Hey everybody, this is Eleanor Mills. For those who don’t, don’t know me, this is my Sunday Queenager newsletter. Everything I do is about trying to tell, change the story that we tell about the latest stages of women’s lives and what we are for to something more positive and optimistic and fit for purpose.
In my view, um, if you’d like to read the, uh, newsletter, rather than have me read it to you here, then go to noon.org.uk and sign up and then it’ll be sent to you directly rather than through Substack. What we do on Substack here is to, um, read it out. ‘cause some of you say you like to hear it being listened to you, but I know some of you would actually rather read it.
So in which case, go to noon.org uk. Um, so here we are. This is my Queenager newsletter for February the 22nd, and it’s the Tale of three, um, Queenager heroes of mine, really? Antonio Romeo, who was made, um, the Chief Cabinet Secretary, first woman ever this week. Gisèle Pelicot, um, who you all know about. And Samantha Cameron.
So here it goes.
Dear Queenagers, I hope you’ve had a good week. I found myself. Unexpectedly moved by “Wuthering Heights”, uh, which I saw just the other night, which was our noon pro outing this week. It was so beautiful. Sumptuous costumes, incredible landscapes, such a powerful love story. And who could argue with Margot Robbie, Martin Clunes and the chap tipped to be the next James Bond, Jacob Elordi is Heathcliff.
The film has had some damning reviews, but we all liked it. We sat in a row at the Soho Picturehouse and I thought it was gonna be a bit 50 Shades of Grey, but it really wasn’t. And actually I love Emerald Fennell. I thought it was beautifully directed. So yes, it’s kind of based on Weathering Heights, the novel rather than totally faithful to the plot.
But you know, a bit of artistic license is a good thing. The cinema was full of women, lots of them Queenagers, and I suppose that’s not really that surprising. Men like Marvel and football, my husband’s downstairs listening to the cricket. Why shouldn’t we enjoy two and a half year hours of pure escapist, romance and beauty in the Yorkshire Dales?
And in terms of Ste as Seediness. Our view was it was a lot less embarrassing than Bridgerton, and I watched “Wuthering Heights” with my 82-year-old mother. She was there as one of the party. I actually thought it was really beautiful. So do go.
I want to write this week about three amazing Queenagers, Samantha, Cameron, Dame Antonia Romeo, and Gisèle Pelicot.
Um, I had to say that, and the highlight of my week, other than Wuthering Heights was going to the closing clearance sample sale of one of my favorite clothes brands, Cefinn. I never know how to pronounce it. And it was set up by Samantha Cameron, wife of, you know, that David Cameron, who used to be also the creative director of, um, Smythson and Cefinn was her Queenager dream.
I first came across Cefinn as a label, a clothes label when I was photographed by The Daily Mail. They serialised my book and they, um, they put me, um. They gave me a kind of sheet, um, from The Mail to, uh, publicise it. Now, for those of you who’ve never done a kind of professional photo sheet, it is really weird.
They give, they give you a kind of wind machine to make your hair look tussled. There was a crew of hair and makeup people to kind of try and make you look pets and a rack of clothes. Most of which were really not my cup of tea. The newspapers have a kind of particular look for their case studies, so they put everybody into those horrid color block kind of, um, frock dresses, very kind of Fox News reader.
There were, there was a lot of Boden and a lot of things I don’t really wear on the rail, um, because, you know. All the papers want to make you look like someone that their readers could relate to. They hated my green nails. They said the readers wouldn’t like them. But on the, on the rail, the best thing I saw there was a rather beautiful blue silk dress, um, which I put on.
It was Cefinn, which I kind of knew about a Sam Cam’s label, but I had never really worn, and I was just super impressed by it. Blue. It hung beautifully. It was super flattering. It was made out of the most lovely silk, I have to say. I liked it so much that I went out and bought it, bought a version of it in my favorite green to wear to my daughter’s graduation.
