‘Being a jeweller, you have to keep on top of the news, because you're affected so much by the price of gold': Sheherazade Goldsmith’s consuming passions

Producing 18k-gold jewellery is a natural fit for someone whose surname is Goldsmith. Sheherazade Goldsmith's Loquet boutique in Belgravia, where we meet, has few decorative elements, apart from a large bowl of sweets in a glass jar. It’s a tribute to the ‘pick n’ mix’ nature of her playful charms, such as a martini glass and a diamond-studded octopus, which can be used to personalise the pendants that her business is known for. Born Sheherazade Bentley, she launched Loquet with the model Laura Bailey in 2013.

Before a career in luxury jewellery, the 51-year-old wore a number of different hats. She worked in fashion, as a PA for Joan ‘Mrs. B’ Burstein, the founder of London boutique Browns. Then Sheherazade was an environmental activist with an organic food business, Deli'Organic, in Battersea — ‘running that was a nightmare’. She wrote columns for The Sunday Times and Harper’s Bazaar, and took a sabbatical to study investigative journalism at City St George's, University of London, before she realised ‘that I was not the journalist I wanted to be.’

‘I was slightly bored by my own journalism,’ she says. Sheherazade writes all the copy for Loquet’s website and their newsletter, but still finds ‘every word painful’. She adds: ‘There is a real shame in changing careers. You feel like somehow you're changing because you failed that version of yourself in some way, but I don't think that's true.’

Born in Camberwell, London, to the financier and entrepreneur John Bentley and the actor Viviane Venture, Sheherazade was privately educated at the French Lycée in London and Aiglon College in Switzerland. She married Lord (then Zac) Goldsmith of Richmond Park in 1999. They are divorced, but share three children and Sheherazade has been in a relationship with the public-relations executive Matthew Freud since 2021.

When we meet she is wearing a large green puffer coat that has a series of small rips on the right sleeve. Her short brown hair is pinned back with small black bows and, as she considers a question, she gently rests the heart of her locket between her two front teeth. The beauty of her job, she says, is that it is a way of adding some sparkle to the everyday. ‘You could easily wear that from day to night,’ she says of one of her necklaces. ‘I definitely make jewellery made for wearing. I think it's just because of my own chaotic life — it's like, you just have to put on what you've got!’

Your aesthetic hero

I really love AnOther Magazine — it’s really cool and I love visually how they do everything — whether it's the graphics, the photography itself or the print. I really appreciate print as well. Anything in print. It’s kind of an old-fashioned thing, but I love how it comes out. My visual inspiration has probably come through fashion brands. People that really inspired me in the 1990s were Miuccia Prada — and she still does — everything about her collections has always been really focused on craftsmanship, but also she's really allowed women to express themselves and be playful. Phoebe Philo, as well, just again for her design ethos, and her career trajectory: when she was at Chloé, the femininity that went with the Chloé collection, and then when she transferred to Celine, her use of colour, I felt, was amazing. Again, it allowed women to dress in a very simple, elegant way, but really have fun with colour — she really introduced that into people's work wardrobes.

A book you found inspiring

I read a book last year [Time Shelter by Georgi Gospodinov] that was the International Booker Prize winner, and it was really beautiful because it was about somebody who has Alzheimer's, but it was the idea of: history is whatever we make of it, and how we remember things. That book, I thought, was amazing, because it is about your stories, but how you remember them.

The last thing of note that you bought yourself

A silk Prada bra. It is fluorescent yellow and there was something really happy and sunny about it.

An exhibition that has really impressed you

The latest Jenny Saville I went to at the National Gallery was absolutely superb. She’s kind of like a Lucien Freud, but there's a feminine something about her — instead of visualizing humans through a male perspective, there's just that female understanding of what it means to be human.

A possession you would never sell

My kids made me this really sweet gift. It’s a blue jar, and it has all these twigs in it that they picked up from Richmond Park — we used to live near there — and they attached leaves to them, and wrote what I represented to them on the leaves. They’ve redone it twice since they did it, because they were quite little at the time, and so the branches have collected more and more leaves. That is one possession I would never sell.

The music that you work to

Silence. I curate my surroundings, so I need objects that are attached to fundamentally fantastic memories.

The last podcast you listened to

It’s quite a boring answer, but I listen to The Daily, by The New York Times. I really love news. I mean, it's kind of an odd thing, but I like discussion and news — my children are quite interested in news and politics and so on. The Daily is the one I go to first, but then I try and get different opinions, always, so I'll listen to something by the Guardian, or I'll listen to The Story, which is The Sunday Times’. I'll swap about just to try and understand, and to get a 360 on it all. I don't feel safe unless I know what's going on, and the truth is I don't have time to read a newspaper during the day, although I do read the Financial Times on the weekends. Weirdly, being a jeweller, because you're affected so much by the price of gold, production, tariffs, all the rest of it, you sort of know what's going on, because it's going to affect all of those things. I sort of know when the price of gold is going to go up again just because of what's happening.

Who would play you in a film of your life

Léa Seydoux

What you’d take with you to a desert island

I’d probably take my locket, actually, because it would have the people I love inside and would have something to do with feeling strength or hope or some kind of mantra or message, so that when I was feeling depressed or in despair I’d have that to hold on to. For the charms inside, I’d have my children’s three birth stones and a little blue iris, for hope; the moon, for female intuition; and probably the happy face, to remind myself to keep smiling.

The thing that gets you up in the morning

A cup of tea.

The items you collect

I don't really collect anything as such, but it is probably jewellery, I guess, if I had to say something.

A hotel you could go back and back to

The Bull in Burford. It’s a country hotel in the Cotswolds and has the most delicious food.

The most memorable meal you’ve ever had

Probably the River Café, in London, and it isn't one particular meal, it's what the River Café is associated with. It's a restaurant that I've gone to for forever. It's kind of seen me grow up, if you like, and it's always been a celebration, whether I'm just meeting friends, or whether I'm taking the children because they've graduated, or it's a birthday. So those meals are always memorable, but it's less to do with the food and more to do with the fact that we're all together, aside from the fact that the food is also incredible.

Your favourite painting

There’s a beautiful Lowry [Children on the Beach with a Dog], which is unlike a Lowry, and it's three people walking on the beach with a little dog and it just reminds me of my little dog [Shady, a Bedlington Terrier/whippet cross] and my three kids. It’s my screensaver on my phone.

The best present you’ve ever received

Somebody gave me a first edition of Pablo Neruda love poems — that was pretty amazing.

For more information or to shop pieces by Loquet, see their website.