The PR guru’s daughter and perfect a Storm
She has opened for Elton, been snapped with everyone from the PM to Cheryl Cole and is close to Brooklyn Beckham. But just why is Tallia becoming so famous?
‘Help open doors, but you need talent to keep them open’
THE weather was surprisingly chilly for a London evening in late April. On the terrace of The Chiltern Firehouse, perhaps the most exclusive of all the see-or-be-seen restaurants in the capital, a large log fire roared as a group of young socialites sipped chilled drinks and posed for selfies, the table in front of them littered with glasses and designer handbags.
Among the group was Chloe Green, glamorous daughter of Topshop magnate Sir Philip Green, and Robert Cavalli, son of the flamboyant Italian fashion designer. But it was the sleek young blonde in the eye-catching sequin jacket who attracted the most attention, as her well-bred Scottish accent drifted over the A-list crowd.
Tallia Storm might be only 17 years old but thanks to a clever PR campaign and an ambitious mother, the former Glasgow High School pupil is fast becoming Scotland’s answer to Kim Kardashian.
In recent months, Storm has displayed an impressive talent for being photographed with people more famous than she is. From Mario Testino to Cheryl Cole, rapper Drake to David Cameron, Storm’s Instagram page is littered with the evidence of just how hard she is working to be noticed in the cut and thrust world of modern celebrity.
She is rarely pictured without the obligatory designer handbag (Celine and Chanel are favourites) and favours fashion labels such as Givenchy and Balmain. While most teenagers her age are scraping together the money for a beanie burger at Nando’s, Storm can be found in some of London’s hippest establishments, dining at the aforementioned Chiltern Firehouse, the Ivy Chelsea Garden and chic celebrity hangout Sketch.
During London Fashion Week she was ferried around town in a brand new Maserati, stopping only for snaps with American Vogue editor Anna Wintour and supermodels Lara Stone and Karlie Kloss. In January she was photographed larking about on the beach in Barbados with US actor Bryshere Gray, and has been linked with Brooklyn Beckham, son of David and Victoria.
In fact the only thing that remains a mystery about Tallia Storm is how the pretty teenager became such a celebrity fixture in the first place. Although she is often described as a ‘pop star’, Storm has so far released only one EP. It features four songs, none of which has troubled the charts. Although she has performed one-off concerts, she has never embarked on a tour or released a full-length album. A book, entitled Pop Girl, is currently languishing at 10,872 in Amazon’s young adult fiction chart.
The credit for much of Storm’s rise to fame then, appears to rest on the shoulders of the woman she calls her ‘glamager’. Tessa Hartmann, for many years one of Scotland’s premier public relations gurus, has done much to ensure her young daughter’s place in the spotlight.
Hartmann, a daughter of millionaire industrialist John Fortune Fraser, who once said she considered her daily work to be ‘networking’, is best known for masterminding the Scottish Fashion Awards, a glitzy annual affair which for the past three years has taken place, somewhat perplexingly, in London.
A fashion maven with a little black book featuring the number of every model, designer, photographer and celebrity you’ve ever heard of – and many that you haven’t – Hartmann has long been admired for her persuasive skills.
Over the years she has convinced Sir Sean Connery to come out of retirement to voice an animated film made by her own husband, talked Scottish Secretary David Mundell into hosting a fashion awards night, and promoted something called T-babe, a ‘cyber rock chick’ that was at one time going to be the next big thing in Hollywood, but sadly disappeared without trace.
No wonder then, that Hartmann – who has started styling herself ‘Dr Tessa Hartmann’ after receiving an honorary doctorate from Glasgow Caledonian University – has managed to her turn her daughter into a pop star.
For years Hartmann and her Swiss husband Sascha, who has been described as a film director, a neuropsychologist, an illustrator and a jazz pianist, lived in Balfron, Stirlingshire, and ran their enterprises from Kilsyth. But last year the family made the intriguing move to Jersey with their four children, where Hartmann’s PR firm Hartmann House is now based.
The story of how Storm was ‘discovered’ is itself tinged with PR magic. At the age of 12, Storm was on holiday with her parents and her grandfather in Hawaii when she had a fateful encounter with David Furnish, partner of Sir Elton John. Spotting him in the hotel restaurant, she approached the star and gave him a demo CD.
What happened next has become oft-repeated Hartmann legend. As the family were making their way through security at San Francisco airport, Sir Elton rang Storm, telling her how much he liked her song. Before she knew it, the story goes, she was being asked to open for him at his upcoming concert in Falkirk, his only Scottish tour date in 2012.
It was a cute story and she was dubbed ‘the tiny chancer’ by the Press. Yet before Storm had even encountered Furnish that day in Hawaii, she already had a management team and a website, not to mention the demo recording she was so handily able to give the pop legend’s partner. She had even provided the voice for a song on the soundtrack of an animated film named Sir Billi.
