Polo & More 2014
Polo & More 2014
By Karen Kranenburg
Photographs by Jake Thomas
T
hese days, it is rare that I meet people that surprise me, so when I do it gives me pause. It
would not be inappropriate for me to describe
Lady Natasha Rufus Isaacs as a woman of substance,
at 30 years old her sound principals and tenacity belie
her youth.
She may be a part of the royal couple’s privileged
inner circle, but when you meet Lady Natasha RufusIsaacs, she is the antithesis to what you imagine a
member of the privileged, hard partying “glosse posse”
(as they are so frequently called in reference to their
Gloucester roots) would be. “Natasha is not only very
different from some of her more frivolous friends, she is
also determined to make a difference.” The daughter
of the Marquess of Reading, she is self-effacing and
charming, not to mention stunning, with piercing big
blue eyes that just draw you in, and make you want to
know more….
There is a saying that life is not about the destination,
but the journey, and hers started in a very different place
from where she is now. Lady Natasha, who prefers to
be known as just plain Nats studied History of Art at
Oxford Brookes University, after which she followed
the very traditional route and went to work at Sotheby’s for 2 years. A committed Christian, she eventually
left her job at Sotheby’s, to seek something with a little
more purpose, and went to work for a church charity in
their social transformation section. In 2009, she and
her friend Lavinia Brennan (now her business partner)
spent several months working In an after-care home in
the slums of Delhi. They were so moved by the plight
of the people they met, particularly the young women,
whose lives had been so brutally impacted by human
trafficking and the sex trade, they felt compelled to
raise awareness of this important, but sometimes ignored issue.
Upon their return to the UK, even though neither had
any formal training in fashion, they hit on the idea of
launching an ethical fashion label, which they called
Beulah, which would provide these women with an alternative sustainable livelihood.
Quite aptly their logo is the butterfly “for each beautiful garment that we make, there is an equally beautiful
change happening somewhere else in the world – we
like to think of it as our ‘butterfly effect’. A small change
at one place in a complex system having a large effect elsewhere.” Where you see the Beulah ‘butterfly’
logo, you know that the product has V