Life in Charms with Annoushka Ducas MBE

0:00Hello, we're interrupting normal Life in Charms programming for one episode only to turn the spotlight back onto Anushka Dukas, MBE, founder of her eponymous brand. I'm Susie Lau, a fashion journalist based in London, and I'm here to hijack this podcast to ask Anushka, the queen of charms herself, about her life in Seven Charms. So Anushka, I'm very, very happy to be here to ask you about your life in Seven Charms. So first of all, how does it feel to be on the other side of the interviewer setup. Do you know it's really relaxing. I'm like yeah you're the one with the questions there I'm kind of like and I feel really much more relaxed this side of the this side of the mic.

0:51Well I just love the way that you frame people's lives through charms and telling people's anecdotes so I just wondered how I mean why charms to begin with like that's an obvious question well no it's not obvious actually but I mean charms have been very much part of my they seem to be a part of my life since I was really quite small my mother used to travel a lot and she used to bring me charms from different parts of the world So I think perhaps the obsession started with that. But why I chose to do a podcast around this is because I'm a real fan of Desert Island Discs. Absolutely love it. And one night, I think, when I couldn't sleep and I was listening to an episode, I suddenly thought, I could absolutely do this.

1:43Instead of being around discs, I could do it around charms. And charms are so evocative of memories of important parts of one's life that you kind of you want to, you know, remember and solidify, if you like. So that's kind of why I chosen charms. Well, I hope I can do this podcast justice and. You'll be much better than me, Susie. Ask them all the right questions about your wonderful seven charms. So let's begin with your first one. Tell me about your first charm. So my first charm is a fish. And why a fish? A bit random. But actually, it's because my whole career in jewellery started because of fish.

2:38My mother had a fish business and she used to supply kind of 60 of the best restaurants in London from the Gavroche to Claridge's to the Connell to Annabelle's with fish straight from the boats. And when I was living in Hong Kong, age kind of 20, she rang me and she said, look, I've got 60 chefs. They're all men. I need to give them a present. Have you got any ideas? So I was like, not really. I'm I'm I'm selling property. I was working for Hamptons at the time, selling property to Chinese investors in London pre-97. And then I rang about because I was living in Hong Kong. I had this real privilege of being able to travel to different countries for the weekend, et cetera, et cetera.

3:25So I'd spent the week. I spent a few days in the Philippines. And I found this workshop making predominantly in silver. And they were really making beautiful things. And so I rang and said, look, if I find a picture of fish in a book, we could make those into cufflinks. So it really all began with fish. And in fact, so what we did is we made the first the first first thing I ever designed was these little fish cufflinks on one side, kind of a little salmon on the other. And on the other side, they were fish bones. And that's kind of why you're looking at that. um for the purposes of uh those of you listening to the podcast i'm actually holding uh the fish charm here and it's so wonderfully tactile and it the fish the little bones like move it's all articulated in it so so for me that that it's so important that charms you know they're not they're not static that if if they should move they do move so that's totally articulated on the spine and so that every every bone if you like has has kind of movement to it and it just makes it really playful it's so pretty and so so so lovely to hold and and play around with um but as i understand you you're completely self-taught like you you don't come from a jewelry design background and you've had quite like a sort of eclectic career you know doing I think I read you did you had a sandwich business you were in property so yeah I just wondered like how you had the kind of I guess like the courage to start Links of London like that.

5:11Yeah no I guess I mean when I when I left school I had no idea what I wanted to do I just knew I didn't want to go to university and I never, ever wanted to take another exam. But I mean, if you'd asked me then what I was, if I'd been designing jewellery, I would have probably laughed. But I think my mother was a real entrepreneur, you know, whether it was a fish business or importing horses from Russia. I mean, there were just a multitude of things. So surrounded by, you know, this kind of real entrepreneurial spirit. um so yeah no age 18 i i went to australia and well i started a little sandwich business with a friend which was you know very new then they were you know they were we we made the sandwiches and delivered them to offices you know but that seems like so obvious um so that was that and then this the fish was kind of really for me where where it all started and i guess what i hadn't What I didn't say was, you know, so I made these fish couplings for mum and she wanted 60.

