Under the influencer: antiques dealer and jeweller Sarah Jane Adams is the breakout star of Big Brother
Sarah Jane Adams is a walking contradiction, inspiring admiration in some; confusion or distaste in others. And that’s just how this newly minted reality-TV star likes it.
As we approach the front door of a terrace home in Sydney’s Newtown, a waft of patchouli oil comes along with its owner, antiques dealer and jeweller Sarah Jane Adams. Hugs are given and offers of masala tea are made as, wide-eyed, we take in the eclectic beauty of her home, which has been sanded down to find long-lost wallpaper, and displays a multitude of antiquities and memories of a life well lived.
It’s “organised chaos”, Sarah Jane laughs, taking us through to her sitting room, where we nestle in for an hours-long chat, ranging through topics as diverse as reality TV and reclaiming menopause.
With her striking looks and uniquely personal style, Sarah Jane – or SJ as she introduces herself – has always been more likely to stand out than blend in. Since her formative years growing up in the UK, she’s grabbed opportunities that come her way with both hands, crisscrossing the globe in the process and living a life that appears to be in constant motion.
Occasionally, she would find herself stopped by a passing photographer, captivated by her riotously coloured and character-filled garb. Sometimes those images would appear in print. But it was a chance sighting of an Instagram snap, reposted by her daughter, that launched SJ into the public consciousness and led to a new chapter in her life, albeit one she’s not always entirely comfortable with.
Clad in a red-and-white Adidas jacket with a matching headscarf, SJ’s nonchalant gaze and strength drew the attention of American filmmaker, photographer and blogger Ari Seth Cohen. He would fly to Sydney to meet her and soon, along with several other women he documents on his Advanced Style empire, she would find global recognition.
“She was (and is) the coolest woman I had ever seen,” Ari wrote in the foreword to SJ’s “unorthodox” 2020 memoir, Life in a Box. Indeed, today SJ is a favourite of fashionlovers worldwide. Her Instagram account, @saramaijewels, has 197,000 followers; her second, the newly launched @mywrinklesaremystripes, has more than 33,000. She’s an ambassador for Priceline and her inbox is constantly flooded with invitations to red-carpet events, offers to “gift” her products and “collaborate” with brands.
Yet use the word “model” or “influencer” to describe SJ and a distinct chill descends on the room; a shiver of disgust passing across her completely make-up-free face.
“I’m not an influencer because I don’t sell s**t,” she says bluntly. “I influence people, I know I do.
Even though I’ve never used the hashtag #greyhair or #silverhair or #silversisters or any of that stuff – because that’s putting me in a box – hundreds, thousands of women have said to me, ‘You are the one who has given me permission to transition my hair’.”
Currently, that influence is spreading. Today, SJ is riding high on a wave of reality-TV popularity. A break-out star on Seven juggernaut Big Brother, her daily antics have become water-cooler conversation.
Like many reality-TV contestants before them, several of the younger cast, SJ says, hope to turn their five minutes into monetised fame. Perversely, she hopes it becomes a means to ending her own.
“I’m really happy that I’m losing followers hand over fist at the moment,” she says. “I’m delighted. If I could get down to zero on @saramaijewels, I’d be so happy. I feel as if, in some way, you lose it unless you are prepared to invest so much time playing that game, which I’m absolutely not prepared to do. I’ve got more important things to be dealing with in my life – like hanging out with my family and my long-suffering husband.”
Square peg, round hole
Born on April 16, 1955, in the town of Chichester in England’s south, SJ’s arrival into the world was dramatic, to say the least. Her parents, Dorothy and Richard, were expecting twins. Sadly, her sister was stillborn during the long birth, with SJ finally arriving some two days later. “In England, we don’t talk about that stuff, so I don’t know any more about that,” she says now of the tragedy.
She would live life as an only child, but it’s clear through both the pages of her memoir and certain collections that her twin remains part of her life, albeit in a largely unspoken way.
With her father in the Royal Air Force, it was decided SJ would attend an elite boarding school from the age of five. Unlike her wealthy classmates, she was on a bursary. She believes this turn of events was one of her earliest experiences of being put into a box in which she didn’t belong.
“I was always the odd one out,” she explains. “We never lived on the RAF camp. We lived on a housing estate because my parents bought a house.
But the local kids there never wanted to play with me because they assumed I was a snob.”
Instead of finding local playmates, SJ would spend hours digging in the backyard for fossils, stones and gems, which sparked the lifelong fascination with found items that would parlay itself into a career.
As a young girl, fashion wasn’t on her radar. “I was surrounded by uniform,” she says with a shrug, adding that it was the postwar years. “My father wore a uniform; I went to school from the age of five and lived in uniform. We were allowed to wear mufti – and only two changes of that – one day a week on a Saturday afternoon. One of those was a version of what
I am wearing today. I’ve actually dressed like this since I was a teenager.”
While the colour, layers and eclectic pieces may scream “look at me”, SJ insists her outer layer has always had a far different purpose.
“It’s protection,” she says simply. “I can’t stand people looking at me. So, I put all this on and I shuffle along and nobody would know
I was anybody because people are so busy looking at this crazy mess of whatever. People always thought I dressed to be flamboyant. No, I wear the things I do because they mean something to me.”
Day trips to shopping centres were never a dream. Instead, fossicking for treasures was a passion. Moving to London after finishing university, SJ spent her nights working as a lighting technician, travelling the country
“I am not going to be moulded into anything that someone else wants me to be.”
with bands, and her days rummaging in the markets finding “exotic, old, second-, third-, fifth-hand things.”
