On a warm Wednesday afternoon in July, Samantha Cameron stood on the steps of Downing Street, her three children by her side, while her husband, David, gave his final press statement as prime minister. She blushed as he thanked her for her personal support, described her as “an amazing wife, mother and businesswoman” and praised her work in aid of volunteering.
The soon to be former PM’s wife did not comment to the waiting journalists, but her departure from No 10 made a statement nonetheless. She was wearing a £1,495 navy and orange dress by Roksanda Ilincic, one of a number of British-based designers whom she had championed during her time in the spotlight. The outfit was perfectly unshowy and appropriate, but the long, exposed zip from its front neckline to hem spoke of something else, a hint of the fashion-forward edginess that she had made her signature.
The following day, alongside the political obituaries of her husband, the papers were full of praise for a woman who “in matters of conduct and in all things sartorial” had always been “an ambassador for Britain”, and quietly nodded to her own creative imagination.
This week we learned what Sam Cam has been up to since. The 45-year-old announced she would launch her own womenswear label early in 2017, with a 40-piece collection for sale through Selfridges and the designer fashion website Net-a-porter.
The label, she reveals in an interview with the new edition of Vogue, will be called Cefinn, which draws on the initials of her children, Nancy, Elwen, Florence and Ivan, the couple’s first child, who died in 2009.
Cameron was careful to wear Zara and M&S as well as McQueen and Erdem during her time in Downing Street. Her own collection will fit somewhere in the middle, not priced at the very highest levels but hardly within the reach of the average hardworking family.
Images show smart monochrome separates in black, red and grey; hemlines are discreet, tops often sleeveless. These are clothes for women like her - professional, discreet but body confident (Cameron’s “honed by years of regular running and Ashtanga yoga”, according to Vogue), and with £300 in the bank to spend on a single item.
Cameron may be the first prime ministerial spouse to launch their own fashion line, but the move comes as no surprise to friends of the couple, who say this has always been central to her ambitions for life after Downing Street – even if the couple found themselves packing up earlier than either would have wished.
“The fact is that she has always wanted to do this,” says a close family friend. “I have known them both pretty well for 20 years, and she has often talked about this. Like any woman, she has had the priority of her children, and certainly after Ivan’s death they really did want to make sure that the family came first. Then when David became prime minister, it was difficult for her to consider doing anything like this.
“But I’ve often gone round on a Saturday morning, popped in for a cup of coffee, and you’ll find that she’s sitting at the kitchen table sketching things and looking at things. It’s part of her life. So there is nothing surprising to anybody who knows the family – this is a long-term wish.”
Certainly fashion and retail are in her blood. Samantha Gwendoline Sheffield was born in 1971, the elder daughter of Sir Reginald Sheffield, a wealthy baronet and landowner, and the former Annabel Jones, now Viscountess Astor, a 60s It Girl and jewellery designer who started her first business at 17 and later opened the upmarket furnishing label Oka. Her younger sister, Emily, is deputy editor at Vogue; the home furnishing designer Cath Kidston is a first cousin.
Samantha studied fine art at Bristol Poly, then moved into fashion, starting as a window dresser at the luxury stationery and leather brand Smythson before rising to be its creative director. She was credited with turning a slightly dusty notepaper brand into a serious player in the lucrative luxury handbag market. The “Nancy” bag was named after her daughter.
In 2010, after she discovered she was pregnant again following the trauma of Ivan’s death, and after her husband was elected prime minister, she stepped down to a consultancy role at Smythson, working two days a week but making clear she intended to stay very involved.
Though described as less intimidating than her formidable mother, friends say she has inherited all of Annabel’s business smarts. “They both have that rare mix of being extremely good at business but without being like those aggressive, killer women who try to get on by elbowing everyone aside,” the designer Jane Churchill told her husband’s biographers. “They do things themselves and just get on with it.”
It seems clear the six-year pause to live at Downing Street – a “very odd” life, she tells Vogue – was not something she particularly relished, but Cameron was eager to use her role to support key sectors, notably British fashion design as an ambassador for London fashion week. Industry insiders enjoyed discreet receptions at Downing Street, while young designers such as Emilia Wickstead and Jonathan Saunders saw their profiles boosted when she chose to wear their clothes.
But “at the end of the day, I was there as [David’s] wife,” she says. “It wasn’t my gig.” Her own ambitions were very explicitly on hold, rather than being set aside altogether. She had always made her own clothes, she tells the magazine, but in 2011, after Florence was born, she hired a professional designer to teach her pattern cutting. The dining table at 11 Downing Street was set up with her sewing machine and she would spend evenings knocking up samples while listening to BBC Radio 6 Music.
Her husband, who met Samantha when she was an undergraduate and has been manifestly besotted ever since, has been “absolutely glowing with pride, it’s the most touching thing,” since news of the label broke this week, according to the family friend.
“You used to say to him: ‘Come for a walk,’ and he would say: ‘I’m very sorry, I’ve got a big, high-powered meeting on.’ Now he’s doing the babysitting. They are totally equal in the relationship, absolutely.”
Cefinn has a staff of five, including a pattern cutter and a machinist, but the driving force is Cameron herself, insists the friend, who says she has been “absolutely flat out” since leaving Downing Street.
“She is learning an enormous amount at an enormous rate, and she is doing it all herself. Every bit of design is hers. She is not employing [designers] who then use her brand. This is Sam’s stuff, these are Sam’s clothes, these are the things Sam likes. It’s very much a personal thing.”
Sam Cam’s highs and lows
Born: 18 April 1971
Career: Fine art graduate and fashion obsessive who rose to become creative director of the luxury stationery and leather brand Smythson, some years before her husband rose to become prime minister.
High point: Vanity Fair named her one of the world’s best dressed women in 2015, the same year as her husband was re-elected to Downing Street.
Low point: The couple’s first child, Ivan, who was born with severe disabilities, died in 2009 at the age of six. His mother has said the pain will never leave her.
She says: “The public scrutiny [of being the prime minister’s wife] wasn’t something I particularly yearned for. I don’t feel relaxed or like I can be myself in the spotlight.”
They say: “This image of her as the quiet, doting wife … She’s actually very tough, in the nicest possible way. When she decides to do something, there is nothing that will stop her doing it” – friend Venetia Butterfield.
