Former BBC Radio Leeds broadcaster Liz Green opens Caché La Boutique to bring French Riviera style to Elland

Liz Green - broadcaster, journalist and now fashion business proprietor - is in full agreement, as visitors to her new French Riviera style-inspired shop Caché La Boutique will discover for themselves the moment they step through its doors.

The boutique can be found in a swish shopping location in Elland, within a conservation area not far from the Elland Mill complex. “I had been looking for a suitable property for a long time,” Liz says. “I knew within 30 seconds it was the right shop.”

During the pandemic, she began watching Facebook Live videos posted by boutique store owners modelling their stock themselves. “Some were good, some were not so good. I thought I could do that. And it began to grow in my mind, and then I took the decision to leave the BBC, and I thought, if ever you’re going to do it, girl, it’ll be now, and so it began,” she says.

Liz left the BBC last month after a hugely successful 32-year career in Leeds and Yorkshire regional radio. In 2012 she became the first woman to solo-present a local radio breakfast show. She was twice named Yorkshire Personality of The Year and made documentaries from Auschwitz, Death Row in Florida and the legal brothels of Nevada. She hosted her last show on March 12, six months after the conclusion of a legal case in which a judge said that she and three female BBC colleagues had been targeted by an individual’s lengthy personal campaign of harassment.

Planning and launching the boutique has, she says, been the perfect therapy. “This has been my way of taking my life back,” she says. “It has saved me. I have found so much pleasure in it, creating it from an empty shop up. It’s just been a joy to me. It's so refreshing and satisfying - and I love the clothes.

“The French seem to be born with a genetic ability to tie a ribbon and apply eyeliner in a single swish. Their style is effortless and beautiful. I spend time on the French Riviera and wanted to recreate that nostalgic, chic, French look.

“I have had joy shopping for stock, beyond joy, and I have kept my eye firmly on older, larger women because, being a large girl once, I know what it’s like not to be able to find anything that’s lovely. Just because you are a size 18 or 20 or above doesn’t mean you can’t look amazing, so I have shopped very much with that in mind, as well as for regular sizes.”

When Liz was in New York, a shop assistant asked her if she was a size zero (which indeed she was, after illness and a diabetic diagnosis). “What I hated about myself at that specific moment was that I had always wanted to be thin, and how differently the world would see me,” she says. “I realised, as she handed me the size zero trousers (think pint-sized) that I was the same person as I had been at a size 20. I was ashamed I was defining myself by size. I have never lost that lesson and want every woman to celebrate their body.”

She also wants to make sure that Caché La Boutique will not feature the designer price tags, or the snobbery, that she sometimes finds while shopping in Cannes and Nice. She had experience of a French shop assistant’s sniffiness quite recently, in a Cannes boutique while looking for a dress for Royal Ascot.

“I had this dress in my hand and it was chiffon, very lovely, with sleeves, and, knowing what I know, I would expect to pay maybe £100 for it, which is top end for me - I’m not a designer label girl at all,” she says.

“I looked at the price and it was 1,000 euros, and I put it back. When she realised I wasn’t going to spend all that money, she almost wiped her hands of me. I saw her do it, and I thought, I’ll never do that in my life. You know that Pretty Woman moment?”

Not that all French Riviera boutiques are like that, far from it, and Liz has found plenty to inspire in boutiques that offer brilliant fashion at fair and decent prices. “And the markets inspire me, because some of their clothes are fantastic,” she says. “There is a big market in San Rafael every Sunday morning, which goes on for a mile, and you’ll get two or three really good retailers. That market is by the sea and overlooks St Tropez. What more do you want?”

Caché La Boutique will offer West Yorkshire women year-round style, not just sun and sea fashions (the designs Liz is modelling here in her garden are from her launch SS23 collection). She will be helped in the shop by Saturday staff and her mum, Susan, and she has gathered suppliers from London, Manchester and France. Most of the labels are French, with designs presented in four brand categories: Caché Style (for everyday wear); Glam Slam (for special event and smart wear); Caché Curve (for 16-plus women); and Caché Sac, featuring bags hand-painted by an artist (with hand-painted clothes coming for autumn).

There is a Team Caché of real women modelling the clothes on the Caché La Boutique social media platforms, says Liz, adding that they include, “a very stylish 90-year-old, a plus-size model who is a top TV and film make-up artist, a gorgeous yummy mummy and a beautiful 60-something who's still working and can dance her heels off to Motown, a petite actress and writer and comedienne who rocked her own caché in a production of The Calendar Girls”.

Liz has indeed, to paraphrase Chanel, the elegance of a woman who has taken possession of her future - back on the airwaves imminently as host of a national radio breakfast show and with a beautiful new shop to keep her doubly busy. Bien fait et bonne chance to her.

• Caché La Boutique is at 68-70 Huddersfield Road, Elland, and online at Cacheboutique.co.uk Facebook @CacheLaBoutique and Instagram @cachelaboutique

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