6:19It was cheaper to make 120 pairs of these couplings. So I was like, OK, well, let's make 120 pairs. I've sold 60 to mum. And then in the meantime, I kind of came back to London to live in London, working for Hamptons in London. And I thought, what am I going to do with these extra 60? So I called up the buyer at Harvey Nichols and I'll never forget her name. she was called fiona duff and you gotta remember that you know actually all those years ago you had to ring the buyer there was no email did you cold call her that's like that's like i mean people try to do that now but it's like very difficult and you just obviously they just ignore all the you can't find a number can you yeah but yeah i cold called her so i don't you know i had to really steal myself to call and anyway this lovely lady fiona said yes of course i'll see you um That was very nice of her.

7:10Wasn't it? But you've got to remember that her job as a buyer is to find new things. So I guess that was, she was, you know, just doing her job. But I went to her with this one pair of fish cufflinks, kind of 1990. And she said, well, these are great, but I can't take one design. So if you couldn't design some more, come back and see me. I literally think she thought she'd never see me ever again. Anyway, a few weeks later, I went back to her and said, actually, I've got these six whatever they were and they were kind of you know golf bag golf ball pig head pig bum all these different cufflinks um and um she said okay these are great I'll take I'll I'll I'll take these um and that that was the beginning of links of London but that playfulness like those choice of like little objects and little kind of bits of whimsy you kind of like carried that through from links of london to anushka so i wanted to then talk about your second charm if you can introduce your second charm got here i mean the globe is really representative i guess of travel um my as i said you know my mother traveled a lot but you you can see it's it's really playful uh and you'll see in hong kong it's got a little ruby in it and a little ruby in London um and you know as I as I said you know we start this whole idea kind of started whilst I was living in Hong Kong I also met my husband in Hong Kong and then started Links of London obviously in London after we were married and um and that's what that kind of represents but it's the playfulness that's that's you know you talk about the whimsy but it's just that ability to it's really tactile it's playful and it's for me it's a kind of you know something that you can you can touch and feel all the time it's just a the two rubies are strategically placed in London and Hong Kong which I love because uh so my my family is uh from Hong Kong but I've never lived there I grew up in London uh visited frequently um but you can probably tell me a bit more about life in Hong Kong and a really special time pre-Handover as well.

9:38I mean it was a god it's a shame you never lived there because it was it's I still love going to Hong Kong I mean we've got a shop in Hong Kong in the Mandarin actually and and I absolutely love Hong Kong and then as you said you know it was a real land of opportunity I mean I arrived there at age 18 not I mean I was meant to meet a friend and take the trans-siberian railway home but I was a bit late having started this sandwich business in Australia so she'd gone so I ended up with a one-way ticket in Hong Kong so I thought okay well I'll stay here and see if I can get a job so it was this and and somebody gave me a job which was quite surprising because I was very under qualified to do anything um but somebody said I literally sat next to someone at dinner and uh and he said oh I haven't had a holiday for goodness knows how long blah blah blah if I if I only I could find someone to take over for two or three weeks so I said oh I'll do it I knew literally not a freehold from leasehold anyway so I ended up with this job at Hamptons but Hong Kong is just it's just such an exciting place I love this like accidental path that you've kind of taken from one thing to the next it sounds extraordinary and the other thing that happened to me in Hong Kong is well a I met my husband there and b um we my the first piece of actual jewelry that I designed was my engagement ring and um I did that in Hong Kong oh yes this is the art deco design that I see it's actually the middle bit is the bit and what was so absolutely fantastic is it was designed weirdly in the mandarin where I now where I now have a shop so it feels like full circle but um was such a funny story because John said to me everybody in Hong Kong thinks I look like Richard Gere I'm like yeah cool city anyway we go into this shop we have to buzz your way into the shop and the lady behind in the shop said oh my goodness you look like Richard Gere so I was like you've obviously paid it to say anyway but cut a long story short they made this they made this ring for me and having never designed you before back to your original question which you said I'm untrained but what was so fantastic is they made a master for me in brass so that I could actually put it on my finger and it wasn't quite right and the proportion was quite right and it sat a bit high and so they made it again when I'd said no no I want to wear it every day I've you know and I had all sorts of comments about it um so Hong Kong has a really it's a really kind of important place in my life and um it's I mean it's a really a great it's almost like a center of jewelry as well because people there love jewelry they have a deep passion for jewelry and in particular gold because it's very symbolic you know it's very present in all the kind of gold shops and and it's investment wedding jewelry yes in that culture too yes it's really important did you yeah were you influenced by that aspect at all I think inevitably I I was influenced by it but um But, you know, at the time, it wasn't really about gold for me.

