedings to be derailed in this way,’ she told the court.

Labelling Ms Hutchcroft an ‘honest witness’, the judge said there was no evidence that she agreed to settle the dispute for £800,000 – as Ms Barrett claimed – which was in any case only about half the sum she had already been awarded.

Analysing the alleged March 2024 settlement agreement, the judge said the signature of Ms Hutchcroft on it ‘does not look like the specimens she has produced’, adding that there was no clear motive for her to have agreed a £800,000 deal.

Giving judgment, the judge said she was ‘quite sure that the defendant was responsible’ for the faked settlement agreement.

‘I am sure that the settlement agreement including the signature was a forgery,’ she said.

‘Ms Barrett had a motive to try and derail the committal proceedings against her.

‘She was the person who sent the email to the court relying on it and her signature appeared on the document.

‘I have no doubt at all that she acted as alleged and it follows from my conclusions that I am satisfied that she acted dishonestly in telling the court that the claim had settled.

‘I find that she committed a contempt of court by sending the email…to the court which falsely alleged she had met with Ms Hutchcroft and settled the proceedings.’

Ms Barrett had also deliberately lied about her stake in the Monaco property, the judge found.

‘I am satisfied so that I am sure that her testimony at the examination in relation to the St Andre property was false,’ the judge told the court.

‘She deliberately lied on oath about her ownership of St Andre. I am satisfied to the criminal standard that contempt has been proved.’

The case has now been adjourned to await sentencing of Ms Barrett later this month.

In an earlier interview, Ms Hutchcroft likened Ms Barrett to notorious international conwoman Anna Sorokin, who inspired the Netflix drama ‘Inventing Anna’ after posing as a super-rich German heiress to siphon cash from wealthy New Yorkers.

Ms Barrett was sued by Ms Hutchcroft and by Lester & Hamilton Ltd, trading as Pandora Dress Agency.