PRINCESS MARGARET’S GRANDDAUGHTER: ‘GRANNY WAS BIG AND BOLD. SHE WASN’T PRECIOUS’
“Gosh, don’t look – my hands and fingernails are completely ruined by using the saw blade,” says Margarita Armstrong-Jones, greeting me at a bustling bar on the river Arno in Florence, the golden afternoon light gleaming on the Ponte Vecchio. It’s the kind of opener you’d expect from a bearded lumberjack, not the slight, strikingly pretty 23-year-old granddaughter of Princess Margaret. Granny almost certainly never suffered chipped nails and callused hands.
But Margarita – or, to give her full name and title, Lady Margarita Elizabeth Rose Alleyne Armstrong-Jones – has been hard at work. Her calluses come courtesy of her studies at the prestigious Alchimia Contemporary Jewellery School in nearby Santo Spirito, where she’s studying jewellery design for three months. “It’s a very small school with magnificent frescoes in a beautiful area. We’re given a lot of creative freedom, and it’s really satisfying to learn the craft and get to grips with the tools,” she says, sipping an espresso macchiato in a coolly student-coded outfit of cherry-red cardigan, jeans and loafers, her tote bag brimming with vintage treasure she’s just found in a Florentine back alley.
“Look at the stones on this, they might give me an idea for something jewellery-wise,” she says of a rodeo-ready studded belt. Princess Margaret never met Margarita, who was born a few months after Queen Elizabeth II’s sister died, aged 71, in February 2002. She is the second child, and only daughter, of Princess Margaret’s son, the second Earl of Snowdon, otherwise known as David Linley. This particular branch of the Royal family tree is woven with creatives. The second Earl is a “posh carpenter” in whose Belgravia showroom, Linley, exquisite bespoke marquetry desks sell for up to £79,000.
Her grandfather was the photographer Antony Armstrong-Jones, who married Princess Margaret in 1960 in what was, by all accounts, a tempestuous union that scandalised high society. The pair consorted with the Rolling Stones and the Chelsea fast set, fuelled by the Princess’s signature Famous Grouse and Malvern spring water (never tap).
Margarita’s mother, Serena, Countess of Snowdon, is the daughter of the 12th Earl of Harrington (do keep up). The Countess, not coincidentally, studied art in Florence in her youth. Both Margarita’s parents have informed her decision to explore jewellery design. “My mother is an incredible sculptress and, as she used to live here, she decided to take a two-week course at the Charles Cecil drawing school here to help me settle in,” says Margarita. “My father is a huge influence, because he always encouraged me to be curious. He’d say, ‘Be different, be interested in things, take pictures, do what’s true to you.’”
Early lessons at the dinner table might involve the flow of lines on a certain type of water glass, denoting its origin, or the pattern of the grain of wood on a particular table. You may not recognise her face, but you’ve seen Margarita – she was an eight-year-old bridesmaid at the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton in 2011.
She was also part of the procession at Elizabeth II’s funeral in 2022. Brought up in Chelsea, Margarita was a boarder at Tudor Hall School in Oxfordshire. She then studied photography at Oxford Brookes University (following in the footsteps of her grandfather, who took the famous photograph of Princess Margaret resplendent in the Poltimore tiara in the bath) before dabbling in interior design.
But it was her early love of collecting that sparked her interest in jewellery. “I can’t say I ever grew up marvelling at my mother’s pearls or anything, because I was such a tomboy. I cared more about football and being out in the mud. But I had a love for stones – actually stones, from the garden – and in the countryside my mother would take my jacket off and find the pockets spilling out,” overflowing with her pebbles and rocks. The countryside in question was not only the Daylesford Estate in the Cotswolds, where her parents had a cottage, but also Sandringham (at Christmas) and Balmoral. “I came to love stones in their natural, raw state, and that eventually drew me to jewellery and the idea of creating with my hands,” she says.
Her first stop was Paris, where she spent a year, bleached her eyebrows and “wore outrageous things”, before debuting the pieces she’d been crafting under the brand Matita on Instagram. Today, the Matita label takes orders from private clients or sells the pieces she’s made directly via friends or social media direct messages (for now).
