In an unassuming house on a stealth-wealth terrace, Nadja Swarovski has been sidetracked. She was talking about why she’s bought a small British fashion brand called Really Wild. Now, though, she’s having to explain why Truffle is cross. Truffle is a pomeranian, a small, snappy ball of caramel-coloured fluff, and poor Truffle once had a traumatic experience in the park with an alsatian. Tofu, on the other hand, is all smiles. “Tofu is my little Hermes,” Swarovski says, cuddling her other pomeranian, “the wings next to my feet. Always there.”
Behind her, Chris Levine’s portrait of Queen Elizabeth with her eyes closed dominates the room, as Truffle is led away for some quiet time. Swarovski settles into her blue velvet sofa and returns seamlessly to talk of sustainability and craftsmanship, and why she thinks she can make money from clothes.
“I’m not sure if I can,” she says. “I hope I can, but to me Really Wild was a great opportunity to demonstrate how a brand can be sustainable. I think the paradigm of the fashion industry is broken. I don’t think we necessarily need two seasons. We don’t need four collections a year. It’s better to invest in a quality product that will last longer and I totally believe that once you find something you look good in, you should stick with it.”
Kate Middleton wearing the “Wild Thing” T-shirt, 2004
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This leads us directly to a woman who has definitely found things she looks good in, and someone who, happily, is not just a Really Wild customer but also the brand’s earliest adopter: the Princess of Wales. Cast your mind back to 2004 and you might recall a young Kate Middleton, recently outed as Prince William’s girlfriend, posing for photographers during the Game Fair at Blenheim Palace. The future queen was sitting on a shooting stool in a very short skirt, cheerfully modelling tweedy clothes by a new brand, Really Wild. She did it as a favour to the label’s founder, Natalie Lake, who was a friend of her mother from Berkshire. Kate’s clothes were from her first collection, including a tight white T-shirt with WILD THING across the bust.
“I don’t know if it was before she met her husband,” says Swarovski, who thinks Kate even worked for the brand at one point, “but in any case she looks fantastic and that sort of endorsement is so incredibly important.”
Fast forward 20 years and Kate still wears the brand regularly, albeit with fewer shooting stools and more due diligence by the palace.
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Swarovski at home in London. Dress, £395, jacket, £485, reallywildclothing.com
JUDE EDGINTON FOR THE TIMES MAGAZINE. STYLING: SUSIE LETHBRIDGE
“There has been contact,” Swarovski admits of the year since she bought a controlling stake in the brand, “and they were interested to see if we’re truly working with British manufacturers. I think it’s a good question, because we’re here to celebrate Britain. All the materials and fabrics come from Scotland. I’m in the market for investing in brands that are connected very strongly to craft and creativity and believe that supporting craftsmanship is supporting cultural heritage.”
Swarovski is set on turning Really Wild into a global lifestyle brand, but is reluctant to put herself forward as the “face” such brands generally need: think Gwyneth Paltrow or Aerin Lauder. In the flesh, she has exactly the same moneyed, honeyed glow as they do. They share the same delicate gold jewellery and gigantic diamonds, the same business brain and jet-set lifestyle, but she prefers to stay behind the camera, not in front of it. Perhaps the Princess of Wales could do the honours?
Top, £315, and skirt, £138, reallywildclothing.com
Waistcoat, £275, trousers, £325, reallywildclothing.com
“I would love that. Could you negotiate that for me? It’s amazing this generation [of royals] has understood how important they are in terms of brand endorsement. That didn’t really exist in previous generations. I mean, I know Linda Bennett did Queen Elizabeth’s shoes; Linda’s a dear friend of mine. It was, ‘Yes, I’ll make the shoes for you,’ and that’s it.”
At 55, Swarovski is embarking on the second act of her career. She departed the family crystal business four years ago, a decision she now describes as “not necessarily what I expected to do, but I think it was an interesting opportunity to follow my own path and direction”.
She’d been working there since 1995, an arrangement that caused consternation among some of her relatives. “No family members were working there at the time,” she explains. “There was perhaps no expectation of women to work, you know? Let alone in an executive position.”
She joined the board in 2011 and spent 26 years at the company, spearheading a reputational transformation. She pioneered collaborations with everyone from Alexander McQueen to the architects Zaha Hadid and Ron Arad, but it was an uphill struggle. Arad told her, “You make those swans and ducks. Why would I want to work with you?” but he ended up producing an epic chandelier. McQueen put the famous crystals on everything from dresses to trainers. He was also responsible for her working wardrobe, which she used as workplace armour. Before McQueen, she says, “the working suit was Calvin Klein, which looked like a refrigerator. No waist. Thanks to McQueen we had beautiful shoulders and a waist. I’m not a dress person. I’m more comfortable in trousers. And in the boardroom,” she says conspiratorially, “you have to have a bit of room for that karate kick, if you know what I mean.”
