Christa D'Souza

L’Wren Scott’s ultimate luxury? Extra legroom. Although being 6ft 3in in flats, you could argue that flying up front is not so much a luxury as a necessity. Even by model standards, God dang, is this woman tall.  It is Thursday afternoon, and we are in one of the personal-shopping suites atop the Regent Street branch of Banana Republic, with whom Scott, just back from India with her other half, Mick Jagger (as you would know if you were one of her 10,000 followers on Instagram), has teamed up to launch her first capsule collection for the high street. Wearing biker boots, tight black jeans (her own design) and an exquisitely embellished jacket from her golden AW13 collection (remember the one where 120 guests were served individual lamb shank shepherd’s pies and ketchup from Claridge’s?), Scott, 46, looks the ultimate glamazon, as she always does. Even when she’s slumming it at Glasto. (See those fabulous Chanel pumps she wore stepping out of her chopper onto the muddy fields? Or those fab Festival boots she wore in their state-of-the-art yurt? What were, they, Margiela? Well again, you would know, if you follow her on Instagram.) Actually, she’s a bit of a glamazon slash goth, with that pale, pale skin and sheet of raven hair cascading bedroom-style over her shoulders, less for effect, she says, and more because she simply has not had time to go to the hairdresser’s since they stepped off the plane. Oh, L’Wren, you are your own perfect muse. No wonder everyone from Oprah to Nigella, to Nicole Kidman, to Sarah Jessica Parker, consider her the go-to designer for the red carpet. Although, as Scott drolly notes, “What does red carpet mean any more, now they put ropes around pharmacies?”  The bottom line about Scott’s super-sexy, super-flattering, not to mention eye-wateringly expensive, designs is that they really can give a girl a to-die-for body, whatever the state of her butt or her tummy. As Ellen Barkin (whose sexy wardrobe Scott curated for the film Ocean’s Thirteen) once put it: “If I looked naked like I look in her dresses, I’d be happy.”  So hooray then that those signature pieces of hers, the slinky sequined sheaths and beaded cardigans, the tailored brocade jeans and the boom-chica-wa-wa pencil skirts, will now be available to the rest of us at, like, a 10th of the price. “Well, I always say luxury is a state of mind,” says Scott in her regal drawl, “because, for me, it really is. It’s legroom, it’s a beautiful view, it’s great food at a great restaurant you’ve discovered because you obsessively read Zagat, as I do.”  Then, allowing a hint of a smile to unfurl as she notices the helicopter insistently hovering above our heads, she says: “Look, we’re being watched by MI5. They’re making sure nothing happens while we’re having this big top-secret discussion here.”  If there is a slight froideur to Scott’s demeanour, you cannot really blame her. It must be tough dating the most famous rock star in the world, living under the constant threat of having one’s patch, as it were, peed on by rival, not to mention younger, admirers. You have to create boundaries in the fiercely hierarchal world of rock-chickdom, or you do not survive. Once you get past the spectral complexion, the looming height and the habit of referring to herself in the third person, Scott is really quite sweet. A man’s woman undoubtedly, but sort of a girl’s girl, too, clucking round the model provided for today’s interview, excitedly pointing out the little “secret stash” pockets for cash she’s had put in the velvet clutches or how her faux-fur bolero (a steal at only £99) instantly transforms a look from day to evening. “Yeah, I can be a bit of a mother hen,” she says, as she hands me a divine black crackle tweed jacket to try on. “My girlfriends [the artist Rachel Feinstein and Daphne Guinness among them] will always come to me for advice. It might not be what they wanna hear, but I like to give the truth.”  As a former stylist, she knows her stuff. Here are some typical L’Wrenisms: wear nude shoes instead of black ones if you want your legs to appear longer; have perfume sprayed on the back of your hand rather than your wrist, because “I find it more elegant doing it that way”; don’t, if you can possibly help it, eat with a plastic fork or drink out of a bottle (although obviously, if you are on the road, needs must); and, please, ladies, ditch the Spanx. “Ew, no, no, no.” Corrective underwear, not very rock chick, not very glam at all.   “You don’t need to wear Spanx if you buy my clothes,” she says. “The dress, the trousers, the pencil skirt, they should do the work. And believe me, I’m in the gym every day to keep my stomach flat. We’re hard on ourselves as women, so if I can help somebody out, I will.”  The adopted daughter of Mormons, Luann Bambrough was brought up in Roy, Utah, in a setting “straight out Stephen Spielberg’s ET”. An exotic brunette amid a sea of salad-cream blondes and 6ft by the age of 12, Luann never actually got teased (her nickname was “Lady”), but she did learn from an early age to, as she puts it, “march to the beat of her own drum”. Passionate about clothes and fashion, she spent most of her spare time poring over Butterick patterns and trawling vintage shops for men’s suits, which she would then alter to wear herself.  It was after being discovered by Bruce Weber, who was recruiting in Roy for a Calvin Klein ad, that she decided to get a one-way ticket to Paris, change her name to L’Wren Scott and become a model. Remember that Pretty Polly ad, the one with legs for clock hands? Those were Scott’s legs. But modelling wasn’t really her thing, she preferred being behind the camera, and by the early noughties she was living in LA, working with Herb Ritts, establishing herself as one of Hollywood’s foremost celebrity stylists. She and Jagger met in 2001 on a shoot, and for a good few years they were admirably low-key about their relationship, living out of a suite that Jagger kept at Claridge’s. Scott was an omnipresent but spidery figure in the background while Jagger was out there strutting his stuff. (They now divide their time between a £7m town house in Chelsea and a penthouse apartment in Paris.)  The first time she came out in public as his other half was in 2005, the year Jagger won a Golden Globe for the best original song for the film Alfie and absolutely insisted that Scott be there with him.  “It was the first time I had to go on the red carpet and I tried desperately to get out of it,” she says. “To be honest, I was more worried about him and what suit he was wearing. I swear, when I got out there, I was like a deer in the headlights. I literally got so nervous, I ran inside and, after a bit, Mick found me and he went, ‘Where d’ya go?’ and I said, ‘Oh, I don’t know, you were talking to people and it was cold, so I waited for you inside.’ Meanwhile it was 100F outside.” The upside of that rather torturous night was that when the “very prominent fashion designer” who had promised to make her outfit failed to show, Scott was prompted to make her own dress out of a bolt of black crepe fabric she had hanging around. Ultimately it gave her the confidence to start up her own label. “Now, of course, I’m so happy promoting my craft, my artwork, but the stuff with Mick? No, I don’t like being objectified like that, I never have. That’s not a comfort zone for me, if I’m being honest. I’m a great observer, which is why I love to travel to places I’ve never been before.”  What a spectacular life this couple seem to lead, and what a nice boyfriend Jagger seems, too, patiently taking all those pictures of her for Instagram.  Although they are not married, it almost feels like they are, the way she has clearly been accepted as part of the old rocker’s extended family, getting photographed with Bianca and Jade and Georgia May at the Serpentine Party she hosted earlier this year. “Do you know how many people I have to get presents for this Christmas?”she asks, half-kidding. For the record, she has seven putative stepkids, plus grandchildren, to buy presents and stockings for.  So, what does the future hold for the talented Ms Scott? Menswear,perhaps? She has, after all, been doing Mick for all his tours for at least a decade. Or maybe homeware? You should see the way she has single-handedly decorated their flat in Paris with its blonde parquet floors, 1940s chandeliers and Lalique glass bathroom. It’s beautifully, exactingly done.  Whatever she does next, she will give it her absolute all. No sitting in bed eating bonbons, of that you can be absolutely sure. “You know, I live with a very disciplined person and, although I’m quite hard on myself, I never think I’m disciplined enough, like getting up to go to the gym or whatever, but then I’m like, ‘Oh God, I feel guilt, I have to rise up to the challenge.’  “I’ll tell you one thing,” she adds, laying a cool, marble hand on mine, “and I really believe this: you have nothing to lose by trying and everything to lose by not. The freedom to fail, it’s so empowering, but it’s like I don’t even accept it as a failure, I accept it as an experience, a lesson learnt.”  If I were the most famous rock star in the world, I would so need a woman as strong as this around.