Lessons from the stylish: Bec Clarke

Are clothes important to Bec Clarke, a woman with more beautiful, precious jewellery than almost anyone else I know? Put it this way, she was sent home from her first job for wearing the wrong trousers. It was a fashion agency. She was front of house. The trousers were straight, not boot-cut. Catastrophe.

So it's probably not entirely coincidental that, almost two decades on, Clarke's daily uniform comprises of boot-cuts and blouses - low-cut usually, the better to show off her curves and her jewellery. She's dressed like this for years. She calls it east meets west London, although when we try to identify which bit of it is east London (she was actually raised in Islington, north London, so I think she just doesn't want to be identified as a pampered yummy mummy type) we're both stumped. "I suppose I dreamt of being edgy and androgynous, but with these boobs and bottom, it's not going to happen. Maybe I mean I'm half groomed, half mess. I'm definitely not experimental."

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If mess is the right word, it's more the sleek, Euro version than the mega-strength British genus. Her blonde hair, the colour of a Timotei ad, is lovingly nurtured at John Frieda ("I tried the €30 highlights in a salon near our house in Umbria and it was a disaster") and her nails are impeccable. They'd have to be, given that she's a walking advertisement for the colourful precious and semi-precious stones she has done so much to make accessible. "As a company it's increasingly important for us to present ourselves glamorously," she acknowledges.


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