How Swarovski went from £65 crystal monkeys to global creative powerhouse
Like the crystals that her family has been producing for 130 years, Nadja Swarovski is a compelling mix of sparkle and flint; a charismatic figure with a shrewd head for business who’s also empathetic and spiritual. ‘It’s an energetic exchange – it’s your spirit that’s expressing itself in the creativity,’ is how she describes the process of collaborating. ‘If that’s not honored, there’s quite a bit of sadness.’
Which would all sound airy-fairy were it not for the fact that Swarovski, 54, has overseen more than 500 successful collaborations spanning the worlds of fashion, film, design and architecture. How shrewd is Nadja Swarovski? Shrewd enough to turn Swarovski from an Austrian brand best known for making twee crystal figurines into a global creative powerhouse.
She joined Swarovski – founded in Wattens, Austria, by her great-great-grandfather Daniel in 1895 – in 1995, as the first woman on its executive board, swiftly seeing its potential as a lifestyle brand where other family members had failed. In 2007 she launched Atelier Swarovski, which spawned more than 250 collaborations with designers including Karl Lagerfeld, Jean Paul Gaultier, Versace and Maison Margiela. Collaborations with newly established British names such as Mary Katrantzou and Christopher Kane helped keep their businesses afloat, and were typical of her pragmatic support, which also included sponsoring the British Fashion Council, underwriting the British Fashion Awards and funding awards for emerging talent.
It was something of a shock, then, when she left Swarovski at the tail end of 2021, after 26 years. ‘I’m incredibly proud of what my colleagues and I were able to achieve,’ she says now. ‘We have broken so many barriers in so many regards, in terms of product development, innovation, sustainability and diversity and inclusion at Swarovski. And yes, it is kind of sad not to be there.’
But Nadja is far too busy to be sad for long. She and her husband, Rupert Adams, who works in finance, are currently focused on their latest venture, Really Wild, a somewhat tame British countrywear brand founded in 2002 by Natalie Lake, which hasn’t made Barbour or Burberry lose any sleep, but which they hope may do so in the future. The Swarovski-Adamses bought a 51 per cent share last year, with the remaining 49 per cent owned by Gabriela Luksic, scion of Chilean plutocrats whose estimated $25 billion fortune makes them the 83rd richest family in the world.
Swarovski being privately owned, Nadja’s own fortune can only be guessed at, but suffice to say that this triumvirate of wealth and privilege has pockets deep enough to fund whatever transformation is deemed necessary at Really Wild. She wants to move the flagship store, currently on the less favourable side of Sloane Square, to a busier street, but says she can’t find the right place: ‘I would love that Rag & Bone space, right opposite Tiffany.’
They decided to invest after recognising Really Wild’s potential as a lifestyle brand. ‘So often, country clothes were men’s clothes. We want to make them more feminine, but also really practical. We want to celebrate the working woman – the young professional who needs to show up, in an empowered way.’ They also want to expand into event dressing (‘polo matches, boating season, English summer attire’) as well as eveningwear, shoes, handbags and jewellery.
Wellies and tweeds may be the antithesis of crystals, but the two businesses share more than one might think – not least a devotion to craft. ‘Swarovski was all about the craftspeople,’ she notes. ‘What’s really important is to acknowledge the person behind the making [of the item] from the very first step. I totally believe the consumer can feel the spirit of the creator. We’ve all seen photos of factories in China, and it’s not great to see how workers have been treated. You can feel the energy of a $2 T-shirt. There’s a certain sadness. Why would you want to buy anything that brings that?’
Her point of view is increasingly shared by customers with the means to buy better. For them, Really Wild’s ‘affordable and aspirational’ price points of £600 to £800 will represent good value, given the brand’s focus on quality, provenance and sustainability. Swarovski likes to call it ‘slow luxury’ – highly crafted items that stick to tradition and don’t follow trends. ‘The brands that adhere to this, like Hermès, are doing very well,’ she notes. ‘Other luxury goods companies that are not slow have become so commoditised that you question what the luxury element is. Is it just the brand name? That’s not enough. The customer is incredibly educated these days.’
It’s these educated customers she has in her sights. She’s like a child in a sweet shop as she talks me through the provenance of the mohair, lambswool, cashmere and tweed in her creations. ‘This is Linton,’ she says, stroking a sleeve. ‘We also work with Lovat Mill in the Scottish Borders – that’s where Chanel sources its fabrics. This one is Harris Tweed, and then these are all Liberty silks. Our entire ethos is to support British heritage, and work with manufacturers and craftspeople who’ve been doing this for centuries. They’re family businesses who are passionate about their land and their sheep. I really believe in ingredient branding [specifying the suppliers of a product’s components],’ she continues. ‘A lot of brands don’t like to do it, but it’s really important to showcase these people, because they need the publicity.’ The brand’s own biggest publicity coup so far has been having a coat feature in Guy Ritchie’s The Gentlemen, upon which Swarovski promptly re-branded it The Gentleman Coat. ‘We’re repeating it this summer, in blue and pink.’