Soon, SJ had set up her own stall, working out of Portobello Road, Camden and Covent Garden. In winter, she’d stuff her Wellington boots with newspaper to keep out the slush she was standing in from four o’clock in the morning. She would wrap herself in layers of frayed and distressed fabrics she’d sourced. Some of those were from India and they sparked a desire to know more about their origin – something that was even more alluring in the bitter cold.
So, SJ boarded a plane to India. And it would change her life in more ways than one.
Flying the coop
Growing up, says SJ, she was always happiest when in silence and in her own space. And while you’d think that India would be the absolute antithesis to that, with the noise and crowds
and hustle and bustle, instead she found a strange sense of calm.
Not understanding the language meant it didn’t intrude; neither did the words on the papers, buildings and sidewalks, nor the Bollywood music blaring. “It was so weird,” SJ muses. “I just kind of knew how it worked and I slotted in.”
That first trip led to a second. And it was on this visit that, after both being on a bus that crashed, she met a young man from Adelaide with whom she chatted for hours. Nine months later, she spotted that same man as she stood at her stall on Portobello Road. Not long after, she went to visit him in Australia – and stayed. In September 1982, they wed.
“We knew the marriage wouldn’t last,” she says, adding that their separation six years later was amicable and that she still drops in to say hello whenever she’s in Adelaide. “But we were in love and wanted to be together, and we had a nice wedding and it was all lovely jubbly.”
A “city girl at heart”, she set forth for Sydney, where a new life awaited – although she continued to travel the world, from South America to
Asia to Europe and more. She found her footing in the inner-west suburb of Newtown, the place she still calls home today. And it was here that another international romance would plant its seed.
A neighbour’s beloved cat had gone missing and, in desperation, he enlisted a psychic to help track her down. Always up for an adventure, SJ tagged along. “She didn’t find the cat, but she spent her entire time focused on me and telling me what was going to happen,” SJ says of the psychic.
The woman predicted SJ would meet a man from the Middle East, someone with dark, flashing eyes who would
“Why is being young the be-all and end-all? I want to be able. I want to be the best, most vital person I possibly can.”
change her life. They would meet in the foyer of a grand hotel and it would have something to do with gold.
The meeting happened exactly as described six months later in London. The man in question was an Israeli of Iraqi descent and the pair quickly decided to have a baby.
“I knew I wanted a baby. I knew I didn’t want to get married and
I knew that I had to decide whether to live between England and Australia,” SJ says of what led to her next life change. “It all happened incredibly quickly, because that was what the fortune teller told me was going to happen … it kind of gave me permission to do something that I may have been a little bit more cautious about had I not seen her.”
Twins, again
In June 1989 at the age of 34, SJ gave birth to twin girls, Olivia and Natasha, in a gruelling 24-hour labour. And, as with her own birth, the delivery was far from simple. “I had eclamptic fits after they were born and was unconscious for three days; I almost died,” she recounts. “It was a fairly traumatic experience. I was in hospital for about 10 days and when I came home, [their father] wasn’t in the house and didn’t come and help.
“But, very quickly, I realised that while the children were the love affair of my life, he wasn’t. And it was going to be easier for me to navigate life as a single parent than it was to deal with this particular person.”
And so the trio returned to Australia. Now, instead of heading off on buying trips solo or with a partner, the girls would come with her – a band of travellers traipsing through the world, delighting in the new and unknown. Consequently, “they’re not so keen on travel anymore,” SJ laughs of her daughters, who are now 32 years old and have
entered the jewellery trade themselves.
When the twins were seven, another significant man entered their lives. This time, he would stay.
Scottish-born David – or DT as SJ calls him – was married to the girls’ primary school teacher. “Unhappily married,” she clarifies, adding that “the whole of Newtown was against me” when the duo threw caution to the wind and embarked upon what would become a binding relationship, the pair tying the knot in India in 1997. “It was a very courageous decision at the time,” she says, but for the first time in her life, she’d found a man who was a true partner.
One who would stick by her – even as she embarked on another uncharted journey: menopause.
Embracing your power
“The poor bugger really drew the short straw,” laughs SJ of DT as she entered into what is alluded to in polite company as “the change of life” just five years into their marriage.
“He was an amazing partner through my menopause.”
Her hot flushes were legendary; her emotions all over the place. And she chose to go through the process naturally, without medication.
“Because, to me, menopause is a rite of passage,” she explains with passion. “Yes, it’s uncomfortable, but the best decisions come out of being uncomfortable if you are old enough not to just have a knee-jerk reaction. And the time of life for most people, with menopause, is when you are ready and strong enough to be able to make those decisions.
“As women, we are told that our prime is when we are 25 or 35.
That’s bulls**t. That’s not your prime – that’s when you are floating around and are easily manipulated. Your prime is now.”
It was during this time that SJ sold the family home, paused her business, took up yoga and became a vegan. Through it all, DT was her staunch supporter, even as she began to use those fluctuating emotions to speak out about female empowerment, ageism and the invisibility of our older generations – men included.
“Ageism is the most invisible ‘ism’,” she says. “Someone asked me the other day, how do I stay so young? And I went, um, cut! Why is being young the be-all and end-all? I want to be vital, I want to be able. I want to be the best, most functioning, vital person I possibly can.
“And this is my message: We shouldn’t be banded together because we are old, or we are white or we are female or we are wrinkled. We are all unique humans.”
That is the message SJ hopes will come across during her time on our TV screens. For while she initially resisted the mantle of public persona that came with her leap into social media, she feels that Big Brother may help her end the circle.
“I’m not going to be moulded into anything that someone else wants me to be and that is why I went into the [Big Brother] house, as I was able to be myself,” she says of what has led her to this unlikely place. “With great respect I will tell the story – my story. And I will go quietly after this. I have no ambition to be anything other than who I am today, except a better person.”