A baby at 52? Sorry Dame Natalie, but even you can’t have it all
What is there not to admire about Natalie Massenet, the founder of successful online, fashion website Net-a-Porter, valued at £950 million?
honoured for her services to fashion and retail, she is now a Dame. the former fashion writer, 52, began her business with a £1.2 million loan from her former hedge-fund husband arnaud Massenet and created her empire from their Chelsea flat.
Everyone said it would fail. But Natalie was undeterred. She understood that many women — six million a month, as it happens — would prefer to shop online rather than suffer the ignominy of walking into a designer shop to be sneered at by an assistant earning less than they pay their nanny.
Given her drive, it’s hardly surprising that the woman who seems to have it all has now upped the ante.
the mother of two daughters, aged 11 and 19, has just announced that she and her second husband Erik torstensson — who at 34 is 18 years Natalie’s junior — have a new baby.
‘Erik and I are so proud and happy to welcome our much longed-for first son — Jet Everest torstensson,’ she said. ‘he came into our lives with the most generous support from our surrogate.’ I have the utmost admiration for Dame Natalie’s achievements. But surely she’s living in la-la land. Doesn’t she realise that, to many, it will appear an utterly selfish choice to have a child at 52?
It’s not like buying a designer frock online. You can’t return it if it doesn’t suit you.
You would have expected a smart businesswoman like Natalie to have done the maths — she’ll be in her 60s when Jet starts secondary school and 70 when he goes to university.
She shows no signs of slowing down. ‘My entrepreneurial drive is as strong today as it has always been,’ she says.
the difficulties of introducing a child into a family which already has two girls, a dad and a stepdad and where a career mum vows she’ll work on, are immense. Unless you have help on hand.
But if you employ nannies to look after the longed-for newborn, then what’s the point of motherhood?
I wish Natalie well. But I can’t help thinking that, after the surprise success of Net-a-Porter, a new youthful marriage and now a new baby, she might have been be lulled into a false sense of security that she can have it all. Nobody can, however rich or successful they are.