As the cream of the Primrose Hill set – Kate Moss, Kelly Osbourne and Davinia Taylor, to name but a few – filed into the Living Room bar in Islington, North London, for the party to celebrate the launch of Sadie’s fashion label’s first shop, they brought not only celebrity sparkle but guaranteed publicity.
But behind the glamorous facade of camaraderie, the true picture was very different.
Style Clash: Jemima French and Sadie Frost often argued and had little idea how to run a fashion business, says their former managing director, Sharon O'Connor
For Sharon O’Connor, then managing director of FrostFrench, the quirky clothing company set up by Sadie and her friend Jemima French in 1999, it was an eye-opening experience.
‘I naturally thought that with Sadie’s contacts, everyone who was anyone would be there,’ says Sharon.
‘But Sadie said she could guarantee her friends coming only if we paid celebrity party organiser Fran Cutler – herself a friend of Sadie’s – £10,000 to arrange the evening and make sure they all turned up.
Apparently, they wouldn’t just come along spontaneously to support their friend.
Sharon O'Connor reveals how she found herself dragged into a nightmare of tantrums, debts and jealousy when she worked for FrostFrench
Even so, the famous faces spent the whole night in a cordoned-off section behind a curtain, ignoring everyone else. And Kate Moss was in and out so quickly that most people didn’t even see her.’
For Sharon, 37, it was an episode that has come to sum up the two years she spent working alongside actress Sadie, 43, and 41-year-old Jemima, a former model.
Sharon, a successful retailer with a number of high-profile jobs under her belt, was headhunted and offered a six-figure salary to rescue the failing fashion label, whose dresses cost up to £200.
But she found herself at the centre of the celebrity pair’s tantrums and bitching and had to cope with what she believes to be their slender grasp of the basics of running a business.
As she worked to turn the company around – it had debts of more than £500,000 – she faced not only tearful and unpaid staff but also the constant bickering of Sadie and Jemima over everything from how much each was getting paid to the type of fabric chosen for a T-shirt.
Sharon even became the horrified witness to a fight between the pair at one of London’s most upmarket restaurants.
And after succeeding in getting two FrostFrench shops up and running and ensuring the company was on track finally to make a profit, Sharon was shocked when it fell apart this year as a result of investment drying up, and even more stunned to find herself made a public scapegoat.
In happier times: Jude Law and Sadie at the launch of her fashion label FrostFrench
The pair released a statement blaming the ‘new management team’ for the fact that FrostFrench had gone into administration with £4million of debt, adding: ‘Sadie and Jemima have been unhappy with the strategic direction and many of the day-to-day decisions.'
But according to Sharon, a glamorous, highly intelligent and ambitious woman who initially relished the challenge of making FrostFrench a successful brand, it was doomed to fail due to what she felt was its founders’ almost comical ineptitude.
In an exclusive interview with The Mail on Sunday, for which she received no payment, Sharon, who simply wants to give her side of the story, claims that running FrostFrench could be like an episode of Absolutely Fabulous – often as much about managing the personalities as managing the business.
‘When I first joined, Sadie was barely involved in the company and it was difficult to get her engaged,’ claims Sharon. ‘She had a very short attention span and we’d have some meetings at her house to make it easier for her.
‘She would sometimes cancel, though, especially if the meeting was in the morning. She’d explain that she’d had a big night and ask if we could meet later. When she did turn up, it was often with a twenty-something boyfriend in tow.
‘I saw her most important role as PR – she is famous and has famous friends, so she had a great opportunity to publicise FrostFrench clothes. But I hardly ever saw her wearing them, and her friends wouldn’t either.’
Sadie, Kelly Osbourne, Kate Moss and Jemima at the party following the opening of the first FrostFrench clothes store
Sharon recalls: ‘We sent Kate Moss a big bag of free clothes and suggested to Sadie that she should ask Kate to wear something, but she told us, “I could never ask Kate to do that.”
‘Jemima, on the other hand, is often described as the creative force of the business and she loved getting involved in designing the clothes.
‘But when I first arrived, she would come to the studio in Kentish Town late in the morning, go off to do yoga for a while and then go out for lunch.
‘She’d be ready to work by about 5pm – just as everyone else was going home. And her behaviour was very erratic. She would throw tantrums and shout and swear.’
Sharon, who is single and lives in North London, joined FrostFrench in March 2006, shortly after it received a large investment from an entrepreneur who wanted someone with a lot of experience to overhaul the business.
With 18 years in retail, including senior jobs at clothing brands such as Oasis, Pilot and the Arcadia group, Sharon fitted the bill.
