It is usual to feel a pang of envy flicking through the Sunday style supplements – Why isn’t my flat as light-filled as that Swedish jewellery designer’s? Why does my day-to-day diet contain so little pomegranate? – but that is nothing compared to the screeching stabs of spite the annual Sunday Times Rich List unleashes: who are these people who have thousands of millions of pounds and why is steel so lucrative?

Yesterday’s list of the UK’s richest revealed that alongside steel, oil, the internet and inheriting lots of money, fashion and retail can be a pretty effective way of becoming and staying rich. The Weston family, who own Selfridges and have a stake in Primark, are fashion’s most affluent with a fortune of £6,650m and are placed at number 11 on the list. Sir Philip and Lady Green, who are currently planning to expand Topshop into China, are number 16 with £3,880m. 

Overall, designer fashion is less lucrative than the high street:  Sir Paul Smith is a rare designer on the list, with a fortune of £280m, and Victoria Beckham features (£200m) but that’s combining her wealth with her husband’s. Meanwhile, Mike Ashley, who owns Sports Direct, is worth £2,300m; Bernard Lewis and his family, who are behind River Island, are worth £1,250m; Matalan’s John Hargreaves is worth £1,000m; Tom Sing, who founded New Look, has £320m; and Nick Robertson, the man who founded ASOS, has £278m. 

Other fashion types on the list are Tamara Mellon (she sold the last of her stake Jimmy Choo for £85m and is launching a new label imminently), the Barbour family (profits soared in 2011), David Reiss (Reiss has profited from the ‘Kate Effect’) and former Harper’s & Queen beauty editor Chrissie Rucker, who set up The White Company. 

The fashion pack is surely responsible too for some of the riches enjoyed by John Griffin (£120m), the man who owns half of the Addison Lee cab company (public transport is impossible in Nicholas Kirkwoods), and Richard Caring, whose clubs and restaurants – the Ivy, Le Caprice, J. Sheekey – are reliably popular spots and have earned £700m for their owner.