Her aesthetic is rather more directional than the dazzling halo of diamonds on her grandmother’s bathtime tiara, or the blockbuster Cullinan diamond brooch now worn by Queen Camilla. Instead it’s all exaggerated shapes, Crayola-bright colours, whimsical materials and natural, often rather savage-looking motifs that call to mind the kind of experimental jewellery Shaun Leane created for Alexander McQueen. “I start with the stones, always. I go to suppliers and find things that fascinate me. I’m making a necklace now in these irregular-shaped citrines and smoky quartz stones.” She “spends hours and hours” at Peter Adler’s Pebble London jewellery emporium, picking out raw materials in the catacombs beneath the shop. “I’ve created pieces with these fangs and teeth shapes, bone, huge beads,” she says.
“I like the idea of an eclectic person seeing my pieces and thinking, ‘Wow.’” She’s wearing a more discreet arrangement this afternoon – a cluster of gold hoops as earrings and a delicate necklace of African glass beads, turquoises and corals, of her own design – but her USP is the bolder and bigger the better. That translates into giant scarlet chillies made of resin, the jewellery equivalent of a fiesta in southern Spain, or silver beads sculpted into carnivore’s teeth.
“You don’t have to be polite with jewellery; I like the idea of being loud, bullish, a bit rude. Audacious.” The girl who wears her jewellery is “on her way to a party”. Well, doesn’t that sound familiar? Princess Margaret was one of the great party girls and style icons of the 20th century – as striking in Christian Dior couture as she was in kaftans on Mustique. But known for her politeness and wallflower ways she was not (Craig Brown’s anthology of anecdotes about her, Ma’am Darling, is a glorious study in Margaretism).
How might her grandmother feel about her jewellery, I wonder? “My designs are quite animalistic, quite raw and organic, so it’s hard to say, but I know she had a love of natural motifs and turquoise, which was her favourite colour. She liked shells too, and would happily buy jewellery on the beach and wear it to fabulous state occasions. She would always buy costume jewellery, which is interesting – that way she could be big and bold. She wasn’t precious. And she was definitely a big earring woman.”
Margarita hasn’t had the full roster of family jewels passed on to her just yet – perhaps wise for a city-hopping 20-something with a love of nightlife – but she’s inherited some pieces courtesy of her father. Her aunt, Lady Sarah Chatto, gave her some boxes of Princess Margaret’s costume jewellery when she was younger. The tomboyish teen wasn’t wildly keen at that stage, but there was a necklace of undulating gold fish that she was entranced by.
For her 21st birthday, her father gave her her grandmother’s engagement ring – a ruby to reflect her middle name, Rose, encircled by diamonds. “It’s a Marguerite shape, a particular floral motif, and just so beautiful. The fact that it shares our name made it feel very magical,” says Margarita now. She wore it to King Charles’s coronation in 2023.
“It was the same church that Granny got married in,” she says, referring to that quaint little chapel, Westminster Abbey. “I wear it to things I think she would want to be there for.” Margarita is refreshingly offline, unlike her Gen-Z peers – although that makes pinning her down in the days before our meeting rather tricky. “I can’t stand being on my phone all the time,” she says. “I prefer using my hands.” She’s zealous about artisanal handcraft, which is why Florence appealed so much.
“I want to know about the human element in making things, I love when things have imperfections because they’re one-offs.” There’s a flicker of her grandmother’s pixie-like physicality and love of socialising – but what 23-year-old wouldn’t want to party, let loose in magical Florence? “It’s a buzzing, creative city and there’s always a gallery opening or a restaurant thing,” she says. Evenings revolve around the party district of Santo Spirito, and she and her gang have, in excellent student form, made friends with one of the local barmen.
Her regular lunch of “the most amazing panini made with focaccia, stracciatella and mortadella” sustains her for the evening festivities. As for what’s next, Margarita’s keen to expand her technical nous (”I’ve just learnt how to sand-cast”, a process of pouring molten metal) and grow her Matita label with a view to crossing over into interior design at some point.
A particular piece at the current Cartier exhibition at the V&A caught her eye earlier this year, she says, a giant brooch that acts as a whole chest piece, draping over the shoulder: “I love things that aren’t what they are supposed to be, playing with things, being a bit naughty, rebelling against the norm.” Sounds ever so faintly familiar.
Hair and make-up: Lisa Pascucci
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