13:06It was, you know, I was just doing a job in property. It was so not about that. But I couldn't find jewellery that I wanted to wear, so I just had commissioned two or three things, but in silver. So, you know, I couldn't afford gold. There's no way I could afford gold. I was 21, whatever I was. But it's kind of interesting looking back because Hong Kong definitely and Asia has definitely had an influence, I think, on my approach. And I think it's not necessarily conscious. It's only when people say, oh, God, this has got some kind of feeling of an Asian influence. And I never really think of it like that.

13:46But I look at it and I'm like, maybe it did. Well, let's move on to your third charm, which I believe is a yellow submarine. This is all about my mother. My very first memory was dancing to Yellow Submarine Beatles song with mum. And I don't know, I must have been five, six, something like that. So my mother died when I was 23. So it's a very, very important memory for you. And it's so clear in my head. And so I did this to remember mum and that important, important memory. and she taught me so much, even in the short time that she was around. But, you know, the submarine's just adorable and it's got, it's the propeller spins and it's got a little diamond in the periscope and it opens, it's a locket and it's just a really special thing but it's a visceral kind of memory.

14:46That must have been so tough to lose your mother at such a young age and given that she was so influential and pivotal in your life in terms of her entrepreneurial spirit. I didn't realise that you had left her so young. Yeah, no, I mean, she died very, very suddenly and it was, yeah, it was really tough. But I was lucky enough. I mean, there's a real double-edged sword, but actually I took over her fish business, literally. I had to give up what I was doing at Hamptons overnight, take over a fish business that I literally knew not a cod for maternity. But I was young. I was 23. But so it meant and we just started kind of links of London.

15:35So I used to get up at four thirty in the morning and drive to the coast and buy fish straight off the boats, ring up all the chefs and, you know, tell them what I've got. and then I'd get home at about two shower change and then I'd kind of a different hat on and put my Links of London hat on. All of that to say, through kind of just being so busy, I think that really helped me to get through the shock of mum dying. I mean, that to me is like the epitome of bootstrapping, like to straddle so many different hats and businesses. But looking at this yellow submarine and the kind of meaning behind it, I think the sentimentality of your charms, it seems to underpin all the work that you have done from Lynx of London to Anoushka, like injecting I guess that sense of emotion in jewellery.

16:42I think the jewellery is all about emotion isn't it? I mean jewellery is not about just how it looks. I mean if it doesn't look nice no one's going to buy it but for me it's absolutely about what it means, why, when, the memories it holds, the significance it holds and that's to me what's really important about jewellery And I think that's I think that's true, you know, from from what I was doing at Links of London all the way through to now. It's all about significant moments. And, you know, people used to come Links of London and they'd buy a charm because it was, you know, somebody passed a driving test or they, you know, it was their 18th birthday.

