Preyed upon by fraudsters, rocked by Hollywood-style heists and nearly blown up by a petrol bomb – this is the luxury handbag store fighting for survival in Cheshire’s Golden Triangle.
Christine Colbert, 58, has suffered a series of ‘catastrophic’ setbacks which have routinely threatened to destroy Dress Cheshire, the beloved boutique she set up in the celebrity enclave of Prestbury back in November 2018.
In the last five years, she has fallen victim to the notorious ‘Kardashian of Cheshire’ handbag fraudster, lost £430,000 worth of stock in two separate heists and suffered £10,000 in damage when the building next door was blown up by arsonists.
On one occasion, she even had to take matters into her own hands by wrestling a shoplifter to the ground after they stuffed one of her Louis Vuitton handbags in an Aldi bag before brazenly walking out the front door.
Speaking exclusively to the Daily Mail, Ms Colbert said: ‘I have felt like a target, a massive target. It’s made me very anxious and more nervous… I’ve had some very, very dark days.’
She added: ‘As a business, we’ve been rocked absolutely to the core through all of these unfortunate events. We’re not sitting there feeling sorry for ourselves, but it’s just been catastrophic. You couldn’t write it.’
Dress Cheshire suffered its first major burglary in March 2024 when four men scaled the back of the building, ripped out a window and drained the company of £180,000 worth of handbags in a terrifying heist.
In the same month, she turned ‘Miss Marple’ to help bring down Jack Watkin, the self-proclaimed ‘rich kid of Instagram’ who conned victims including Ms Colbert out of thousands of pounds in an elaborate designer handbag scam.
Watkin, who befriended Ms Colbert in September 2020 and became a regular visitor to her shop, defrauded her out of £44,000.
The scammer, who described himself as the ‘Kardashian of Cheshire’, persuaded people to invest huge sums – which he claimed was to buy and sell luxury handbags – but stole the money to fund his millionaire lifestyle.
2020: Christine Colbert is befriended by Jack Watkin, a man who would go on to defraud her and others out of tens of thousands of pounds.
March 2024: Dress Cheshire suffers its first major burglary as four men scale the back of the building and take £180,000 worth of handbags and stock.
March 2024: Ms Colbert turns ‘Miss Marple’ to help bring down Watkin, luring him into a trap before police arrest him.
August 2024: The building next door to Dress Cheshire is blown up in an arson attack, leading to £10,000 in damage to the shop.
June 2025: Dress Cheshire suffers a second major burglary. This time £250k worth of handbags are stolen after thieves tunnelled their way in.
Through all this time, Ms Colbert has had to fend off petty thieves and credit card scammers who have tried to bleed her accounts dry.
Then, in August 2024, five months after the first major burglary, the building next door to Dress Cheshire was blown up in an arson attack, which left the shop moments away from being destroyed in a gas explosion.
Recalling the terrifying moment to the Mail, she said: ‘Somebody petrol bombed next door and nearly blew us up. At like midnight, the police were banging on my door and I looked out the bedroom window and it was police blues and twos.
I was thinking “what now?” because it had only been within weeks of the first burglary, and I answered the door in my dressing gown. And she said, “It’s Dress Cheshire”.
‘And I said, “Don’t tell me we’re being burgled again.” She said it wasn’t us directly but the shop might catch fire if we don’t get the gas turned off.’
Unfortunately, this was just the latest in a string of ‘traumatic’ incidents for Ms Colbert.
On June 8 this year, she was forced to watch a group of brazen thieves steal £250,000 worth of luxury handbags after tunneling through her shop.
Three intruders circumvented Dress Cheshire’s sophisticated security set-up by identifying the 3ft wide chimney stack as a weakness.
Having smashed their way through, one used a duvet cover as a giant pouch to steal the highly sought-after pre-owned bags from brands including Chanel, Gucci, Dior, and Louis Vuitton.
Live CCTV footage showed the skilled thieves ransacking the shop, where bags valued at as much as £30,000 were snatched.
The second heist coincided with the start of Watkin’s trial in June. Ms Colbert said: ‘I knew June was going to be a horrendous month. I didn’t anticipate the heist, who could.
‘Because of the arson next door, that led to the heist because that building has been unoccupied since then and boarded up. So they took advantage of that situation and were going in and out.’