And after that I decided that I would have a look at Cefinn. because I do quite a lot of public speaking and things, so I need some smart clothes sometimes. And I started going to their sample sales because they’re quite expensive. And what I found on Wednesday was that I’m really not the only Queenager who loves
Sam Cam’s designs. I got to Bond Street to the final sale ‘cause she’s shutting the label down. And I got there at like 12:55. It was starting at 1pm and the queue was round the block. We had to queue for 45 minutes just to get in, during which I chatted to loads of the Queenagers around me. One had come all the way from Devon and she was saying she just loved the s and clothes because they made her feel so elegant and confident and it was really sweet. All around us. Women were wearing, um, their things from the label. This is actually a Cefinn shirt. There’s a lady wearing a sweater dress from last year. Lots of her trademark sleeveless jumpers. I’ve got three. I had say I’ve got a navy, black and a cream.
I just find her clothes super wearable. And the sample sale was great. I got a long leather skirt for £30 reduced from £400 and an amazing sequin party dress. Green, um, which I was actually zipped into by Sam Cam herself. She was there overseeing what must have been one of the push jumble sails in history.
It was a huge room with full of Queenagers, kind of in tights, all their bare legs trying on silk dresses and velvet trousers, party frocks, day dresses, all desperate to nab a bargain because everything had to go. But what was really interesting was they thought they’d do it over two days and it was so popular that everything had sold out within about two hours.
And I sat down and chatted to Sam about why she was closing down and said to her how proud she should feel. Because all those women there obviously so loved what she’d done and how she made them feel. And I really asked her why it was that she’d set, she’d shut. She was shutting it down because she’s an incredible Queenager.
And so I really wanted to know, you know, this was her Queenagers dream, this business. So I wondered why she was she was shutting down, I mean. Probably the economics of the business weren’t really working, but she said that it was stressful and exhausting and that she really needed a break and that she just wasn’t really sure that she could go on doing it for another five years.
She said how happy she was to have fulfilled her dream of running this business. She’d always wanted to own her own fashion label ever since she was a girl. And she was almost teary actually about how much the ladies loved what she’d done and how they made her feel. Um, and. You know, I just said to her, your clothes really are magic and you’ve done something amazing.
Because she was a rare fashion designer who truly saw midlife women like us. She loves us and she really wants us to feel good about ourselves in her clothes. I gave her a hug, you know, we know each other a bit from my former life. I once profiled her for the Sunday Times Magazine, um, and I’ve always been a big admirer of her.
I think it’s jolly hard to have such a successful husband and a very successful entrepreneur mother. I said I thought she should feel really proud of what she’d created and the pleasure that she’d spread. You know, and I really love a Queenagers who goes for her dream, particularly when it’s an entrepreneurial one.
And there really is another equally important lesson here, which is it’s also really important to know when to quit, when to know when our passion or the thing that the dream that we had is no longer serving us. You know, like many of us, Sam has had her own midlife collision. She said she got a kid doing GSCEs.
Uh, David Cameron’s, um, very publicly had prostate cancer. She was running a big business in a very tricky market. Fashion’s really polarized at the moment so that the very luxury stuff is profitable and the very cheap kind of sheen stuff, but in the middle, lots of, lots of good brands are going out of business, which is just such a shame because something like someone like Cam and Cefinn really did see midlife women. Um, it’s funny, when I wear Cefinn, I always feel kind of cool and comfortable and on top of my game. They’re made, the, the material, the material that she uses is fantastic. It’s never sweaty and they really last, I’ll be wearing them for years. So I really hope Sam enjoys her sabbatical.
She’s a grafter, so I know this won’t be her last throw of the dice. But also well done her for creating such an amazing and much loved label and also knowing when to stop. And it must have been really hard to throw in the towel so publicly, but I think she should feel really proud.
Another Queenager in the news this week, and actually another one I know was Dame Antonia Romeo, who’s been made, um, appointed the first ever woman to be Cabinet Secretary in 110 years.
Now. That really is quite a moment. Hooray. I wrote a column about it in The Telegraph. There’s a gift link at the bottom of here, um, about, you know, how her appointment is partly an attempt by Starmer to stop the, uh, kind of boys club inside Number 10 and to bring in some more women. And he’s been under a lot of pressure from the kind of parliamentary Labour Party to do that.
