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Ensconced in her plush cream leather seat during the short helicopter flight from London to Glastonbury this weekend, L’Wren Scott emanated the sort of unmistakable air of entitlement that only comes with practice — and serious amounts of money.
In her over-sized sunglasses and done up to the nines in beautifully tailored monochrome silk and chiffon, she radiated glamour as she chatted to her boyfriend Sir Mick Jagger over their on-board headphones.
It was only when their Agusta-Westland chopper landed at the pop festival site in Somerset on Friday afternoon that she let out a groan as her dainty black and white Chanel shoes sank into the sodden grass.
The stunning L'Wren Scott dazzled in a gold sequined mermaid dress at The Serpentine Gallery with Mick Jagger
Perhaps nobody warned the pampered L’Wren what she was letting herself in for at Glastonbury, where Jagger and the Rolling Stones headlined triumphantly on Saturday night.
Not that she and her rock star paramour were slumming it, like most of the festival-goers. They booked a £3,000 yurt — a giant tent, with king-size bed, antique mirrors and cashmere throws — to bunk down in, the coordinating decor of which was personally overseen by the exacting Miss Scott.
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ShareIndeed, her choice of expensive shoes aside, the 46-year-old American fashion designer is known rarely to put a foot wrong when it comes to issues of taste and style — subjects close to the heart of Sir Mick, her lover of 12 years.
No wonder, then, that despite the fact he has yet to make an honest woman of her, L’Wren — who is as shrewd and she is stylish — has quietly established herself as Lady Jagger in all but name.
L'Wren clearly has a good relationship with her surrogate stepchildren Jade and Georgia
Sir Mick Jagger with ex-wife Bianca (left) and current girlfriend L'Wren Scott at the Serpentine Summer Party in London
According to some, however, she is keen to make things more official. This week it was claimed she has been dropping ‘heavy hints’ to Mick, who will be 70 this month, about becoming his third wife.
Apparently, members of the Stones’ entourage have taken to calling her ‘So When?’ behind her back because of her determination to persuade the singer to walk her down the aisle.
Members of Mick’s circle, however, are sceptical about any suggestion that the savvy L’Wren would stoop to being quite so blatant. ‘It doesn’t sound like her at all,’ one told me. ‘That sort of thing is for barmaids and coat check girls.
‘L’Wren is way too astute to try to put the arm on him. Others have tried and failed.’
Those in the know say it is precisely because she has resisted the urge to attempt to tie down the notoriously priapic Mick that Miss Scott has lasted so long as his consort — only second wife Jerry Hall, who was with Jagger for 23 years, kept him longer, but even she couldn’t stop his roving eye.
Sir Mick Jagger and L'Wren Scott posted a photograph of themselves online before boarding their private helicopter to Glastonbury
But their 12 years together have been astonishingly scandal free when it comes to the subject of women.
It says something about L’Wren’s steeliness that she has managed to keep him in check. It may why, in the bitchy fashion world, she is known for having ‘the legs of a gazelle and the hide of a buffalo’.
It’s clear that after years of happily melting into the background, we are seeing a new high profile L’Wren.
As well as Glastonbury, she was front and centre — in an eye-popping gold mermaid dress of her own design — as she co-hosted the Serpentine Gallery Summer Party in London last week, at which members of the extended Jagger clan were in attendance.
And who could blame the statuesque former model — who has long worn a giant rock of a diamond ring on her engagement finger, presented to her by Mick — if she did not want to make things more formal?
Mick proudly showed off his not-so-humble £3,000 accommodation once he arrived at the festival
Mick and L'Wren made the most of their time at the festival, checking out some of the attractions on display
The absence of a marriage certificate, however, has not stopped her slipping easily into the role of top cat among the other wives and girlfriends of Jagger’s cohorts in the Stones.
I am told Miss Scott is almost universally known among employees of the Stones as ‘The First Lady’. But it is not always meant as a compliment.
