Celebrity jeweller Theo Fennell looks aghast. His friend Alasdair Hadden-Paton
is gesturing at me, and pointing out the clash of priorities. “But Theo,
you’ve got a board meeting at 2.30 . . .”
Fennell runs his fingers through his sandy hair. “Have I?” he asks in a
puzzled drawl. “I thought it was 3.30. It’s in my diary at 3.30.”
Hadden-Paton, his business partner, turns waspish. “Well, it’s in everyone
else’s at 2.30.”
“Ah,” says Fennell. Tough choice, me or his first board meeting since he
returned to the company that bears his name. This, I point out, is very good
publicity for his business. Fennell grins. “Tell them I’ll be along later.”
Exit Hadden-Paton, muttering with a sigh, “Come when you can, Theo.”
Working with Fennell is never dull. Tall, burly, charismatic and cheerfully
posh, he is standing outside his design studio off London’s King’s Road,
pulling on a cigarette, when I arrive. He looks like a trendy spiv: cream
shirt with sleeves rolled up, tight pinstripe trousers, black winklepicker
shoes. We’ve never met, but his face lights up when he sees me cross the
street.
In the flesh, he’s a rumpled charmer, showing an ease with people that has
given his jewellery business a profile way beyond its estimated £25m
turnover. Behind the scenes, he is a slightly different proposition –
tenacious, difficult and demanding, according to some.
Like many entrepreneurs, he admits he is unemployable. “Yes, I can still
behave in a stampy, queeny way, which mortifies me, but I don’t quite have
the nerve to stop doing it in mid-stamp.”
He laughs. Fennell made his name producing quirky pieces for high-profile
clients like Sir Elton John, Keith Richards, Liz Hurley and the Beckhams –
jewel-encrusted skulls, scorpion rings, pendant keys. Prices of £3,000 and
above are common. Hence his press soubriquet King of Bling.
But he is also passionate about his design work, and that has given him a
difficult past 12 months. Pushed out of his own company after an argument
over strategy, now back in to rescue it as the business lurched into the
red. What happened?
“Well, erm, it was just an unfortunate time,” says Fennell. “A person came in
whose direction, if not anathema to me, was not the direction I thought the
business should be going in. Lots of toys came out of the pram. The board
decided it could do better without me and to try and keep some semblance of
continuity we manufactured a consultancy agreement.”
Arguments followed, then things turned “deeply unpleasant”. He became, like
all entrepreneurs who sell their name, anxious to grab it back. Then last
Tuesday it was announced: Theo Fennell returns to Theo Fennell. What next?
“I hope I come out of this more mellow, more reasonable. It has taught me a
lot about senseless behaviour and human nature.”
Sipping from a cup of tea, Fennell, 57, looks thoughtful. Educated at Eton,
the son of a British Army major, he seems an archetypal Chelsea toff.
Beneath that, however, you can sense a shrewder brain at work.
He now has a new chairman, new chief executive and new, increased
shareholding. The firm, with 60 staff, has seen income slip away, down 20%
last Christmas, and is predicted to make a £2m loss this year. Whether that
is due to recession, or the decision made by others to broaden it into a
global luxury brand, is moot.
What is clear is that personalities clashed. Fennell, who operates as creative
director, fell out with his chairman Richard Northcott, the former Dodge
City DIY tycoon who had rescued Fennell’s original jewellery venture in the
1980s.
Northcott wanted to broaden the brand, opening more shops. There was also talk
of selling the business to one of the big luxury brand groups. “We thought
somebody would come in and invest a lot,” says Fennell, “but we didn’t take
some of the offers that came along, and by that time I was not terribly
happy with the direction. We were trying to be an imitation of another
brand. It was like a formula – that’s why someone was brought in from that
background.”
That someone was Pamela Harper, formerly at Burberry, who was appointed chief
executive. Good track record? Fennell smiles wanly. “I really don’t know.”
She left in March as sales tumbled. Northcott, who owns 16% of the business,
stepped down last week. Are they still speaking? “Of course,” says Fennell,
amused. “We had to do the deal.”
Now he is among friends again. Former managing director Barbara Snoad, who led
the company from 2002 to 2007, has returned. Rupert Hambro, banker and
fellow Old Etonian, steps in as nonexecutive chairman. Hadden-Paton, former
hotelier and long-term investor, has raised his stake and will become deputy
chairman.
It sounds more like a polo club social than a public company but, as Hambro
points out, friendship is one of Fennell’s key strengths. “When I was
working with Theo before this, trying to put things together, a lot of
people wanted to support him.” That’s because Fennell is, adds Hambro, a
genuinely likeable character. However, he is also not all that interested in
the financial details. What’s important, says Hambro, is to get the right
team round him with the right strategy, that will let him design and promote
effectively.
