Jade Jagger - London's Jezebel

Their mum was a barrister and everyone was into philosophy, politics and law and there were great conversations round at their place in Newbury.

I think it'll be great to see someone of our generation [in power] and I think, as a woman, we're never proportionally represented.

After Maggie, a formidable woman, we've been stuck with frumpy old people's views that I don't think are representative of the nation or of what younger people want in their government.'

And Cameron isn't too privileged to be representative? I think Dave has a lot of experience, he lives round here [in Kensal Rise] actually, not in some big mansion. He's hardly in Notting Hill. They're both working parents, they've had a lot of heartbreak, I mean, which bit is wrong? D'you want a smaller house? Would that do it?'

Jade started her family first and her career second. Pregnant at 19 by her sixth-form college boyfriend Piers Jackson (whom she split from after eight years together), she did not receive any formal training in design.

Still, she enjoyed speedy success with her own jewellery brand, Jade Inc, co-founded in 1996 with Tamsin de Roemer, who now runs the fashion label De Roemer, described in Vogue last year as a luxury brand to watch'.

In 2001, Jade was appointed creative director of Garrard, bringing a breath of very fresh air to that traditional firm and creating such memorable bagatelles as the sterling silver punk graffiti dog tag pendant, and the yellow diamond knuckleduster.

It was a slightly edgier look than Her Majesty was aiming for, however, and the firm's royal warrant was withdrawn in 2007, by which time Jade had already moved on.

I loved working there but I also like the fact that my new store is quite small, quite manageable,' she says diplomatically. Nowadays, her own Jezebel diffusion line of clothing is stocked at Harvey Nichols and fashion stores in 18 other countries, serving the worldwide demand for hoodies emblazoned with Jezebel' in gold.

The Jade Jagger range of clothes in her Jade Jagger boutique are, however, very much the higher end, made to measure, alluding to gold brocade and velvet.' They are, she says, about finding your own personality, rather than looking like a celebrity.

So many clothes look mass-produced now. We've gone so far into China that I just feel an impersonal quality has come over everything'.

Has she ever been to Primark? No – her assistant is always promising to take her – but still, she wants to bring back some of the detail, some of the personal quality, the handicrafts that I really hope hold real personal attachment and value.'

It's quite hard to understand exactly what she means as her words often in the wrong order come out. She's recovering from a cold and I think an early whisky toddy to keep her warm on the shoot might have blurred her focus a little bit – but she still speaks with huge authority.

Her voice is posh with the edges knocked off – exactly the voice you'd imagine, really, for a rock star's daughter educated at public school, but who now runs a business called The Jezebel Sound System that puts on private parties she calls Jezebel Raves.

But the Jezebel crew' is a sideline. Her main interest at the moment is the new shop, a gorgeous little boutique on All Saints Road, near Portobello Market. It's her biggest new venture since she moved back to the UK from her eco-farm in Ibiza. Her father turned up to the launch party, I hear. Yes, he's supportive and proud and excited to see me having a shop.' Had he visited there before? Before the launch?' She looks at me like I'm a little stupid. Er, no. It wasn't open.' He didn't drill any screws, put up any shelves, then? A twinkling smile. No, we opened up very quickly.' The smile fades very quickly.

Sir Mick brought his partner of nine years to the launch, the vertiginously tall former model L'Wren Scott, who also designs her own line of clothing. She's a great fan, she likes my jewellery and I like her collection of clothes, so we exchange our new pieces,' says Jade. My boyfriend Dan [Williams, a DJ] helped out with the music, and my daughters have worked Saturdays there too.' She thinks it's good for them to serve behind the till – not that there is a traditional till, as this boutique is too trendy for that, being modelled to resemble a living room rather than a shop, but still, a Saturday job is par for the course. When I was Assisi's age I worked at Harper & Tom's, the flower stall on Elgin Crescent.'

O ut at parties, Jade is often photographed dressed to the nines, flanked by her daughters, hyper-glamorous mini-mes kitted out in all the latest clobber. The pictures look more like the three party-going graces than a mother and her daughters. Comparisons with Fergie and princesses Beatrice and Eugenie spring to mind.

Does Jade consider herself firmly a parent, or more like a friend to them? You'd have to ask them that,' says Jade, before summing up her parenting as firm but fair'. The girls have grown up thoroughly eco-conscious, she says, living in the country, using solar energy and growing their own vegetables.

This idyll was the eco-farm in Ibiza, where they used to live, until schooling brought them back to the UK. For them it's not about evangelising for green issues, it's just about doing it.

'Talking about it is one thing and getting up in the freezing cold and squeezing into your G-Whizz is another.'

Assisi, 16, wanders in and out of the kitchen during the interview wearing a long floaty skirt and T-shirt, with an identically-dressed girlfriend in tow. She is, her mother tells me, at a philosophical age in her life.

'She's pretty earnest, thoughtful and she loves books.' Amba, 13, is more playful and vivacious. She's a strong personality, she will definitely give you a strong look if she's not happy
with a situation.'

Of the Jagger granddaughters we will surely be hearing more. But Jade is anxious to get back to the subject in hand. Any more questions about the shop?' she says archly.

'I just wondered if you wanted to ask about the dresses or the embroidery or the fine jewellery or the clothes?'

It's impossible to focus Jade on something she doesn't want to talk about. Questions about her gilded bohemian childhood in New York, for example, when she played at The Factory with Andy Warhol (he asked her to pee on his photoreactive paper, apparently) are met with monosyllabic replies, as if she is bored to death by her own glamour. Even about her designs, she's hardly forthcoming. Of her Kiss motif of a lady's lips, reproduced on her T-shirts, rings, necklaces and keychains, she says: It's just about the very glamorous feeling of being kissed by a lady.'

Not a direct reference to the Rolling Stones' lips motif? No, I just like pop symbolisms. Only in retrospect, actually, after I'd already drawn it, did I realise that it was similar to my dad's thing.'

She also seems to be nursing an obsession with skulls. They're everywhere in her work and home, grinning from T-shirts, threaded onto necklaces and ghoulish rosaries, hanging in her kitchen in the form of a print of a Roman catacomb as big as a wall.

Even sitting next to us on her black lacquer kitchen table, there's an animal skull that she's covered with gold leaf. It's all very Damien Hirst – especially her diamanté skull pendant, which is like a miniature version of his For The Love Of God, isn't it? This does not go down well. I've been doing skulls for a long time
before he came up with that!' she cries, with some justice.

For her the skulls reference her childhood, when Keith Richards was quite a big influence, and he's renowned for wearing a lot of skulls.' Was she allowed to play with them or borrow them? No, I didn't ever borrow Keith's jewellery. He's quite scary.' I see. I saw a lot of skulls in Asia, through Kali and symbolic references to rebirth,' she goes on. But before we can get any deeper into her traveller's take on Hinduism, she breaks off, saying sharply, Can you take it ALL out please?' – and it is only by turning round that I realise she is talking to a maid, who is on her hands and knees in the corner cleaning out Jade's condiment cupboard.

The world of Jade Jagger is a busy place. There are daughters, dogs, groceries and boiling crabs for her to attend to, not to mention girlfriends coming and going – young local, trendy types – Jezebel crew members, probably, popping round for a pre-rave cuppa. You can spot a Jezebel girl by her rosary of dead men's skulls, apparently: a talisman for all wannabe Jades out there.

I slip away, leaving Jade in her cosy, hermetic, almost entirely female world, an Amazonian kingdom of her own creating, in which she is indubitably queen.