Should party animal Jade Jagger encourage her teenage girls to drink, smoke and pout for the paparazzi?
By NICOLE LAMPERT
Last updated at 22:54pm on 16th May 2008
Amba and Assisi Jackson may be just 12 and 15 respectively, but they are certainly comfortable in the spotlight.
And with a pedigree like theirs - their mother is Jade Jagger, daughter of Rolling Stone Mick - who could blame them?
The sisters' latest outing, at London's fashionable Automat Club, was to help their mother publicise her latest business venture.
Liberal: Jade with daughters Amba, 12, (left) and Assisi, 15, at the launch of Belvedere Vodka's 'Jagger Dagger'
Jade has designed a diamond-encrusted ice pick - cannily named The Jagger Dagger - for which Belvedere vodka has paid her at least £250,000.
In return for the cash, Jade is hosting parties around the globe - New York, Mumbai, Los Angeles, London, and the Cannes Film Festival on Monday to attract a suitably wealthy buyer for the £125,000 ice-pick.
Just one is for sale - the rest will be used in clubs to help promote the drink - but it remains unsold despite its creator's best efforts.
Like a PR pro, Jade's pulled out all the stops to get as many column inches as possible for the venture.
At last week's party, the determined designer wheeled out her father to garner maximum attention, as well as happily posing with her scantily clad daughters, who both had school the next day.
Like mother like daughter: Jade was criticised for letting daughter Assisi smoke
'I felt a little creeped out when I realised who they were - and how old they are,' said a partygoer who was in attendance.
'They were both dressed like 20-year-olds, with high heels, lots of make-up and tight mini-dresses - and were constantly going back and forth to the bar. I can only hope they were drinking alcohol-free cocktails.
'The weirdest thing of all was they were the first ones there - they got there at least an hour before their mother - and even when Jade did arrive, she hardly spent any time with them. She really left the girls to their own devices as she played hostess.
'Amba and Assisi each had a friend with them and they sat at a table where they were joined by the pop singer Adele and drag queen Jodie Harsh.
Party girl: Jade out clubbing with Mark Ronson in Ibiza where she lived for almost eight years and still has a home
'Jade spent most of the night talking to Mick and only posed for a picture with the girls when a publicist came to find them.
'They left at about 11.30pm without their mother and were working the photographers outside, pouting and posing. They are two Jade mini-me's.'
Move over Peaches and Pixie - there are some new celebrity offsprings in town.
Liberal: Jade's parenting skills have come under fire
And unlike Bob Geldof, who cringes from afar at the antics of his children, Assisi and Amba are usually out partying with their mother.
A self-confessed 'old hippy', Jade Jezebel Jagger, 36, admits to having a relaxed attitude to parenting.
'They kind of manage themselves and I oversee it,' she says. 'Parenting has developed into a different thing now that they're older.'
And parenting a la Jade seems to be very relaxed indeed.
Last September, Assisi and her mother were pictured giggling in the back of a car as the 15-year-old smoked what looked like a huge marijuana joint.
Mummy Jade has made no secret of her own marijuana use and has argued for its legalisation in the past.
At the time, Jade's spokesman insisted there was nothing more than tobacco in Assisi's roll-up - but even if this was the case, it is still illegal for the precocious 15-year-old to smoke at all.
It is Assisi, in particular, who looks set to give troubled Peaches Geldof a run for her money.
Already well known on the London party scene, her friends include Saffron Le Bon (daughter of pop star Simon and model Yasmin) and younger members of the well-connected Von Bismarck and Dellal families.
Her Facebook and Bebo pages - which picture the teenager practising her pout - boast hundreds of acquaintances.
While Bob Geldof takes a stern view of his daughters' very public partying, Jade has adopted a more laissez faire attitude, even taking the two girls to her own all-night bashes.
Amba in 2006 aged 11, left, and Assisi, right, aged 14 – with their mother at a London Fashion Week bash
Both daughters are popular faces at Jezebel, the nightclub Jade oversees in Ibiza, and have also become part of the furniture at their mother's A-list parties in her home on the Spanish island.
'Jade used to ship them off to babysitters every weekend when she was out partying, but now they are older she doesn't bother,' said one friend.
'All three enjoy a night out together. Beforehand, they will often swap clothes and help each other with their make-up.
'Jade is still very young to be a mother of teenagers. In many ways, the three are more like sisters than mother and daughters. Jade is a very sweet mum and they all adore each other.'
Another source puts it more succinctly: 'Think of Fergie, the Duchess of York, and the way she is matey with her daughters and goes clubbing with them. That's exactly what Jade is like - except her life is much wilder.
'Jade doesn't ever freak out at her daughters' behaviour. Her dad was strict as hell with her and it just made her more rebellious.
'She tries to be really laid-back with her girls and thinks she would rather just know all the gory details of what they get up to.'
Two years ago, Jade's style of mothering came under fire when the girls - then just ten and 13 - appeared at a fashion party wearing miniskirts and low-cut tops.
Worse-for-wear: Jade stumbles into a waiting car after a night on the tiles last year
Jade's response was typical: 'I know my girls are absolutely fine. They were at a party and got dressed up - it's exactly the sort of thing I did at their age. They chose what they wore and I thought they looked great.'