17:25And next year they'd come and buy something else which was significant. It's just marking moments. And obviously in 18 karat gold, those moments are particularly precious. And the attention to detail that I can get is wonderful. Well, moving on to another sentimental memory, we've got, I believe it's a gondola. That is a ski gondola that's kind of rubies. there's rubies and it's it's because uh as my my kids were we have a uh and a place in magève in france uh and it has a really old-fashioned gondola that's red uh and um and so for me that signifies so many happy memories um of a place that's very familiar that the children absolutely love and kind of that familiarity and everything and just the just the memories that that go with it i mean i wish uh listeners of podcasts could appreciate how beautiful this little gondola is with the things like pavé rubies and the glass on the rock crystal windows and the little and both doors open and there's a set of skis a little white gold set of skis on the corner But when I look at that, it's just so much about the memories and the happy, happy times we've had there.

19:03And we still go and, you know, the children all go now and it's just a really special place for them. When you first started Anoushka, which was in 2006, so you had sold... No, it wasn't 2006, it was 2009. We sold Links of London in 2006. Yes, sorry. That's fine. So you had sold Links of London in 2006 and you, I believe you wanted to start a business that was maybe more personal because Links of London had become, you know, very big, very corporate in scale. would you say that there was you know a real kind of I guess like something missing in fine jewelry that kind of whimsicality playfulness no it's funny sir because actually well what a when we sold lincolone 2006 I thought right that's it I'll go and go I'm gonna be perfect mummy I'm going to you know do all the things that I haven't done for a long time make sure I'm always there on the touch line and always you know all of those things and then I realized quite quickly that I having worked since I was literally kind of 18 I'm like as this it was not it was not feeling like a natural place to me you're not a stay-at-home mum I don't think so and I think my children would definitely agree and so uh I kind of was like okay what do you want to what am I going to do and I guess all I've really ever done was rather fish business or or jewelry and at the time I mean it's hard to think that now but in 2009 the in the kind of jewelry landscape was really really different from now so you know you'd have links and then not very much between links and the high jewelers so you know whether you go to Cartier or Boucheron or any of this and then the the odd kind of gallery but you had to be quite kind of confident about all very rich so I just thought I'm going to just do what I really love and so that was why we kind of started Inishka and at the time I was like you know I think I've always designed in kind of stages of life weirdly I kind of look back I didn't think that at the time and I've never thought that but looking back I look at what we did at Lynx and, you know, kind of little charms for children and godparents, you know, to commemorate events.

21:40And I think I was 40, I guess, just about 40 when we sold Lynx. And I think there's a thing about, as you get older, I kind of think that yellow gold suits me better now than when I was younger. And so I wanted to start designing jewellery that had a bit more personality than perhaps some of the other jewellery that was out there in terms of kind of, you know, I mean, I've got a love bangle, I've had it since I was whenever, but it's slightly corporate, it's slightly, so it was really about designing really individual jewellery that could wear every day and not be frightened to kind of get it out.

22:29in your time since um starting anushka you know you've seen a real change and now you have this kind of very broad like landscape massively it's such a different landscape um but i i'm just kind of thinking i'm thinking back to what it was i mean at the time i just wanted to have jewelry that i could wear every day that didn't take i want to take the reverence out of it and i certainly didn't want to be you know ushered into a shop with a doorman and whispering and all of those followed around yeah followed around I'm like no I really didn't want to have all of that going on and I really felt actually that that quite a lot of jewellery was being designed by men and it's a different thing men designing jewellery I mean they do wonderful job but they don't necessarily wear it so they don't really understand that those earrings have got to be super light they've got to move they've got to move with you uh you know you might want to have a have a change uh but without it all being a big big palaver um you know that you do want the movement because actually if you've got something around your wrist or around your neck and think you i i certainly tend to play with it it's not just an adornment it's absolutely something that you play with and feel um and so kind of yellow gold is such a lovely 18 karat gold is such a lovely material to work in um there's something about it kind of its patina and all of those things let's move on to your next charm which uh obviously is again connected to a life very uh important life stage peas in a pod this is this is fabulous the the four pearls in the in the pod yeah that's one of my favorites so those uh the peas in a pod are to represent my four children um and yeah i i mean it's just a it's perfect thing it's a good job you had four but to represent like well because Peas don't normally just, well, I only have the two, so it wouldn't work with two peas in a pod, in one pod.

