Georgia May Jagger: 'We're all quite aware that this world is a fantasy... it's the same for my parents'

Georgia May Jagger: model, rock progeny… MasterChef contestant ?

‘I cooked a lot over lockdown,’ she says with pride. She and Louis Levy, her restaurateur boyfriend, took it in turns to prepare dinner over spring and summer while sheltering in Georgia May’s Los Angeles home. Sometimes,they raised the stakes. ‘One night we decided to do a stir-fry competition. We each made our own stir-fries and then compared. He won. Well, that’s what we decided,’ she clarifies, a flash in her green eyes and a gap-toothed grin confirming that she has a different idea about who truly produced the superior dish . ‘But we didn’t have a third judge, so it’s definitely a bit up in the air.’

Stir-frying, dog-walking, wardrobe-sorting, bread-baking (‘I tried to make focaccia and mainly got flour everywhere’), tomato-cultivating, DIY-ing, reading, FaceTiming: Georgia May spent most of lockdown engaging in very normal activities, insofar as any pursuit can be normal in a time that is anything but. Not that her life lends itself to any description including the word ‘normal’, even in less extraordinary times.

Her mum is Jerry Hall, a woman whose own lockdown gardening proved so abundant she took to dropping off veg boxes in Bel Air neighbours’ drives – but also the ultimate glamazon and icon of the hedonistic 1970s fashion scene, now married to media mogul Rupert Murdoch. Her dad is Mick Jagger, no introduction needed. And Georgia May’s current state of contented domesticity stands in contrast to a childhood spent backstage at stadiums and on private jets.

Georgia May, now 28, was born and raised in London. She remembers lingering in her mother’s dressing room as Hall got ready to go out to events, playing with her gobstopper 1980s jewels and dressing up in her Vivienne Westwood and Antony Price gowns. ‘I absolutely loved those big dresses. There was definitely more of a sense of fantasy then than we see now in fashion. Even then it felt like something a princess would wear in a fairy tale.’

She went to her first Fashion Week when she was about 11 with big sister Lizzy (then a model, now an equal rights activist), accompanying her for fittings and observing all the action backstage. With Georgia May’s genetic inheritance, it was only a matter of time until it was her turn. That happened in 2009, when she shot her first cover of British Vogue (‘I didn’t realise that I was going to be on the cover until after the shoot’), and then again in 2010, when Karl Lagerfeld hand-picked her to close Chanel’s Cruise show… on the back of a motorbike.

Campaigns, fashion shows and more magazine covers followed, but nothing could compare to the closing ceremony of the 2012 Olympics. That night, she walked the world’s most-watched catwalk in a gold Victoria Beckham minidress, , shortly before Beckham herself performed with the reunited Spice Girls.. ‘I was with Kate Moss, Naomi Campbell, Karen Elson – all the models I really look up to – and we got to be part of that incredible energy.’

Across a sitting room in London in August, she’s decidedly ‘more normcore’ than all that – though it’s worth noting that only a Jagger could consider glittery Gucci trainers, a Réalisation Par heart-print silk jacket and Pandora heart-shaped hoop earrings ‘normcore’. Her life isn’t usually so glam as all these anecdotes might suggest, she insists. Really. ‘We’re all quite aware that this world of fashion and music is a fantasy… I’m not constantly “on”, and it’s the same for my parents. We all like being in our pyjamas at home as well.’

In this slim slice of late summer when it seems life in the UK might be inching closer to normality, she’s remembering her last big trip, to visit Pandora’s factories in Thailand. She and the company’s fellow muses, including model Halima Aden and influencer Margaret Zhang, got to try their hands at making their own charms. ‘It was really hard! The level of skill it takes to paint these tiny little enamel flowers by hand is just incredible. It really impressed me and made me look at my jewellery in a different way.’

The company is marking 20 years of its charm bracelet, a jewellery-box staple that Georgia May recalls sharing with a best friend when she was younger. She’s replaced her original bracelet with a new one incorporating charms that nod to her priorities: a dog (she’s proud dog-mum to Dr Pepper and Gizmo, both papillons, and rescue dog Edith), a tiny family (the Jaggers are a tight-knit if geographically dispersed crew), and a globe.

The globe evokes the ocean and her work with Project Zero, a non-profit organisation that seeks to raise awareness about the climate emergency and protect oceans. Watching nature restore itself when so much of the globe was grounded felt revelatory, she says – though it’s hard not to grow disheartened by the tons of disposable masks and gloves ending up on seabeds now that we’re moving more freely. For Georgia May, sustainability can be as ambitious as a jewellery brand pledging to only use recycled gold and silver (as Pandora has committed to do by 2025) or as individual as how a person chooses to consume.

‘I’ve barely bought anything new since March. Usually in the summer, I’ll go buy a new bikini without even thinking about it. This summer, I think I donated like six bags of stuff. I’m definitely feeling appreciative for how privileged I was just to be able to be home with my loved ones.

‘I feel thankful for so many things, really,’ she adds – for her health, for having a garden and resources and space. ‘I’ve found slowing down and not getting on a plane every few days for work to be really beneficial. I do feel that I was probably travelling and living a bit too quick, you know? I definitely feel very, very privileged and try to remind myself of that every day.’

On the brink of autumn, she and Levy, who she met as a teenager on holiday before they got together two years ago, are especially grateful to be back in London. She’s excited to see the new fashion collections (‘the way they’re doing Fashion Weeks because of lockdown is really interesting’), and ready to slip into a jumper (‘seasons’ not being a big LA thing). ‘By the time summer is over, I’m so excited to wear a jacket and winter clothes. There’s no better place to be cosy than in England.’

Being grounded doesn’t mean she isn’t busy. She’s working on expansion plans for Bleach London, the colour-focused salon she joined as a co-owner five years ago; a skincare line, May, is also in the works.

Jerry Hall remains in LA, but Jagger has plenty of reminders of her mother close at hand. ‘I’ve got lots of Mum’s archive stuff that she’s given me. Her clothes aren’t always appropriate for the life I lead, but she’s always telling me to wear them anyway, like, “Go for it! Don’t hold back!”’ Being Georgia May Jagger, you get the sense she never would.

A life in fashion

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