At the start, Hartmann denied accusations she had pushed her daughter into show business.
‘I’m aware there’s going to be a judgmental process that will go on, but from my perspective I haven’t pushed her in this,’ she said.
‘It’s happened, it’s evolved and this is what we do so we’re giving her the tools and it’s far less a pressure on her than it is for some of the kids who have no social life whatsoever because they’re involved in so many extracurricular activities.’
Despite the leg-up from Sir Elton, however, and a much publicised deal with Virgin Records, it was three years before Storm released any music. Instead, her management focused on other ways to keep her in the public eye.
She adopted an eye-popping hairdo that made her look as though she had stuck her finger into an electric socket and performed on stage at the Scottish Fashion Awards, the annual event organised by her mother. She secured a blog on the Huffington Post and gave a speech at a convention called Ted X Teen wearing a tartan sporran.
Sir Billi might have been Storm’s big break but the film – an animated jape about the race to save the last beaver in Scotland, which was written by Tessa Hartmann, directed by Sascha Hartmann and produced by Tessa and Sascha Hartmann – was not a success.
Despite a heavyweight cast including Connery in the title role and featuring Alan Cumming, Ford Kiernan and Miriam Margoyles, with Dame Shirley Bassey singing the film’s title song, it received only a limited release in the UK and was shown in only three cinemas before being released on DVD. Variety lamented it as ‘woefully anaemic’.
At only 12 years old, Storm herself made a rather astute remark about the career that lay ahead: ‘Some people might be like “she’s only doing that because of her mum and dad”, but while they can open the doors, I think you have to have talent to keep those doors open.’
Talent – and an incredibly active social media. For someone without an enormous track record, Storm has a vast following on social media,
‘Longoria loved that I could sing jazz so young’
with 134,000 followers on Instagram, more than 79,000 on Twitter and over 45,000 likes on Facebook. Her website is a slick affair whose front page quotes the words of Plato: ‘music is a moral law’.
The lyrics of Storm’s debut single Social Security, which gruellingly repeats the mantra ‘like, follow, tweet’, would probably not have overly taxed Plato.
Then there is the debut novel, Pop Girl, which was written after Storm signed a two-book deal with publisher Scholastic. Barely was the ink dry on the deal than Hartmann was, according to her daughter’s blog, visualising ‘the second book, a TV series’ – perhaps imagining her daughter as the new Zoella, the blogging sensation who makes wildly popular YouTube videos and whose debut novel, Girl Online, topped best-seller lists.
Intriguingly, on Pop Girl’s inside cover it reveals the book was written ‘with Lucy Courtenay’, an established children’s book author. Of the two reviews on Amazon, only one is positive, awarding the novel five stars and describing Pop Girl as a ‘Wonderful fun read’. The review was left by one ‘Tessa Hartmann’.
In recent months, Storm has ditched the electric-shock hair for a more grown-up look. She has become a regular on red carpets and this week attended the premiere of Disney’s Alice Through the Looking Glass, wearing a dress from new friend Chloe’s dad’s Topshop.
Last autumn she caused a minor stir at the MTV EMA Awards in Milan by appearing in a barely there black mesh dress that revealed her underwear and left little to the imagination. Aged only 16 at the time, the outfit raised eyebrows.
Romantically she has been linked to Brooklyn Beckham, the dashing model son of Victoria and David, and has been photographed with him several times. She has coyly denied suggestions of any relationship however.
‘The thing about Brooklyn is that we are friends and I have never been his girlfriend,’ she said once.
‘We hang out and he’s great fun. I feel as if he’s constantly changing his mind about who he is actually with so I am so glad to just be the friend and not the one who gets dumped every two minutes.’
Another celebrity friend is Eva Longoria, the US actress best known for her role on the TV show Desperate Housewives, who has apparently supported Storm’s career for some time.
‘Three years ago she just heard about me and has been flying me around the world to sing at her global gift galas. Her PR gave her a copy of a CD several years ago and she fell in love with my vibe.
‘She loved that I could sing jazz and yet was so young.
‘I think I was just 15 when I sang in Marbella for her at that gala.’
Amid this glamorous whirlwind, it’s tempting to wonder just how much time Storm has for being a normal teenager. Her 16th birthday party was hosted by a fashion brand called Paul Frank and held at a Glasgow nightclub. She changed schools half way through her education, going from the private Glasgow High to Balfron High School.
‘I was even asked to leave the choir of my old school as my signature wasn’t “soprano” enough!’ she wrote once in her blog, indignantly.
Even her stage name – she was born Natalya Storm Hartmann – isn’t quite her own.
Those who have met Storm say she is an intelligent and eloquent young woman, unfailingly polite and friendly. She seems to enjoy singing and if her social media is anything to go by, has a deep and enduring love for designer labels.
She will apparently be releasing more music this summer and there is also talk of a ‘major TV project’. No doubt her mother will be very proud.