24:52You'd have to have the peanut. It's an adorable peanut with two little pearls in it. But yes, I mean, how, I mean, four is just, you know, like I don't know many people that have four children nowadays. Well, I'm an only child, so I'm like, this was really peculiar for me to have four children. As an only child, it's like, oh, God, four, how have I managed that? How did you juggle motherhood with Anoushka and all links of London beforehand? I mean, it's a permanent juggle. You've made that. You're juggling, you know, women are juggling all the time. But there's no way I could have done it without help.

25:33I think, I mean, I had wonderful nannies throughout. I was so lucky. but also it's been brilliant working with John, my husband, because it's always meant that either I can go to the school play and he went to the meeting or I go to the whatever it was and he go to the touchline, you know, so that flexibility has been incredibly helpful. But, I mean, it doesn't matter what you do, it's a juggle. It's a big old juggle, you know. You always feel guilty for not coming home two hours ago and you feel guilty about leaving the office. I mean, it's all of those things we all know as women. We kind of know that that is a real thing.

26:18It's a constant guilt cycle. Yeah, I definitely know that. Have they had any input in like how you've kind of navigated Inushka over the years? I mean, they've had they've had masses of input because I was talking about designing for stages. in life so that is absolutely true in terms of you know they would be given uh christening presents and I was like oh I'm not sure about these I think I could do a better job so I was involved a whole range of christening presents at length and then as they get older and they'd be doing the jimkhana whatever they'd be doing uh you know I started doing kind of sweet you know sweetie bracelet for example the sweetie bracelet's a really good example because they were wearing those sweetie brosets used to eat those sweets from um so you know actually that that was very much part of that particular phase in life um so they've been absolutely an important part of the journey and now now is even better because i'm learning so much from them because you know i'm old and they're young and they're they're you know in terms of asking their opinion would their friends buy this would they like this you know or and and and one of my children chloe is really interested in in the business and she's got a really good eye for design um and it's a joy to be able to kind of and also they don't hold back in terms of what they think do you know what i mean they're honest they're honest so i'll ask you and you say oh yes it's lovely but or not they'll go absolutely horrendous absolutely hideous don't do it the real talk yeah and I really love that but the joy of learning from them now is like oh so refreshing and you never think you're going to get to that phrase we come on to your penultimate charm and this is very sweet as well it's a little dog paw it's very tactile isn't it yes it's very very good to kind of rub yeah with your thumb yeah so uh the dog um dogs have been an absolute massive part of my life do you like dogs yes i'm a dog person oh you're a dog person i'm a real dog person i'm not a cat person yeah i'm also yeah a little bit scared of cats yeah me too i'm like but i um so dogs have been a really important part of my of my life ever since i can remember um and really weird but so that's a dog paw for that but um i i know it's really weird i really like the smell of my dog's feet no no i know that's a weird one it smells like biscuits it smells like biscuit anyway i thought until quite recently that i was weird and didn't really discuss that and then i read a whole article in the daily mail about all these people who like the smell of their dog's feet but there's this whole raft of people that agree with me who knew I'll have to look that one up I'm not sure if I'm like going to like just start grabbing I don't have a dog unfortunately I I I hope to like once I get the the kids uh out of the once they're a bit older then I can handle the dog I know I know that's all quite a lot to you know but um so so that is that's why I've done this poor um and you know i've got i've got french bulldogs i've had um i've had them ever since i was very small when they were really unfashionable they seem to have come incredibly fashionable and everyone's why are your dogs so ugly and now they think they're not ugly they think they're gorgeous anyway the uglier the dog the more i the more i love them i'm i'm a pug fan i'm very cliched I would love a pug one day.