Since purchasing the brand in May, Swarovski has had her work cut out. ‘It was a company that needed a lot of nourishing. Last year was absolutely exhausting, because I’ve done things that I didn’t do in 26 years. But it’s good to roll up the sleeves and work. It’s very simple: we’re here to work hard and achieve something. If you want to join that bus, hop on. If not, hop off. We need to make sure we have the same values, and are really clear about them.’ Which are? ‘Accountability, responsibility, transparency, honesty, kindness. When we communicated that to the team, two people quit immediately,’ she laughs.
If she is a demanding boss, she’s also a nurturing one. ‘At Swarovski every designer got carte blanche, although I have to say I chose the right designers in the first place; ones I knew would not disappoint.’
At first the fashion world was resistant to working with a company that sold £65 crystal monkeys, owlets, mermaids and Buddhas, a snobbery that Swarovski herself understood only too well (‘I appreciate the animals – I just don’t relate to them,’ she told Forbes in 2004). ‘It was so hard,’ she remembers. ‘I had to ask people to do me a personal favour – just come to the showroom and look at all the crystals. The minute they suspended their disbelief, they realised what they could do with them.’
It was Alexander McQueen who first saw their potential, and didn’t care about any perceived naffness. ‘The minute he started to use Swarovski crystal, people wanted to copy it. He gave it such a beautiful interpretation. There was one dress in particular that I remember, which was made of crystal mesh at the top, with a mesh hood, then a metal section which looked like armour. [The model] Honor Fraser wore it, and it was amazing.’
She has fond memories of McQueen, with whom she worked until his death in 2010. ‘He was such a shy person, very kind, with incredible sensitivity. In the beginning, he was so poor that he didn’t have any materials to work with, so he’d walk on Brighton beach and pick up fabrics and old materials that would wash up – plastic, glass, pebbles, feathers. Crystal was just one more creative ingredient for him to work with.’
When she’s not in business mode, you sense she’s a homebody who prefers to nest rather than socialise, despite her globetrotting lifestyle. She says she’s currently watching Rivals. ‘It’s so funny! I love the British sense of humour. I’ve been learning a lot about England. Apparently Rupert Campbell-Black was my husband Rupert’s role model. He thought he was so cool because he was a rider. When he was little, my husband would dress up in his little riding outfit and stay with his grandmother in the country, and go to different riding fairs.’
So he was merely a sartorial role model? Phew. In fact, Nadja’s Rupert sounds rather devoted. ‘We met originally in Hong Kong, through mutual friends. He is such a nice guy. When I was at Swarovski, he was certainly my tremendous sounding board, and so supportive, especially given I had to travel so much.’
Eventually, they started investing together. ‘We have a little portfolio which includes Artemest, a platform that supports almost 1,000 Italian artisans who don’t know how to market or sell, and Collagerie [a shopping platform launched by former Vogue fashion director Lucinda Chambers], which is amazing. Rupert is a very good leader, very kind. He has a team who respect him, and because he comes from the finance industry, he drives fat out of the business; and I’m more [focused on] the operations, marketing and creative direction.’
They have three children, aged 16, 19, and 20, and live between London and Austria, although with their two eldest at university in the US, she’s been mulling over whether to move there. ‘But then the third announced she’s going to go to school in Europe,’ she says wryly. ‘My parents live between Austria and the States, so I’ve always traveled so much, and never minded it. I’ll likely be spending more time in the States, because we want to expand the North American market. We also have expansion ideas in Europe, and will definitely roll out the Really Wild concept in Austria. But baby steps.’
I ask what it means to her to be a Swarovski. ‘Well, for me it’s just being me,’ she shrugs. ‘There’s so much I could say, and it’s always fun to talk about the past. What’s most important to me is that a lot of my collaborations turned into friendships – one could even say soulmates. Maybe that’s what made me different from that very male leadership at Swarovski. I wanted to make sure it was a win-win. When I started [working there] 30 years ago, the world was so different. There was a stronger power. I always felt women have a softer power. I don’t want to call it emotional, because it makes us seem weak. It’s intuitive.’ Intuitive enough to make Really Wild into a global lifestyle brand? With Nadja’s track record, you wouldn’t bet against it. She may not be on Swarovski’s board anymore (she remains a shareholder), but her vision is still crystal clear.