And network? Fennell has a reputation as a party animal and is rarely out of
the diary columns. In fact, he stopped drinking 10 years ago, but just likes
to be social. He is very funny company, spotting other people’s
preconceptions quickly. He’s been married 32 years, but acknowledges that
those who don’t know him always assume he must be gay. “Yeah, even my
daughters made me do a newspaper ‘How gay are you?’ test. I got 92 out of
100.”
That easy humour masks the scars of what has been an up-and-down career.
Making top-end jewellery requires large amounts of capital investment,
expert craftsmanship and canny marketing. It is also, though Fennell is loth
to admit it, locked in tandem with economic cycles.
He fell into the trade by chance. At the age of five he was sent to boarding
school by parents who lived abroad. At 18 he left Eton to study art in York
and London, but concluded he would never be good enough to become a portrait
painter, his first ambition. A small ad for a silversmith’s apprentice took
him to London’s Hatton Garden.
There, working for a family firm, he had an epiphany. “An 18-carat gold
champagne flute, made in the 1920s, came in for repair. It had ‘Good Morning
Diana’ in facsimile handwriting round the rim. I thought, how cool is that?
Then it occurred to me you could make things that were a bit different.” He
set up on his own, designing items for other craftsmen to produce, then
opened his first shop in London’s Fulham Road. “It was pretty chaotic. I had
no idea about accountancy or any of those things.”
He often thought about chucking it in. “My wife, Lou, said I should try
something that involved hanging round in bars, because that was my real
talent. But I’ve always been bloodyminded.” That bloody-mindedness and sense
of independence, inculcated by a childhood often spent apart from his
family, has driven him on. It also made him that fervent networker.
“Because who is going to stop in a new jewellery shop? The only way you can
promote it is to go out and talk to everyone, and have an unusual product to
sell.” But he doesn’t chase celebrity. Elton John hosted his 50th birthday
party because they make each other laugh. Old friends say the press always
get Fennell wrong.
“He’s one of the most intelligent, well-read people I’ve met,” says author
William Boyd, who has known him since the 1970s. “And his exhibition of
jewellery at the Royal Academy two years ago was astounding. It’s the art
that stimulates him.”
So now it’s back to basics, producing collections twice a year, and sticking
to the jewellery and silverware that made the business’s name. Hambro says
an announcement will be made in September as to how more money will be
raised. The firm has been listed on the Alternative Investment Market since
1999, though its shares are not widely held. Fennell’s design consultancy,
set up after the split, will be folded into the plc.
And Fennell, who has always drawn headlines for selling whacky items like
silver Marmite tops, has some new ideas up his sleeve. Such as? “Little bits
of wood to hang round your neck for luck. They can be from somewhere you
love – we’d mount the wood – real emotional content. Called touche-bois.”
French term? “Nah, we invented it,” he grins. Cost? “£100 for silver ones,
to £500 for gold ones.”
Sounds reasonable for a recession. He sweeps his hand through his hair again.
“What we are trying to do is effect a position where we are not getting rid
of people. We believe we can make this business special again, genuinely.
“We’re not Laertes and Polonius arsing about, you know.” And after a bit more
banter, he is off to his board meeting. The rest will be anything but
silence.
The life of Theo Fennell
VITAL STATISTICS
Born: August 8, 1951
Marital status: married, with two daughters
School: Eton
University: Byam Shaw School of Art
First job: trainee silversmith in London’s Hatton Garden
Pay: to be negotiated, but Fennell earned £346,000 last year before
leaving the public company that bears his name. He also owns 19% of the
company.
Homes: Knightsbridge and Berkshire
Favourite film: Lost Horizon, the 1937 film about a group of travellers
who find a utopian society in the Himalayas
Favourite book: A Sentimental Education, by Gustave Flaubert
Favourite music: Bob Dylan
Favourite gadget: a needle-point pen for drawing
Last holiday: Barbados
WORKING DAY
THE JEWELLER wakes at 7am in his apartment behind Harrods in London’s
Knightsbridge and walks to his studio off King’s Road an hour or so later.
Theo Fennell starts each day in the studio by making a list. “Number one:
‘make a list’. I tick that.” He will then work on designs or talk to the
craftsmen who make his pieces. Lunch is likely to be a sandwich at his desk.
Meetings with private or corporate clients will follow. He jots ideas down
in a leather-bound notebook that carries his mother’s family crest.
Fennell walks home after 6.30pm. He and his wife often have evening functions
to attend. “They are launches and openings, with friends to support. There’s
a lot of mutual support – that’s something I cherish.”
DOWNTIME
THEO FENNELL relaxes by playing guitar. “I strum. I’m good at country, folk
and show tunes. Very camp fire – very camp.”
He also likes to read a lot. He seeks inspiration for his designs from books,
movies, television and music. “It’s going to sound pretentious but my work
is as cerebral as it is visual,” he says.
Fennell plays golf, handicap 11, at Sunningdale, and watches cricket at Lords,
where he is a member. Most of all he loves doodling. “I have a strange
Calvinistic attitude to watching television. I have to be doing something
else as well, so I doodle.”