At a Women in Film lunch with Salma Hayek, 2017
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At the Serpentine Gallery with Damian Lewis, 2022
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These days, her “new direction” is an investment firm created with her husband, Rupert Adams, to back firms that focus on craft and sustainability. In a digitised age, she argues, craftsmanship is being forgotten as machines have taken over. Support craftsmanship, she reckons, and you support cultural heritage, whether it’s tweed in Scotland or Native American beading. “And of course one is not in business just for fun. One is in business to achieve commercial success.”
She thinks Really Wild had perhaps, after 20 years, lost its way, and that its future lies in clothes that work in the countryside as well as the city. “Hardcore country, whatever that means, but also hardcore city. I think particularly after Covid, people are spending time in the country and appreciating it. One sees that balance between city and country. You see it a little bit in New York and Los Angeles, where people go out to Malibu.”
America is her second biggest customer and she recently threw a party in Palm Beach, Florida, prime Mar-a-Lago territory, to introduce wealthy locals to the brand (albeit not the Trumps, whom she doesn’t know). For a British brand looking to sell into America, the tariff situation could be a worry, but Swarovski thinks everything is calming down on that front. Besides, back in January she visited the Scottish mills where she sources fabrics and was told that the UK will be OK because Trump loves his Scottish golf courses. Ever the businesswoman, she says she’d be happy to sell him a Scottish cashmere sweater for golfing.
Swarovski is a shrewd operator. As well as transforming her family firm, she was one of the first people to talent-spot and invest in Erdem, Mary Katrantzou, Christopher Kane and Giles Deacon. Really Wild is a natural progression. Lake retired from the company last year and there’s now a new designer at the helm, although Swarovski oversees every detail of the creative process. Her original idea was to create more feminine versions of the clothes she bought for shoots from Purdey and Holland & Holland. Jade Holland Cooper had much the same idea with her brand, which also specialises in British heritage, craftsmanship and fabrics.
Shirt, £275, and skirt, £225, reallywildclothing.com
“I look at Holland Cooper and I don’t consider them competition because they have a totally different ethos. I have my own vision and I probably wouldn’t use the huge gold buttons,” she says, fiddling with the small tortoiseshell buttons on her immaculate cream safari jacket. “I think the product needs to be the hero.”
Swarovski was brought up largely in Austria with her sister, Vanessa, but moved to America for university. She spent her twenties living between New York and London, working in the art world and for fashion brands including Missoni. In 2002 she married Adams, a financier, and they settled in London. In 2005, when heavily pregnant, she was at home when burglars broke into the family apartment in Cadogan Square, and she’s since had her watch snatched on the street. In the past she’s said she doesn’t feel comfortable any more in London, but today she’s more emollient. She loves the culture and the intellectual stimulation of the capital. “And having been in Florida the past few weeks — quick,” she half-jokes with a horrified intake of breath, “take me back to London.
With Penélope Cruz in 2018
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With Hugh Jackman in New York, 2017
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“I think one does feel safe,” she adds. “You just have to do this…” and she turns her engagement ring round so the stone is hidden, a gigantic slab of a canary diamond. She and Adams share three children, Jasmine, 17, Thalia, 19, and Rigby, 20, and the family home is filled with scented candles, silk flower arrangements and world-class art by the likes of Nick Knight and Marc Quinn. Like Michelle Obama, Swarovski will soon be an empty nester; unlike Obama, the prospect leaves her unfazed. “We plan, we FaceTime. Travel is easy. Remember when you had to send a letter when you went away? People were crying when they said goodbye. Now it’s like, ‘See you later.’ ”
Freed from having to commute to Swarovski HQ in Austria, she might relocate to the US, but the question is where. She used to dream about moving to a ranch in Santa Barbara with a view of the ocean, an area now infamous for the celebrity enclave of Montecito. Not any more.
“There are too many people in Santa Barbara,” she says. “It’s done. It was this little place that nobody really knew about, with amazing avocado plantations, but now I have to find another location. Somewhere undiscovered.”
That, though, can wait. Right now she has a board meeting to chair, a parents’ evening to attend and a fashion brand to revive. She never needed to work. She could choose to do nothing. She smooths an invisible crease from her jacket and gives a hint of a shrug.
“Yes,” she says, smiling. “But that would be boring.”