INTERVIEW:Fashion designer, jeweller, model and environmental campaigner – Jade Jagger has many irons in the fire these days, but, writes BRIAN BOYD, the wild child of old still resurfaces from time to time
THE PICTURE IN the tabloid shows Jade Jagger being “helped out of a London nightclub, looking a little the worse for wear” sometime around 4am on Thursday morning. But 15 hours later the 38-year-old is looking regally immaculate as she welcomes you into a back room of a Smirnoff party in Dublin city centre – she’s here to launch their new Mule drink. She rips open a packet of crisps, munches away with gusto and tells you about being baby-sat by Andy Warhol when she was younger. “I sort of grew up in the Factory with Andy and Halston ,” she says. “Maybe that is where I get it from.”
The “it” refers to being a jewellery designer (of some renown), fashion designer, model, and property designer in league with Philippe Starck. There’s a lot of “designs” in there. “I know, I’m a very visual person,” she says. “As I said, I think you can trace it all back to Warhol and the Factory days, being surrounded by very creative people and picking up from that.”
She was brought up in New York by her mother, Bianca Jagger, who separated from her father Mick when Jade was seven. “I used to have a real New York accent but I had to drop that quickly when I was sent to school in England when I was 11,” she says in her neat Home Counties voice. “When you are born into a family like mine, you don’t know anything different. My parents are just my parents. Some people may be prejudiced about you because of your family but once they meet me, it’s different.”
At the time of her birth in 1971, Jade Sheena Jezebel Jagger was a golden child – the daughter of an unfeasibly beautiful Nicaraguan mother and rock music’s most famous front man. She weathered all the publicity quite well until her teens when she became the prototypical “wild child”. “I’m not quite like Stella McCartney but it was when I had my own jewellery line I felt I was being seen for me, and not just the family I came from,” she says. Seven years ago Jagger was made creative director of the uber-posh jewellery company Garrard and Co, who for a long time were the Crown jewellers of the UK.
“I don’t think I was brought in to bling it up necessarily,” she says. “It was more to give a contemporary feel to a very traditional company. They knew when they hired me that I go in for big designer-orientated pieces. It’s not bling but it is big.”
She’s currently working on a new jewellery collection for Garrard, which will debut in London’s fashion week in October, as well as a Jade Jezebel Jagger clothing line for Harvey Nichols. “My interest doesn’t end with the decorative arts, I also love making clothes; I love the fabrics.”
Having a daughter, Assisi Lola, when she was just 19 (followed by another girl, Amba Isis, four years later) saw an upswing in the press attention she thought she had left behind as a child. She moved to an 18th-century farmhouse in Ibiza where she immersed herself in painting. “It was just easier living there all around. Because my mother brought me up speaking Spanish, I had no problems with the language,” she says. She met her husband, the DJ Dan Williams, on Ibiza. Her children are by her former steady boyfriend, Piers Jackson. Following her expulsion from school in England at 17, her father sent her off to study Renaissance art in Italy; she met Jackson, then an art student, on the plane.
On Ibiza, Jagger got in touch with her inner hippy. “I was a full-on Earth mother,” she says. “Sandals, brown rice, everything. But even before Ibiza, my two girls were both home births.”
The popular image of the Mediterranean island may be of 24-hour dance music parties and boundless hedonism, but away from the clubs, Ibiza is a stunningly beautiful place. Jagger lived on the island for seven years and although she is now back in London, she is still a frequent visitor. Ibiza struck an environmental chord with her.
“You know, I get asked to do a lot of things. But it’s good to have a connection. I do work for cancer charity trusts because I lost a good friend to cancer, and now I work with the Corona Beach Project which is campaigning for the preservation of beaches. Seeing needles or plastic nappies on beaches – I can’t bear it, and it’s important for us to take responsibility for cleaning up our beaches.”
The “wild child” in her resurfaces from time to time. Two years ago on a flight to New York she had to be “spoken to” by cabin crew for her “loud behaviour”. Her spokeswoman issued a statement saying “Jade has a fear of flying and often has a drink before she boards a flight to calm her down. While she had fun with her travelling companions, she did not realise her talking and laughing would cause offence.”
She’s too busy now for high jinks. Jewellery, Phillipe Starck, designing clothes for Harvey Nichols, fronting the Corona Beach Project. “It’s one big lifestyle project,” she says of her many irons in many fires. “And music is next.”