She says: ‘It was clear there was a lot of work to be done – the company was in chaos and on the brink of administration. Staff were walking out because they hadn’t been paid. I thought the brand had huge potential, though. I was looking forward to getting stuck in and making a real difference.’
Sharon brought in new staff, formulated a five-year business plan and quickly took control, all of which was approved by Sadie and Jemima. But her first board meeting proved to be a bizarre sign of things to come.
‘It emerged at the meeting that Jemima had agreed with another director that her salary would be a six-figure sum and that Sadie wasn’t aware of this and was furious.
‘An argument broke out between them. I couldn’t believe it. The meeting ended but the arguing didn’t. Sadie said she was going to the sushi restaurant Nobu for
a date with Russian socialite Evgeny Lebedev, so Jemima decided we would go with her while she waited for him to arrive.
‘Jemima and I stayed in the bar while Sadie went upstairs to eat with her date but both of them kept coming down between courses for a cigarette. I went to the toilet and when I came out, I found Jemima, who was drunk, launching herself at Sadie’s face with her designer handbag.
'Sadie’s date was watching the whole spectacle open-mouthed. He and Sadie ran back upstairs, while I had to carry Jemima to a taxi to take her home.’
After four months, Sharon removed Jemima, who owned a 3 per cent share in the company, from her hands-on role and placed her on an equal footing with Sadie, who had invested several six-figure sums and owned about a quarter share.
Both oversaw and agreed all the decisions, but left the day-to-day running to the new team.
‘I had Sadie’s full support in reassigning Jemima,’ says Sharon, ‘but Jemima was shocked. She referred to it as a “drive-by shooting”.’
Sharon claims Jemima ‘was a destructive presence in the studio, behaving in an erratic, unprofessional manner’.
‘When she was given a project to look after, it was a disaster. Toblerone commissioned a limited-edition bag from us and her designs were pretty awful and late, which made the whole process late.
The bags cost a fortune to make because we had to get them done quickly to try to meet the deadline, and when they came back some of them were faulty.’
Because of poor cash-flow, there was often not enough money to pay everyone.
‘I made it a rule that the staff were paid first and the directors last, but Jemima hated it,’ claims Sharon.
‘After one meeting, when I’d told her there was no money for her salary, she left the room kicking things and swearing.’
Despite Sadie and Jemima being friends since they were teenagers, Sharon says they rarely agreed on anything. ‘When it came to taste, they were like night and day. Jemima liked things to be very obvious, such as T-shirts with very rude things written on them, while Sadie liked much cooler clothes.
‘Sadie would often ask me to disregard Jemima’s ideas, and vice versa. But Sadie had better taste so we’d usually go with what she wanted.’
Sharon speaks warmly of Sadie, whose personality, she says, is in total contrast to that of her business partner. ‘Sadie was like a scared kitten when Jemima was being her usual forceful self,’ she reveals. ‘She’s a very sensitive character, and nervous about how she’s perceived.
‘She and her ex-husband Jude Law seemed very close and would still go on holidays together with the children.
Sharon claims that her struggle to get Sadie to wear FrostFrench clothes was one of her major headaches. ‘She had an allowance of £2,000 worth of clothes a season.
She loved them and always took them all, but rarely seemed to wear them in public.
‘If Sadie did a magazine shoot, she loved to dress in Dolce & Gabbana or some other top designer to benefit her own profile.
'I wouldn’t have minded her falling out of nightclubs if she’d done it in a FrostFrench dress, but she never did.’
Despite its problems, Sharon believed the company was on the road to long-term success. After the first FrostFrench shop opened in Islington last September, a second opened on the Kings Road in Chelsea in March and there were plans for two more this year.
So Sharon was shocked when she realised that the company was on the brink of insolvency after what had seemed like a reliable investment stream dried up. She felt she could not continue as a director and her employment was terminated in April.
She parted on what she believed to be good terms with Sadie and Jemima, until they appeared to blame her and her management team for the failure of the company.
Sharon says: ‘It would have been easy and much more honest if they had blamed the change in their investment circumstances.
‘Sadie and Jemima had agreed every change I implemented. They can’t claim to have been unhappy with the decisions because they were involved in all of them.’
FrostFrench has been replaced by a new company called FrostFrench London Retail after a Norwegian investor came to its rescue.
Sharon, who is in talks with major retailers to find a challenging new role, does not hold out much hope for this venture while it is under the control of Sadie and Jemima.
‘I can’t see it working with those two in charge,’ she says. ‘Even with a never-ending pot of cash, I doubt they will ever learn from their mistakes.’
Lawyers for Ms Frost and Ms French disputed the truth of Ms O’Connor’s claims, but were not in a position to discuss the details.
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