A retired clothes manufacturer celebrated his 100th birthday with friends and family on Friday.

Philip Rochman blew out his candles at Jewish Care’s Rosetrees care home in Friern Barnet alongside his great granddaughter, six-months-old Scarlet Sternberg, who he had never met before.

Scarlet’s parents Selena and Nick flew her and sister Sophie all the way from California to meet her great-grandfather.

Mr Rochman came to England just before WW1 and grew up in Ladbroke Grove, West London. He became apprenticed as a tailor on leaving school and worked for his father before meeting his wife, Evelyn Collier in 1938. 

The happy couple married in 1939 and moved into a flat in Aylmer Road, Hampstead Garden Suburb, where they lived for most of their married life.

Philip started his own clothes manufacturing business after the war making high quality women’s and children’s clothes. He had clients all over the world including members of the Royal Family, Burberry’s in London and Paris, and up-market stores in New York, Japan, Hong Kong and South America. 

He retired from his main business in the late 1980s but continued to work throughout the 1990s.
Mr Rochman lived independently in sheltered accommodation in East Finchley before moving to Rosetrees one year ago.