30:13Well, there you go. That's a bigger version, a bit more, you know, feisty version. So we've got to talk about your final charm, which I think is just the funniest thing I've seen. It's literally the word sex on legs, and I believe that's an homage to your husband. That's an homage to my husband. Yeah, because I said to him, okay, So when I was thinking about my my seven charms, I'm like, OK, I'm going to represent you with a like a kind of lovely gold rock. And I was kind of imagining this quite, quite beautiful gold rock. I could kind of just a solid solid rock because he has been my absolute rock.

31:00And I couldn't have done any of this without him. I mean, there's absolutely no question he's given me the confidence. he's always been there to say you know what you definitely can do it all the time I got total imposter syndrome because I didn't train to design jewelry etc and he's always been the one that they know you absolutely can do it so I thought gold rock was a really nice you know way to represent him and when I said that to him he went gold rock I don't want to be gold rock so I said well what do you want to be? He said, well, obviously I want to be sex on legs. So I'm like, okay, we'll go with sex on legs.

31:39I mean, kind of, you know, diamond sex written in diamonds and then on these little gold legs with wobbly, with wobbly feet. He reportedly looks like Richard Gere and he's sex on legs. Clearly. Yeah. I mean, you haven't met him. yeah dare I ask yeah is he yeah absolutely I've got to say that haven't I yeah you've actually obligated to say that or not but but it's kind of it's also just that kind of slightly tongue-in-cheek um approach because I think you're so much about you know it doesn't have to be serious all the time and you know and if the legs didn't wobble it wouldn't be quite so kind of pleasing and it's funnier with the wobbling legs it's funny isn't it I don't I just think it's it's so anyway I love it and and to be honest we put it on display in the in the in the stores to kind of you know talk about this kind of life in charms and to really uh get people to understand that actually anything is possible uh I never expected anyone to buy it anyway lots of people bought it I would feel this would be a popular one just because it's so funny and unexpected and you'd want that around your wrist yeah I think and the other thing is that lots I mean the thing that around your wrist or here because around your neck because I think the other thing with charms is that everyone thinks of them as charms on bracelets but actually we don't live like that anymore do we we're all busy doing this with the typing and etc etc so they all come kind of designed so that you can put them on a necklace and wear them wear them kind of differently anyway that's the story between uh about sex on lace well thank you for uh your seven tales of your seven charms um i think they've definitely spanned the gamut of from the sentimental to the funny to the pivotal um so I wonder what is next in the journey of Anushka so really unlikely but when we sold links of London in 2006 I think I I'm pretty sure I thought my silver kind of journey was over um so actually for the first time in nearly 20 years um I'm just about to launch a collection in silver and that's based on Knuckle which is a collection I launched in 2023 and it's this collection of chains and very much based around because I couldn't find you know what I said to you it's all about phases but in this particular case I couldn't find a chain that I really like that was kind of both uh timeless and felt kind of modern and the reason it's called knuckle I'm going to show you actually is because this this is the knuckle this part is the joint and it acts like the knuckles on your fingers so that it allows the joints either side to move so that's why it's called knuckle oh so to like kind of move more freely I've got one on my wrist as well so they move exactly yeah more free form but yeah the interesting thing I was reading up about the chains is that obviously most chains and machine made today and you found craftsmen in Arezzo in Italy that do do it kind of by hand so no you're so you're absolutely right um so 98 percent of most chains 98 percent of chains that you see in the market are made by machine so um and it's it is unusual to find handcrafted chain so what's really lovely about this collection is it's made by a kind of master craftsman in arezzo in italy who i first worked with 30 plus years ago when I did the sweetie bracelet and he made the first sweetie bracelet so I knew that he was the right person to go to in terms of working together to make make this come come come alive um and he's kind of 82 now and you know we've known each other for a very long time so it's really lovely to come full circle another full circle I know it's but it's yeah but it's exciting and it's difficult to make because part of it is cast so this this knuckle joint is cast and yet these are made separately and then they have to be soldered together so it's all it is quite a complicated and long-winded thing to do but all of that to say so I'm really excited now to be using this this kind of what's become a signature for us I think knuckle collection to and make it in silver um when you're when you're designing in silver what you have is the ability to make things a bit bigger bolder heavier um and that's right hard to do in when you're when you're just in 18 karat gold particularly now because the gold's at an absolute all-time high yes as it happens I mean I've been doing this for a while but um in silver it allows you to to go bigger and and and be a bit more playful with it and and I think one of the things that's so important about knuckle is the is the playfulness I mean the fact is it has it has two classes so one either end and that allows you to do so much when it allows you really to join this to this oh yeah to extend and make it long so actually if you have one bracelet and one necklace so let's say you have a bold necklace and a and a heavy bracelet you if you if you put those two things together I think minimum you can wear them six different ways and so for me that's it's so I find that really important part of my kind of whole ethos around design is that it should work really hard for you.

