Penny Lancaster slams Michelle Mone in memoir, calling Ultimo feud 'cynical and ugly'

Penny Lancaster's new memoir, Someone Like Me, lifts the lid on a long-running split known in tabloids as the Bra Wars, in which she says the termination of her relationship with Ultimo founder Michelle Mone was driven by greed and publicity, not creative differences. She describes the end of their working relationship as "cynical and ugly," a characterization she uses to recount the public bust-up that fueled huge publicity for the lingerie brand in the early 2000s.

Lancaster, who modelled for Ultimo in 2002 before being dropped two years later, says the brand was "on the brink of bankruptcy" at the time, a claim disputed by Ultimo's side. She says she met Mone and her husband Michael in London and that Ultimo could not offer the going rate for someone with her profile, but that Mone implied they might discuss a business partnership "down the line." She also contests reports she was paid £200,000, saying her first-year contract was "substantially below that." She even claims Mone told her she and her husband had to remortgage their house to sign the deal. Lancaster says the publicity Ultimo enjoyed helped turn its fortunes around.

However, the partnership soured when, in July 2003, her agent began negotiations to renew her contract, and Lancaster learned from the press that Ultimo had signed Rod Stewart's former partner Rachel Hunter as its model. She writes that "the headlines, of course" were the business plan, and that pitting Rod Stewart's ex-wife against his current girlfriend generated more publicity than any marketing campaign ever could. In her view, the shift marked the start of a pattern she calls "cynical and ugly."

A BBC One documentary, The Rise and Fall of Michelle Mone, earlier this year examined how Baroness Mone and her husband Doug Barrowman's PPE Medpro won lucrative contracts for PPE during the pandemic. The firm is being sued by the Department of Health, which says the gowns could not be used because they were not sterile. Mone and Barrowman deny wrongdoing. Lancaster touched on the documentary during an episode of ITV's Loose Women in May, saying: "It didn't surprise me because karma gets you, I guess."

A spokesman for Baroness Mone said Lancaster's contract "came to a natural end" and dismissed the notion of a "scare of bankruptcy" at Ultimo. The spokesman said, like many growing businesses, there were challenges but that Mone built Ultimo into a major international brand, noting that when department stores demanded changes in marketing, Rachel Hunter's arrival was a natural part of how the industry works. The spokesperson added that there were never hard feelings and that Mone wishes Lancaster well with her new book.

The narrative surrounding Mone's rise to the peerage in 2015 and the broader introspection sparked by Lancaster's memoir underscore how a public feud from two decades ago continues to echo in Culture & Entertainment, shaping how brands, critics, and audiences view power, money, and the cost of publicity.