Despite the brickbats, her relationship with Jagger — who is worth £200million — has won her an enviable lifestyle. She is the mistress of his homes, including a £10million Chelsea townhouse, a French chateau in the Loire Valley and a stunning cream-painted neoclassical apartment on the Left Bank in Paris, of which she personally oversaw the expensive redecoration.
All this is a world away from her upbringing in Roy, a one-horse town in Utah, the adopted daughter of Mormons. Back then, she was known as plain Luann Bambrough.
But like one of her outfits, which she designs for the likes of Nicole Kidman and Sharon Stone, L’Wren — who changed her name at 17 when she ran away to Paris to be a model — is something of a perfectly put together construct herself.
She gives every impression of having reinvented herself from the girl whose parents — insurance clerk Ivan and mother Lula — couldn’t afford to send her to fashion college, into a sophisticated glamazon.
She and Jagger began dating in 2001 after meeting at a photo-shoot in Paris where L’Wren — whose 42in legs got her model assignments for Pretty Polly tights and Chanel — had been hired as a stylist.
They make for an unlikely pairing: as well as being 23 years Mick’s junior, at 6ft 3in, she stands head and shoulders above her 5ft 8in lover.
Only second wife Jerry Hall, who was with Jagger for 23 years, kept him longer, but even she couldn't stop his roving eye
When having their picture taken, she bends at the knee in a discreet curtsy to avoid towering over him.
Such attention to detail has given her significant leverage. Witness, L’Wren’s faultless display at the Serpentine Gallery party. Among the A-list guests, including Kate Moss and Sarah Jessica Parker, she had also been careful to invite several of Mick’s nearest and dearest.
It is, perhaps, an indication of just how secure she is in her position that she also felt safe enough to include Bianca, the first Mrs Jagger.
And L’Wren has made it her business to get on with his seven children by four different women. She looked at ease with 41-year-old Jade, from his marriage to Bianca, and Georgia May, 21, whose mother is Jerry Hall, at the bash.
Friends I spoke to this week say there is genuine affection between the children and their unofficial stepmother. Even Jerry, who divorced Jagger in 1999, has only good things to say about her.
Wisely, Miss Scott has kept on the right side of all the principal women who preceded her in his affections.
On Mother’s Day this year, for example, she posted a gushing message on her Twitter page in praise of Bianca and Jerry, plus Marsha Hunt — mother of Mick’s eldest daughter Karis, 42 — and Luciana Morad, who gave birth to his son Lucas in May 1999 after a fling.
‘Wonderful mothers and very kind, loving beautiful children,’ Miss Scott wrote. The only surprise, perhaps, is that she has not presented Jagger with a child herself.
The Rolling Stones performed on the Pyramid stage to a euphoric crowd of more than 170,000
Mick Jagger wowed the crowds with his moves at Glastonbury in an ostentatious green jacket
She has something of a chequered history when it comes to men. She dated well-off London-based property developer Andrew Ladsky, who is related to the Boucheron jewellery dynasty. But their three-year relationship ended acrimoniously in 1991 in a row about the ownership of a sheepskin coat and two pictures.
After returning to Los Angeles, where she moved after giving up modelling to work as a clothes stylist to stars like Tom Cruise and Ellen Barkin, she married another property entrepreneur, Anthony Brand. But they divorced after just three years of marriage in 1996.
In 2006, Miss Scott launched her own-label fashion house, and Jagger is a regular at her fashion shows.
But she has been careful not to exploit her domestic arrangements. In the few interviews she grants, she is frustratingly secretive, refusing to talk about her famous boyfriend or, bizarrely, even confirm her own age.
Perhaps it is this air of mystery that appeals to Mick. But the only spanner in the works is that Jagger recently went on record saying: ‘To be honest, I don’t think much of marriage. I’m not saying people shouldn’t do it, but it’s not for me.’
Only time will tell if the determined Miss Scott persuades the reluctant Mick to take one last turn on the marriage merry-go-round.
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