Emma “Esme” Young was born in 1949 at Bedford Hospital, Bedfordshire, the second of five children, to Brian Pashley Young and Patricia Cole. Her sister Fiona Espenhahn is a textile artist and her brother Jeremy is a documentary film producer. She has spoken publicly about being partially deaf as a child, which delayed her learning to read until age seven.

After an art foundation course, Esme studied at what is now Central Saint Martins. In 1972, she co-founded the fashion label Swanky Modes in Camden with three friends, dressing celebrities including Cher and Grace Jones through the 1970s and 80s. She later moved into film costume design, working on films including Bridget Jones’s Diary, Trainspotting and The Beach.

Since 2016, Young has been a judge on The Great British Sewing Bee, appearing alongside fellow judge Patrick Grant across multiple presenters (Claudia Winkleman, Joe Lycett, Sara Pascoe, and more recently Sophie Willan), currently airing on BBC One.

She continues to lecture at Central Saint Martins and published a memoir, Behind the Seams: My Life in Creativity, Friendship and Adventure, in 2022. She keeps her personal life largely private and still rents the London home she has lived in since the 1980s.