Model and businesswoman Caprice Bourret would allocate more funding to the police if she were Chancellor of the Exchequer.
The American, who moved to Britain in 1996, told DONNA FERGUSON she no longer feels safe walking around London at night with her kids and thinks more needs to be done to protect women and children.
Her branded bedding range, By Caprice Home, is sold worldwide, including at Next, Wayfair and Very. Caprice, 49, is married to financier Ty Comfort.
Comfortable living: Caprice sells her bedding range, By Caprice Home, worldwide
What did your parents teach you about money?
My parents split up when I was four. I didn’t grow up with my dad and I have no real recollection of him, but my mum believed that financial independence represented happiness. She taught me not only to work hard, but to work smart and to be persistent in order to attain financial freedom. She was an interior designer. She’s had a colourful past – she’s made a fortune, she’s gone bankrupt and made a fortune again.
As well as being a grafter and a strong woman, she taught me that when you fall down, you get back up again. She was the biggest influence on my life and still is a truly inspirational person. The values she taught me are what I’m teaching my children now.
Was money tight when you were growing up in the US?
My mum did very well for herself until her father, who meant everything to her, got sick when I was a teenager. He passed away very slowly of a vile cancer and he didn’t have medical insurance. She had to sort that out and it was heart wrenching. It destroyed her.
As a result, we had a really hard time financially, so when I was 17 and graduated from high school, she told me: ‘You have got to go and support yourself.’ And thank God she said that because it is what has made me who I am today.
Have you ever struggled to make ends meet?
Yes, when I was living in a rough area of New York in my early 20s, trying to make it as a model. Initially, I didn’t have enough money to eat. Home was a small two-bedroom apartment which I shared with another girl and some horrible cockroaches.
Eventually, after a few years, things started to go OK for me. I wasn’t the prettiest, youngest or tallest. But I was smart about my modelling career. I knew it wasn’t going to last forever, and that I had to be really professional.
I got on the cover of Vogue in the early 1990s and everything changed. It taught me that you create your own luck in life. You put yourself in circumstances where the universe brings you opportunities, and then you have to go for it and not feel fear.
Have you ever been paid silly money?
One hundred per cent yes. Spending six days working on one marketing campaign, at the height of my career in 2000, I got paid $1million (£719,000).
I literally couldn’t talk when my agent told me the figure that he’d negotiated. I even felt guilty. I thought: ‘This is insane.’ All I had to do was a modelling shoot, a few personal appearances and some interviews. It was ridiculous.
What was the best year of your financial life?
This year. In the past, I made a number of smart investments in property outside of London in the English countryside. This year I’ve sold them and reaped the rewards.
The most expensive thing you have bought for fun?
When I was in my 20s, I bought a black convertible Mercedes SLK. I always dreamed of having one. I can’t remember how much it cost, but I do remember paying for it in cash. I felt like such a big shot. It was quite empowering.
What is your biggest money mistake?
I lost a lot of money exchanging currency in 2009.
I pay factories in China in dollars for By Caprice Home stock and get paid in sterling by retailers selling my products in the UK.
Back then, I used to exchange my currency on the spot, whatever the value was that day. I should have planned ahead and fixed my rate of exchange, so I would be OK if the value of those currencies changed dramatically – as they did after the 2008 global financial crisis.
I was naive. When you’re dealing with hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of stock and you don’t read what the market is doing and fail to educate yourself about the currency markets, you’re an idiot. I lost over £1million just from that mistake, which I deserved to lose. I was devastated at the time.
But I learned such a valuable lesson and later on, when my business really started to gain momentum and make some money, I knew what I was doing. I play it smart now and hedge, and I buy my currency forward at a fixed exchange rate, so I can plan my business and my cash flow. I’ve become so good at it, and made so much money doing it, I have even had a call from my currency exchange company asking me how I knew to buy at a particular time.
Do you save into a pension?
Yes, I do. I started in my 20s and that’s when I put most of my pension money in. Now I have children, I’m even more conscious about saving for my retirement.
Do you invest directly in the stock market?
Not outside of my pension. I don’t know enough about it and I don’t trust other people to play with my money.
Do you own any property?
Yes. My home is a six-bedroom Grade II-listed house in West London. It’s about 12,000 square feet. My husband and I bought it eight years ago at a good price when it was in a distressed condition. It’s now worth about eight times what we paid for it.
I used to have eight other properties as investments, but because I’ve been selling them, I only have two left now.
What is the one luxury you treat yourself to?
Sleep. When you’ve got a business and kids, sleep is a commodity that just doesn’t exist. My seven-year-old boys, Jett and Jax, are a handful and a half. And I’m a hands-on mum.
If you were Chancellor what would you do?
I would allocate more funding to the police. I want more police officers on the street. We should be spending taxpayers’ money on something useful like making the streets safer for women and children, not building ridiculous bike lanes. Personally, I won’t walk down the streets in the dark. I will not put myself in that kind of precarious situation and I’m terrified for my kids. Unless my husband is with us, we’re not walking on the streets after dark at all, we’re just not doing it. Call me overprotective, call me a little bit crazy, I don’t care. My children are everything to me and I don’t feel safe. I just don’t.
Do you donate money to charity?
Yes, a lot. I donate both my time and money to charity Brain Tumour Research because I had a brain tumour myself. I’ve also donated quite a large amount to Great Ormond Street Hospital for a new MRI scanner, which provides a more accurate and precise diagnosis for children with brain tumours who need surgery.
What is your number one financial priority?
My two sons and my stepdaughter Izzy, 13.
My children are going to be grafters, not spoilt brats, but at the same time I want to give them the best opportunities that I can in life.
Becoming a mum has made me even more ambitious, but it is a different kind of burning ambition than the one I had before. Everything I do now is for my children.