When asked if she feels like the unluckiest business owner in Britain, she said: ‘Well, yes and no. My cup’s always half full… but I feel like I’ve definitely had my share of bad luck and it has been horrible.
‘Throughout all of the frauds and the robberies, nobody really knew that I was dealing with Jack.’
She added: ‘Don’t get me wrong, I think any one of those things could topple someone completely, and just have them thinking, I don’t need this. But then also they’re not going to knock me over. Absolutely no chance.
‘Why would I allow these horrible individuals of all different categories that they are try and topple me, but don’t get me wrong, I have felt like a massive target.
‘We’re a small business, we’re not a big multi-million pound business. I‘ve lost my own personal money here and people don’t see that.
‘I’m a northern girl. I don’t come from a wealthy family. I just come from Northern grit. You just pick yourself up, dust yourself down and crack on. That’s what my parents told me to do and that’s what I’ve done.’
In between the major heists and sickening fraud from a ‘friend’, Ms Colbert has also faced a terrifying credit scam from fraudsters posing as customers in her shop.
Explaining how it works, she told the Mail: ‘We’ve had people in trying to intercept our payment gateways. They literally try and keep us preoccupied whilst they make fraudulent payments in our card terminals.
‘They blatantly walk in, they say they’re going to buy a £5,000 bag, and then they try and use the machine for their own gain, and so not only steal the bag, but steal my money and empty my bank account at the same time.’
She explained how they usually operate in pairs, with one talking to her and the other ‘punching in’ numbers to the card machine.
The cunning plot sees the payment go through as a ‘customer not present’ transaction, allowing them to walk out with the bag before ringing their bank to say their card has been compromised in order to get a refund.
But this is a fraction of the fraud carried out by Watkin, a man who Ms Colbert thought was a friend before he rinsed her bank account.
The 26-year-old former public schoolboy promised his victims – including Ms Colbert – a share of the profits if they loaned him cash to buy and sell expensive Hermes bags.
But neither the handbags or any profit ever materialised and instead Watkin used the cash to fund his extravagant lifestyle.
At one stage he spent weeks living at the five-star Dorchester Hotel, in London’s Mayfair, where rooms cost up to £3,000-a-night. Police said his bill topped £136,000 in just six months.
He also paid more than £22,000 to travel around the capital in a chauffeur-driven Rolls Royce and regularly visited Harrods, where he ‘scouted’ for victims and spent almost £68,000.
Ms Colbert spent three years trying to get back almost £44,000 she had loaned Watkin when she decided to take matters into her own hands in March 2024.
With the help of Watkin’s close friend, Hannah Jakes, 34, who was also defrauded of almost £100,000, the pair lured the fake millionaire, who was on the run from police, to a local pub with the promise of more cash.
Ms Colbert revealed how she wore a ‘large hat’ as a disguise and hid in someone else’s car in the car park of The Merlin public house, in Alderley Edge, Cheshire, so he would not recognise her.
But as soon as the unsuspecting Watkin arrived Mrs Colbert swung into action and dialled 999. Minutes later detectives from Cheshire police swooped to arrest him.
Watkin was convicted in June after Ms Colbert helped bring him down and and will be sentenced in September.
But to her utter disbelief, while most of Watkin’s victims have all been paid back, Ms Colbert remains more than £44,000 down.
As of October last year, the Government made it a law that banking institutions had to repay customers who have been a victim of fraud where the bank could have stopped it.
‘All the main banking institutions had signed up to this and as a result of Jack being actually convicted, they have repaid the victims – except the one bank that I sent money to Jack from wasn’t signed up to the scheme, and they won’t pay me back.
‘So I brought everything to justice, everyone gets their money back and I have had a £300 cheque of a thanks very much for your hard work.’
Ms Colbert opened her business up in Prestbury in November 2018 before going online during the pandemic.
Along with Wilmslow and Alderley Edge, Prestbury makes up the so-called Golden Triangle of towns favoured by Cheshire celebrities and sports stars.
Ex-Manchester United star Wayne Rooney and his wife Coleen used to live there until they moved to a £20million home they designed nearby.
However the area has been frequently targeted by burglars including a gang who snatched more than 100 rare handbags worth over £1million when they raided a home in Alderley Edge in March.
Daily Mail has contacted Cheshire Police for comment.