Savannah Miller on creativity, pregnancy at 47 and her sister Sienna’s ‘beautiful’ engagement

The setting is suitably understated: a private dining room at The Princess Royal, a beautifully restored pub in Notting Hill, west London, tucked just behind Westbourne Grove. Savannah Miller, who is seven months pregnant and hosting a lunch alongside the jewellery designer Dinny Hall, is in high spirits and looking radiant.

The event forms part of Savannah’s Awaken the Maker series, which brings guests together for hands-on craft workshops and creative conversations.

As some of the first guests to arrive, we unexpectedly find ourselves helping the fashion designer to fasten the final button of her multicoloured Celia B dress. It had been delivered just ten minutes before she left home and, given her growing bump, the button proved just out of reach.

“I wanted to wear something jewel-coloured,” she tells us. “I never really wear colour like this, and it feels joyful – it makes you feel happy. How have I not clocked this before? I’m 47 years old!”

Savannah is already a mother to three children – Moses, 21, Lyra, 18, and Bali, 14 – with her first husband, Nick Skinner, a bushcraft teacher from Devon, and has a stepson, Java Skinner, 31.

She is now expecting her first child with her second husband, James Whewell, the heir to the Wyresdale Park estate in Lancashire. Their baby is due in a matter of weeks – less than six months after her sister, the actress Sienna Miller, welcomed her third child in May. 

“It was intentional on my part,” she says. “I thought: ‘If she’s doing it again, at least I won’t be in the trenches on my own. I’ll join her… if I should be so lucky.'”

We meet the day after it is announced that Sienna is engaged to her partner, the actor Oli Green, 29, who is the father of her two youngest children.

“We’re all over the moon. It’s the happiest news, and it was beautiful, the whole thing,” Savannah says of her sister’s engagement. “I can’t express how happy I am for her.”

Recently, Sienna, 44, spoke about the judgement that women can face when having children later in life, and Savannah agrees with the sentiment. “There’s a very strong narrative against women doing things,” she says.

“It frustrates me immensely, because if it were a man, the question wouldn’t arise; it doesn’t enter people’s heads. If it’s biologically possible, then clearly it’s totally fine. People are always going to have their opinions, but each to their own.”

The lunch, attended by guests including the model Jodie Kidd, the actresses Remmie Milner, Mika Simmons and Pearl Mackie and stylist Bay Garnett, is intended to bring together women in the creative industries to focus on jewellery making. 

“Over the years, I’ve been finding myself less and less inspired and creative, and everyone I’ve spoken to who is in the creative industry has found that,” Savannah says.

“There’s this disconnect now, with digital information that’s literally in your hand 24/7… we’re not finding imagery in the way we used to, and we’re not distilling it in our souls.

“Awaken the Maker began because I really wanted to remind people of that feeling of being a portal, in essence, to your own creativity. You can do that by learning a new skill.”

Many of the previous workshops, which focused on crafts such as calligraphy and willow-weaving, were hosted in the Cotswolds, at The Double Red Duke in Clanfield, close to where Savannah lives. “I loved seeing the impact they had,” she says. “People feel as though they have literally awakened the maker within themselves.”

Dinny was a natural choice to lead a jewellery workshop; Savannah has admired her work since childhood. “Sienna and I used to be – we still are – diehard fans of her hoops. When I told my friends that I was doing this event with Dinny, they were like, ‘Oh my God, I love Dinny Hall!’

“What’s unique about her is that she’s stayed so true to what she does. There’s newness, and it’s fresh and exciting every season, but it’s still very much definable.”

Savannah was still studying at Central Saint Martins in London when she joined the label Alexander McQueen, working alongside the late fashion designer himself. The experience left an indelible mark on her and continues to shape her creative outlook.

“It was a riot,” she says. “Back then, there was no such thing as the internet, so we had loads of books everywhere; it was this massive mash-up of information that created something that came from within him.

“I learned more there than I ever did at Central Saint Martins. He was such a unique individual, and I was very quickly by his side, because people would come and go and I was such a kiss-ass… I was obsessed with him.”

Reflecting on that formative time, she contrasts it with the creative climate of today. “I feel that individuality has been squashed by the digital era, and it’s just [about] copycatting everything. It’s sad.

“Back then, [John] Galliano did Galliano, Lee [Alexander McQueen] did Lee, and everybody had their own, very different signature, whereas nowadays you go into department stores and it’s like one big washy kind of blah. Everybody’s looking at the same information online.”

Away from her reflections on the industry, Savannah says she is in a particularly content and grounded phase of her own life. “When you’re in your late forties, you know yourself so much better, and there’s a sense of: ‘I know who I am; I know where I want to go and what I want to do.'”

She also loves the gentler pace of life in Gloucestershire. “I really love coming to London. I need the buzz of the city to be functional in work, but when I go home – which is a sort of land that time forgot, down there in my little valley – it’s like stepping into a fairytale.”