... as SamCam plans lucrative fashion career
EVER the stylish ‘first lady’ of British politics, Samantha Cameron is now expected to launch a lucrative career as a fashion designer.
As well as her own label, SamCam could also return as an adviser to the luxury stationers Smythson.
With Mr Cameron’s political life over, she can devote herself to rekindling her well-paid retail career.
She is said to be planning a clothing line with former aide and stylist Isabel Spearman, who received an OBE in Mr Cameron’s resignation honours list.
There is also talk of her resuming her career with Smythson, where she worked her way up to become the firm’s creative director and built a 2. per cent stake in the firm before the couple entered Downing Street.
When it was bought out for £15.8million in 2005, she received £43 ,000 for her shares, followed by a second payout in 2009, estimated to be £40,000.
Her salary as creative director was said to be £400,000 in 2010, but when her husband became PM that year, she opted to go part time as creative consultant on a reported £100,000 a year.
Smythson’s own tax arrangements have come under scrutiny, with the Mail revealing it was owned by Greenwill SA, a secretive Luxembourg firm that was itself controlled by the Barracuda Trust in Guernsey.
SamCam, 45, is a Marlborough College schoolfriend of Mr Cameron’s sister Clare, and she met the man who would become her husband at a party at the Camerons’ house when she was 16.
If anything, as the elder daughter of Sir Reginald Sheffield she may be wealthier than her husband. Mr Cameron once joked: ‘Samantha owns a field in Scunthorpe.’
But in fact her father owns property and land estimated at more than £20million, has more than 3,000 acres of arable land, the Grade I-listed stately home Sutton Park, an 18th-century Georgian house north of York, a home in London and a hall near Scunthorpe.
Mrs Cameron’s career took a back seat while her husband pursued his political dreams, but friends say she has been itching to get back to work, especially now that their youngest daughter, Florence, six, is of school age.
SamCam was named the best-dressed woman in the world by Vanity Fair magazine last year. Her first collection could be out as early as next year.
Her husband’s decision to quit politics also means the family will no longer feel the need to justify expensive holidays. This summer, they have holidayed in Ibiza, Portugal, Polzeath in Cornwall and the isle of Jura.
‘Itching to get back to work’