When asked by Jonathan Ross in a TV interview last week whether she would have any more children, Jade told him she had 'grown out of it', and also said she thought she would be having grandchildren 'in a minute'.
'I think the girls will have kids, so I will have to look after the grandchildren,' Jade told Ross.
She added that she and her daughters were considered to be very much on the same level by patriarch Mick, who has several children younger than his grandchildren.
'We all fall into the children category,' she said. 'I think there are 11 of us combined - children and grandchildren.'
Perhaps we shouldn't be surprised that Jade still sees herself as a child - her upbringing, even by showbiz standards, was highly unsettled.
After her parents divorced, seven year old Jade moved from London to Manhattan with her mother Bianca, while Mick remained in Britain to start a new family with Jerry Hall.
Jet-setter Bianca was hardly a traditional stay-at-home mother. Jade would often be dropped off at the legendary hippy hangout The Factory to be babysat by Andy Warhol - he taught her colouring-in and she showed him how to play Monopoly.
'My mother didn't find motherhood easy,' Jade has admitted.
She later moved back to Britain, to attend an all-girls boarding school in Wiltshire.
After being expelled, she was sent to a crammer by her furious father to try and get some qualifications.
But on a trip to Florence, she met and fell in love with aspiring artist Piers Jackson.
It wasn't long until her own daughters were on the way - Assisi was born when Jade was 20.
Jade tried her hand at being a domestic goddess mother - all Aga cooking and chintzy florals - but soon tired of being at home all the time. When she split from Jackson after eight years together, Jade re-embraced the London party scene with gusto. But her partying eventually had to give way to more pressing concerns - namely money.
Notoriously careful with his £225 million fortune, Mick had stopped funding Jade's lifestyle after buying her a £1million house in Notting Hill when she had Assisi.
It was money, then, or the lack of it, which prompted Jade's move to Ibiza nearly ten years ago, where she bought a large converted barn and lived in a minimalist fashion.
Then, two years ago, Jade announced she was moving back to Britain for her children's schooling.
Assisi and Amba were enrolled into the £4,200-a-term Harrodian School in West London, and the family moved into a £1.75million house in London's fashionable Queens Park.
Inside, Jade's en-suite bathroom - which contains a pole-dancing pole - is bigger than either of her daughter's bedrooms.
Assisi and Amba, despite the upheaval, have settled back in the UK well. Jade, meanwhile, for the first time in her life, has thrown herself into work.
Indeed, after losing a lucrative £1million-a-year post at exclusive jewellery company Garrard, she has had to find a new living, trying her hand at all sorts of ventures.
Most prominent of these was the creation of her company Jade Jagger Jewels, which retails in top-end boutiques.
Unconventional parents: Jade's mother and father Mick and Bianca Jagger. They divorced when she was a child
She has also planned a range of loft-style apartments with uber-designer Philippe Starck and property developer John Hitchcox.
To pay the more immediate bills, she quickly signed up as an underwear model with Debenhams.
But despite her best efforts, the latest accounts show her architectural design company JJ4U has reported a loss of £304,082, her interior design company Jagger Bartlett has made a profit of just £8,316, while her lifestyle company Jezebel Enterprises made a loss of £38,683.
She remains undetered - some might say she has no choice with a family to support.
Her latest project is a clothing range, set to be released this autumn, which has already been accepted by Harrods and online designer retailer, Net-A-Porter.
No doubt Mick is crossing his fingers that this latest role is a success for Jade - for she certainly doesn't appear to have inherited his aptitude for making money.
One thing Jade has inherited, though, is her father's attitude to monogamy.
'I do wonder why modern society has made monogamy the one and only option,' she said.
'In England, it's always: "Are you with him or him?" Perish the thought it might be both.'
The American music producer Pharrell Williams also revealed the pair had an affair lasting more than two years, but admitted he broke it off because she 'wore me right out'.
One regular at her Ibizan parties concurs with Williams: 'Jade loves being the centre of attention and will flirt outrageously - and I mean outrageously - with any young man.
'It's hard to think of her as a mother of two because she is still an extremely sexual being.'
Just like Daddy, then - and, in a strange way, this image is one Jade is, no doubt, keen to cultivate, if only to bring her closer to her father.
It does seem that Mick is the only man whose attention Jade truly desires. As a friend said: 'Jade has had to vie for Mick's attention with a lot of other kids.
'For a few years he did despair of her, but recently they have become better friends.
'He may not 100 per cent approve of Jade's style of parenting - but he recognises that she has brought up two good children. He also recognises that she is working hard.
'She does still find herself having to fight for his attention, though.
At the ice-pick party, I heard her say to him: "Can you please stop perving at all the women in here and talk to me."'
Indeed, Jade was known to be particularly furious when Mick dated her friend, model Sophie Dahl, and begged him: 'Please - no one younger than me.'
Speaking last week, Jade moaned that being the daughter of a celebrity wasn't easy. 'It can be a right pain in the a**e. People think you are stupid.'
Perhaps she should keep those hardships in mind as she parades her daughters in front of the flashbulbs on the red carpet.
One can only hope that Assisi and Amba make a better fist of celebrity life than their mother has.
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