Nadja Swarovski Talks Tweed, Sheep as She Builds New Brand Really Wild

LONDON — It’s been four years since Nadja Swarovski left the family company for good, and since then she’s been on the move, championing craft, sustainability and emerging talent and putting her money behind the companies that share her values.

Lately she’s been transforming one of those companies, the classic clothing label Really Wild, into a high-end proposition brimming with Scottish fabrics, Liberty prints and London-made leather. She’s also been investing, through Pegasus Private Capital, in fashion, lifestyle and wellness brands.

“At Swarovski I was very much working with the craftspeople. I grew up in the factory, and I like the making element. When I left Swarovski, I felt I was missing my tribe” of makers, said Swarovski, who remains a shareholder in the family crystal company.

Swarovski added that she’s always been interested in “every single element of the supply chain,” and that as the world is digitizing, “I feel it’s important to step back, and really embrace the hand.”

Her mission hasn’t changed much since she left Swarovski, once a pillar of the fashion industry, especially in London where her office was based.

During her 26-year tenure at the family crystal company, she became the first female member of the executive board and led corporate branding and communications, projects in film and entertainment and licensing.

On her watch the Austrian brand sponsored the Fashion Awards in London and showered young talents, including Alexander McQueen, Julien Macdonald, Giles Deacon and Christopher Kane with crystals of every shape, size and color for their collections.

She also oversaw scores of collaborations with designers such as Karl Lagerfeld, Viktor & Rolf and Jean Paul Gaultier for the Atelier Swarovski collection and teamed with architects and lighting designers on a series of projects for Swarovski Crystal Palace.

And Swarovski was a sustainability pioneer, taking cues from the eco-friendly manufacturing processes used by her ancestor Daniel Swarovski 126 years ago and promoting the use of deadstock crystals in fashion and jewelry collections.

Her new projects have much in common with her past experiences.

She and her husband Rupert Adams acquired a majority stake in Really Wild Clothing last year via Pegasus, and since then she’s set about upping the style quotient, and forging close ties with mills and manufacturers across the U.K.

She has also joined the British Fashion Council’s low carbon transition program, which is helping small, London-based fashion businesses decarbonize their supply chains.

Swarovski said the focus at Really Wild is on sustainability, so the collections are small, focused and meant to last. She has been working with a variety of tweed makers, each with a different specialty. She favors Lovat for water-resistant fabrics of varying weights, Kynoch for its rainbow of color and Harris Tweed for its quality and stature in the industry.

Swarovski is also working with Lochcarron for the Really Wild tartans, “bouncy wools” and fabrics with drape, and Linton — a Chanel favorite — for bouclé. Italian mills, and Alfred Brown in the U.K., are making the linen fabrics, while the suits are made in Portugal, which is known for its top-notch tailoring.

Really Wild continues to work with Liberty, diving into the archives and developing bespoke color combinations and prints across different types of fabric. Other suppliers include Knitster, an English company that works with recycled cashmere; Kinalba, a Scottish cashmere maker; Dom Goore, a London-based leather clothing expert, and Chrysalis, an outerwear specialist based in Northamptonshire, England.

She wants to use Really Wild to show that fashion can be made sustainably, “whether it’s the human element, working with people in the factories, or whether it is just the clean production. Our purpose is to create a product that makes people happy, and enhances their lives. My choice is to do it in a sustainable way, and make it positive for everyone involved.”

Like many sustainably minded designers and brands, Swarovski also believes that minimum order quantities, MOQs, are a scourge.

“We need to address the issue of minimum order quantities. So many brands produce so much more than they know they will sell because they can get a cheaper price. That nut needs to be cracked,” she said.

She believes that if clothing companies are making locally, they should work with governments on incentives to make less, prioritize workers and slay the beast of overproduction. She knows that can’t happen in China, the capital of mass production, but her hope is that it could happen in the U.K. and elsewhere in Europe.

From a style point of view, she has sharpened the Really Wild silhouettes with an international audience in mind. She said the tailoring, dresses and accessories have to work equally well in London and the British countryside as they do in the Hamptons, Palm Beach and the Mediterranean.

Swarovski was an early adopter of Alexander McQueen and regularly wore the designer’s suits to work. She said they were “empowering, but still feminine. We really want to carry on that silhouette, with a bit of a shoulder, and definitely a waist.”

Really Wild sells online and has one stand-alone store, at 53 Sloane Square, which will be refurbished in early 2026. Swarovski has also been doing U.S. trunk shows, most recently in New York, Connecticut, Chicago and Florida. Going forward, she plans to collaborate with other clothing brands that complement Really Wild’s offer and aesthetic.

Swarovski is working on other fronts, investing through Pegasus in companies with sustainability, authenticity, craft and tradition at their heart.

“We feel that by supporting craftsmanship in particular, we’re supporting cultural heritage. This entire Instagram culture sometimes makes people forget the treasure they have in their own backyard,” said Swarovski, adding that conservation plays a big role in her investment decisions, too.

“It’s about looking at everything more holistically. Look at all the tweed manufacturers, and you’ll see that the sheep are so crucial. The weather impacts grass quality, which impacts wool quality,” she said.

Pegasus has also invested in Artemest, the digital platform cofounded by fine jewelry designer Ippolita Rostagno and entrepreneur Marco Credendino that promotes Italian homeware design and craft.

“Ippolita is a genius,” said Swarovski of Rostagno, whose eponymous jewelry brand was acquired earlier in December by the U.S. luxury goods distributor and investor MadaLuxe Group. Swarovski said the Artemest marketing machine has been a game-changer for Italian makers large and small.

Rostagno, she said, “found these amazing ceramicists, leather, furniture and glass makers so engrossed in their craft they couldn’t think about sales or marketing. They don’t know who the director of Bergdorf Goodman is, they don’t know who Peter Marino is. Artemest does that for them, and offers an interior design service” and one-of-a-kind or limited-edition products, too, she said.

She’s also put the Pegasus money behind an AI-driven company called Threedium, which is developing a program where people will be allowed to photograph themselves and order custom-made clothing. The program is meant to reduce fabric waste.

Another investment, in The Teff Creations Company, is focused on well-being. The business makes cookies, cake and brownie bites from teff, an ancient, protein-rich grain from Ethiopia that’s high in fiber and gluten-free.  

“It’s a heartfelt, sustainable business started by my ex-assistant at Swarovski [Jessica Rogers]. She has invested in some factories in the U.K., and we wanted to support her amazing passion. Teff is a great, nutritious substitute for wheat, and athletes are really responding to the cookies,” said Swarovski, who is also at work on an artisanal olive oil project in Majorca, part of her mission to exalt the hand, and the human touch.