'I have risen from obscurity to d-list'

The Beckhams are fans, and when he turned 50, Elton threw him a party.

But celebrity status is all a bit of a joke to jeweller Theo Fennell. He talks to Rachel Cooke

THEO Fennell will not thank me for saying this, but he is the kind of man who would look very good indeed in lederhosen. Slim and tall, with a big, leonine thatch of blond hair, ruddy cheeks, blue eyes and rubbery Portillo lips, he has one of those terrifyingly posh, booming voices that can make your knees tremble if you catch him in a bad mood. Hard to believe he spends his days dreaming up designs for, of all things, jewellery.

Luckily, today, he is all smiles. He has just received a letter of complaint from a woman protesting at the ad campaign for his new Strip collection - which features a painting of socialite Shebah Ronay clad only in earrings and a necklace - by her boyfriend, the artist Johnny Yeo; and he is relishing the thought of dispatching a tart reply.

"Ridiculous," he harrumphs. "Really, these people should have better things to do with their time. They're all women, of course!"

We are sitting in the office at his flashy four-storey shop on the Fulham Road. Linda Gray (Dallas's Sue-Ellen) was in earlier, and while I was waiting for Fennell to finish chatting to her, I had a good look round.

The shop is luxurious - Czech & Speake scent is squirted into the lobby every time a customer walks past a laser beam.

If you want an emerald the size of a small suburban lawn, or a citrine that spreads seductively over your knuckle like a pool of golden syrup, then this is the place for you.

Fennell's fans include Elton John (who reputedly used to spend 50,000 a week in the store), Naomi Campbell, the Beckhams and Elizabeth Hurley - several of whom are guests at a party he is throwing tomorrow to celebrate the success of the Strip collection.

Thanks to hanging out with this crowd, Theo has become something of a celeb himself; you often see him on the society pages of glossy magazines, and when he turned 50, Elton even threw him a party.

"I've risen from total obscurity to the D-list," he says, giving me a wry look. "Though it's difficult to preserve your sense of humour about it - and I do find it very funny - without sounding as if you're above it all. My wife and I have a huge laugh when we're sitting round a table and we're the only people we've never heard of. But with minor celebrity status comes a certain amount of piss- taking - and that's fine for me, but not for my family (Fennell and his wife, Louise, who organises designer-clothes sales, have two teenage daughters, Emerald and Coco). It also brings an expectation that life will somehow be different - when, in fact, the photographers who take my picture are probably better off than I am."

The son of a soldier, Fennell always knew he would end up doing something "creative"; so, after Eton, he enrolled at the Byam Shaw School of Art.

Alas, he soon found that he was not quite as talented as he had hoped - he'd spent too much time listening to sycophantic girlfriends singing his praises - and that his "passion" probably lay elsewhere.

He had written angst-ridden pop songs and a dire 80-page novel, but it wasn't until he applied for a job with a silversmith in Hatton Garden that he stumbled on his vocation.

"I don't want to be too pretentious about it," he says. "But it was almost as if I had come home."

Though he was very bad at making jewellery himself - "I didn't have the patience for it" - he began designing pieces for friends.

It took him until 1982 to get his name over the door of a small shop in Chelsea: "Oh yes, it was a struggle. In the early Seventies, boy was I poor.

I had long hair and stacked soles and I lived with three other art students in Hammersmith. Home was full of foul old bean cans and paint pots.

Like Tracey Emin's bed.

Then, two of us got this penthouse in Queen's Gate which we couldn't afford. It only had one bedroom, so when we were trying to impress girls you'd arrange for the flatmate to be out.

You only used the bedroom in extremis and you kicked them out before they had to use the bathroom because it was fantastically squalid."

These days, of course, Fennell comes face to face with wealth daily.

He is too discreet to spill the beans about any one client, but he does have his own dark thoughts on the troubling effect vast riches have on a person's taste. "I do sometimes look at a woman and think: how can she have spent so much on jewellery that doesn't fit?

"It's like watching someone walk out of a couture show in a dress that rides up at the back. I find myself wanting to say: please don't just buy all these huge stones and slap them together. The trouble is, the rich want things quickly. The rarity is to find someone with money who's prepared to wait."

HIS two pet hates are stones cut in the pointedovalmarquise shape and opals.

"I can't deal with the marquise. It's ugly and always used in those explosions of diamonds that are just a statement of wealth.

With opals, there's too much going on." He also finds it hard to keep mum when redheads insist on buying rubies.

"I want to say, please don't do that." So what stone does he think would suit me?

Theo gives me the once-over, then declares: "Not sapphires, because you've got pale-blue eyes. A russet stone would be quite good for you."

I don't like the sound of this.

Russet? "Yes, topaz or a yellow diamond. They're very popular."

Does Mrs Fennell have a jewellery box so stuffed full of goodies that it should be locked in the Tower of London? "I'm as strapped as any man when it comes to buying her a present. I can't afford to give her really good stuff and it wouldn't do to give her a pair of stud- earrings, would it?"

Fennell's friends say he is a brilliant mimic and that he likes to get his guitar out and play Honky Tonk Women. His business associates, meanwhile, say the secret of his success lies not just in his kitsch designs - the solid silver Marmite lids, the gold Mars Bar holders - but in his winning way with customers. Does he agree? "A lot of bollocks is talked by self-important designers who say, 'I can't talk to zees people' (customers). The client is always more important than you."

There is, I tell him, something sexual going on when a woman buys something sparkly for herself (many of Fennell's customers are independent women with their own swollen wallets).

The whole process is a kind of flirtation, isn't it? "I jolly well hope not," he snorts, though I notice a twinkle in his eye. "It isn't always important that I'm on the shop floor. A lot of people would feel less inhibited if I wasn't."

So is there anyone he longs to bejewel who hasn't yet dropped by? "Well, sadly, Liberace has gone. I mean it.

Any jeweller worth his salt would have loved to deck him out. But I'm more pleased when someone really unexpected walks through the door. I'd love to make something for JK Rowling."

A little amethyst witch's broom, perhaps? He hesitates and then says, sternly: "Well, something magical." Even Theo Fennell knows the difference between kitsch and goddamn awful.

Copyright 2001
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