It's great to have a female Chancellor - just not this one!, says jeweller Kiki McDonough

Daily Mail​

07-06-2025

Kiki McDonough's status as a successful businesswoman would have come as a surprise to her father, her teachers and at least one bank manager. It even seems to slightly surprise Kiki herself, who has the air of an accidental entrepreneur.
Her eponymous jewellery brand, which celebrates its 40th anniversary this summer, is worn by the Princess of Wales and the Queen. She is invited to give her views on business and the economy on high-profile TV programmes, including Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, where she lambasted the Labour Government.
McDonough, who turns 71 this month, started her business in the heady 1980s when Mrs Thatcher was in Downing Street and women were storming the City and setting up businesses of their own.
'Unless you were there you can't understand how extraordinary it was to have the first woman Prime Minister,' she says. 'She pushed her way through the old school network. There were so many entitled men. I knew some of them.'
She has considerably less admiration for the country's first female occupant of No 11 Downing Street, Rachel Reeves.
'It's great to have a female Chancellor but unfortunately this one... it hasn't worked as well as we would have liked. Being the first woman chancellor and to have screwed up,' she says, referring to the increases in employer National Insurance Contributions.
'These tax changes Labour has brought in – it is completely counterproductive. If you want business to succeed you don't pile on a lot of hurdles and barriers. They spread doom and gloom like butter, and once you have done that, it is very hard to unspread it. Rumour has it Reeves might take more taxes in the next Budget. She shouldn't be spending so much.'
McDonough started her business when a family friend, Nigel Milne, asked her to design modern jewellery for his shop in Mayfair.
Until then, she had been a secretary, including for David Stirling, the founder of the SAS, having left school as soon as she could because lessons bored her.
Though her father had an antique jewellery shop, she says she knew nothing about the business, adding: 'But I was young and you just go for it. I'm not much of a feminist but I priced my jewellery between £95 and £950 as women were starting to earn more, to make their own decisions and buy their own jewellery.'
Her first designs included crystal heart earrings with a diamond-set bow on top.
'Well it was the 80s,' she says.
David Deakin, whom she had lined up to make them, told her he didn't think they would sell.
'I wasn't sure either. We laugh about it now,' she says. The designs, which are still on sale today, proved wildly successful.
'I asked my father for £5,000 to start my own jewellery business,' she says. 'He had been a jeweller – I am from five generations of jewellers – but none women.
'He looked rather bemused and said he was not sure it was a good idea. He loaned me the money for two years. I paid him back within a year, and no one was more surprised than me, let alone him.'
'Women were not taken as seriously back then. I remember going to the bank manager at Barclays when I had been in business six or seven years.
'He asked me into a meeting where he said he didn't think this was the bank for me.
'I rang up HSBC and they have been fantastic ever since. I do feel a little bit of that Pretty Woman thing, that he made a big mistake, huge. It was definitely because I was a little woman with a little jewellery company.'
One or two snooty rivals on Bond Street 'thought I was pathetic' she says. 'I never let it bother me. Have a laugh and soldier on.
'My mother said it is terribly unattractive to complain. My father was a prisoner-of-war and that puts it in perspective.' McDonough's Royal connection goes back to 1986, when Sarah Ferguson arrived at Bordeaux airport wearing onyx heart and bow earrings and a pearl and onyx heart necklace. Soon after, Diana, Princess of Wales, began wearing Kiki jewellery too. McDonough knew Diana's sisters and thinks they must have said something to her about McDonough's jewellery.
'She was lovely. When she came to my shop she waited her turn.
'The jewellery I do is not bling or cutting edge, it is pretty and hopefully makes you feel prettier.
'That's what I think jewellery should be, it shouldn't walk in the door before you. It suits the working mother lifestyle, where you can wear it every day and love it.
Twice divorced, she combined the business with bringing up two sons. She says: 'I had children quite late and thought why have them if you're not going to see them? I didn't take a break, I just ran the business at a slightly slower growth rate. Then when the children went away to school, I thought right, that's it.
'My prices are now £950 to about £25,000. I still love seeing people in the street wearing my jewellery. It's a bore to keep something in a safe, I think jewellery should be worn with jeans. I put on a pair of earrings on a Monday and take them off on a Friday.'
She is, she says in cut-glass tones, a 'great Liverpool fan', a passion acquired from her youngest son. Her other great passion is ballet, and she has designed a collection inspired by prima ballerina Lauren Cuthbertson. She says: 'Ballet and football are both about really neat footwork and amazing athleticism and strength, but ballet is my ultimate. I love it.'
Next on the agenda is expanding in the US. She hasn't seen Melania Trump wear her jewellery, adding: 'Though I have to say, she does dress beautifully. I think she's amazing. She is a cool customer.'
McDonough has no plans to retire, and says her two sons won't take over when she eventually steps back. She says: 'I don't have that ambition to pass on a family business. I have had the best 40 years any woman could possibly ask for, and counting, so whoever has it next – lucky them.'