38:03We don't live a life anymore where it's all about occasion, or not my life, what I might be. So I want the jewellery to work really hard for you, and Knuckle absolutely embodies all of that. So the silver, introduction of silver is just, I'm excited about it because I think it'll enable more people to kind of come into it and kind of understand my whole kind of approach well it's part of that kind of personalization and you know individuality and what ability to individualize yeah to make it yours to make it your own absolutely yours yeah um and yeah so so for me that's anyway who who thought 20 years ago that i'd come back to silver but um let's see let's hope everybody likes it well your life and charm seems to be all about kind of circularity and symbolic you know symbolic moments but I wanted to end perhaps with a bit more of a journalist question and you know because we were talking about the next steps and like new audiences new customers coming into the world of Anushka and I think in the fashion and luxury space there's a lot of kind of question marks I think about value of things and what something is worth and I wondered from your perspective having had so much experience in in in the field is you know what how do you determine value in an Anushka piece?

39:55that's a really interesting question but I think in jewelry in what I do specifically is you know first of all there is genuine value it is it is real gold so there's no dare I say gold plate sometimes called vermeil sometimes called silver gilt you know all of those things which I don't work in that because I absolutely know that that is going to rub off and it's and therefore once it's rubbed off it's probably something you're not going to want to wear anymore and therefore it's probably landfill what i absolutely know about working in in 18 karat gold and silver and you know what whatever but it's real gold it will be here in thousands of years as we as we know and it will still retain its value in fact now it'll be rather more valuable than it was 10 years ago because of the appreciation of gold.

40:54But that's on the kind of monetary side. But on the other side, you know, I know I kind of bang on about it, but actually it is about values, about memory. It's about experience. It's about what you can pass on, what you can talk about. And so, you know, life in charms, I hope that, you know, when I'm not around anymore, that my grandchildren will learn a bit about me through the charms that you know these particular charms so I feel like that's a kind of part of the legacy if you like that gold and jewelry really really allows unlike kind of a lot of other luxury if you like clothes might be around but they might not but jewelry is something that is passed on through families through friends or whatever so for me it's a kind of there's no question about the value well thank you Anushka for allowing me to take over your podcast and for letting me delve into your life and charms well Susie uh thank you for thank you for doing it and uh I I'm rather liking it this side of the But the situation, it's much more relaxing.

42:13I'm going to hand back the mantle to you, though. It is definitely your baby and you are definitely the queen of charms. It's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you for joining us on My Life in Charms. If today's conversation has inspired you to reflect on your own story, a memory, a milestone, a moment worth cherishing, We invite you to begin your own life in charms journey and visit anushka.com to learn more or get in touch with us at bespoke at anushka.com to start crafting your very own 18 karat gold autobiography. Until next time, thank you for listening and don't forget to follow or subscribe to hear more extraordinary stories told in jewels.