MAY BOTANICALS
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‘A lot of natural beauty brands, or ones supporting charities, have a certain look,’ says the 32-year-old model on the phone from her home in Los Angeles. And what’s that look? ‘Dull.’ She launched her own, May Botanicals, with a London soirée last October, including five products ranging from the best-selling Clean Slate Cleanser to the face and body Super Balm. ‘I do all the art direction and shoots myself. I really wanted it to have a creative image — one you would have on a make-up or perfume campaign.’
She has impeccable pedigree — father, the Rolling Stones’ Mick Jagger, and mother, the American model and ex-Mrs Murdoch Jerry Hall — and her modelling CV name-checks every luxury fashion house. With some years spent at the pinnacle of the beauty business as the face of Rimmel 2009-2013 (all thankfully completed long before people had learnt to wail ‘nepo baby’) few others appear better equipped to make 100 per cent biodegradable kelp masks as desirable as the newest red lippy.
It was Hall who kick-started her interest in natural beauty. ‘They didn’t have much when she was growing up so they were really into using things that you can find around the house for beauty products — coffee body scrubs, using olive oil as a moisturiser, those kinds of things,’ she says. ‘I always saw her doing that — it inspired me and me and my sister [Lizzy] to kind of make our own products.’
Her mother happens to be her style and beauty pin-up, too. ‘She’s just so glamorous — the most amazing kind of style and always does her own make-up. I also love Blondie.’ As for her father’s skincare rituals, she can only laugh. ‘I don’t think he’s got an extensive beauty routine — but I’ll have to ask him.’
When it comes to May Botanicals’ environmental credentials, well — they roll off Jagger’s tongue. ‘I’ve been working with WWF for a long time, but I was also working with the ocean conservation charity called Project Zero,’ she says. ‘My products are soil certified organic… [and] we just did this event with a charity called Earthed, which is really amazing, working on regenerative farming and planting.’
I wonder how far her inner eco-warrior stretches — what is her take on climate change protests? ‘There’s always more to do. It’s really difficult when you get so bogged down by the negative that you just feel like there’s nothing that you can do,’ she says. Should we… just stop oil? ‘I think we definitely should,’ she says. Whether she would join the orange-clad masses and descend on the M25 is a slightly different story. ‘I don’t know. I’m kind of working with the charities that I’m working with right now…’
News of the Duchess of Sussex’s lifestyle brand, American Riviera Orchard, came not long before our conversation, but Jagger is not sure about following Meghan’s lead. ‘I don’t want to do loads of new products, it’s a less-is-more approach,’ she says. ‘It’s not about how quickly we can grow. That’s the reason why I’m doing the whole thing, and I didn’t do it as a licensing deal with another brand.’
She is growing it, though — the next stage will be the US launch. As for Jagger herself, time’s up on a two-year LA stint. ‘I’m trying to move back to London this summer for good,’ she says. ‘LA has a lot of amazing nature and the beach but it definitely feels spread out as a city… it doesn’t feel as if it has a centre.’
Mostly, though, she misses her friends here. ‘It’s easier to casually meet up with people when everyone lives a Tube stop away from each other.’ We are primed for Jagger (skin glowing) arm-in-arm with Cara Delevingne, Suki Waterhouse and Alexa Chung at the Serpentine Summer Party come June.
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