But I also was really struck by the incredible misogyny around Romeo’s appointment. Before she was even, before she was even, um, she announced in the job, there was an absolutely horrid kind of smear campaign by all the kind of men at the top of the civil service who obviously didn’t want her to get the job.
They dug out an ancient investigation, um, into her expenses when she was the Consul General in New York, back in about 2017, and accused her of bullying. Which was a charge, which had been thoroughly looked into and found to be totally groundless at the time. And, you know, we’ve all worked with bullies, which is horrible, but that’s not Antonia.
So it made me really think about the double standard around ambition for women. You know, Antonia is ambitious. She’s super bright, she’s hilarious. She’s definitely got an eye on the prize, you know, full disclosure, she’s a bit of a mate. We both went to Westminster as girls in the Sixth Form, which I have to say I think was a great preparation for dealing with the male British establishment.
We really learned to see them look them in the eye and know how to deal with them as a teenage girl. And then she also went to Brasenose College, Oxford, like me. She’s always been hyper ambitious, but I think that a, a very ambitious and successful man would never face the obstacles that she did. She was really bitched about for liking designer dresses.
I mean, why shouldn’t you have a nice frock if you are a successful woman? She had an expensive watch and all sorts of people had a go at her for wearing a Rolex. Or something equivalent. Whereas I’ve never seen a man attacked for having an expensive watch. And when she left, um, her colleagues mocked up a picture of her on the cover of Vogue because she’s such a fashionista.
She absolutely loves her fashion. And again, she was really, really attacked for that. So I just think that there’s a real double standard around women in the public eye as opposed to men. And also there were all these men kind of saying, oh, she should be looked at for kind of, you know, her kind of behavioral style, which I think is just because they’re not used to women being forceful.
One of the ministers that she’d worked, worked with said how good she was always. Kind of standing up for him, even if she put other people’s noses a bit out of joint. And if we’re gonna be successful in the world, you can’t always be pleasing. And there’s a real contrast there between I think, how men are seen and how women are seen.
So I, I really kind of congratulate Antonia for having got to that point and forgetting the job. And she, I know she’s been wanting it for a long time, and also it’s incredible that in 2026, she’s the first one. I mean, that really is a huge achievement. Anyway, if you’d like to read the column I wrote for it in The Telegraph, which I’m proud to say was puffed on the front page, um, it’s free here on the gift link [Editor’s note: Gift link is available in the free email newsletter for subscribers].
And my final, incredible Queenager of the week is Gisèle Pelicot. If you haven’t seen the interview that she did with Victoria Derbyshire on Newsnight, I really, really would recommend that you did. I thought it might be quite grim actually. It wasn’t grim at all. It was incredibly inspiring about her. I love her line about how shame should change sides, that it’s the men who should be feeling shame because of what they did.
You know, this is the woman who was raped by her husband and all sorts of people while she was asleep, and she was also, uh, she was incredibly impressive in terms of her bravery, her composure, and her lack of bitterness.
There’s a wonderful part of the interview when she’s shown a series of vox pops with French women talking about how the, the impact that she’s had. How her taking the stand is emboldened women everywhere to call out sexual abuse. If you haven’t watched the interview yet, please do. She truly is an icon.
I think this is how we begin to turn the tide on sexual violence against women with firmness, with dignity, with putting the blame back where it belongs on the perpetrators. And it’s a really, I think it’s really important that the rest of us as women. It kind of support her, you know, we should, we should watch that interview.
We should really take on board what she says because she’s right that it’s only through putting the shame on the men and through being kind of, you know, dignified and kind of grown up about how we talk about it, that we begin to change this narrative. And I think that people will look back at this point as a really important pivot in the way that we think about sexual violence.
The other book I’m reading at the moment is Virgina Guiffre’s memoir, which I have to say is quite a tough read. But again, if she could, if she could go through all of that ghastliness of the hands of Epstein and the others around him, it’s a really important portrait of that world, then we should be able to steal ourselves to actually read her book.
I really recommend, and I think it’s important that we do, but anyway, um. Another more positive news if you’d like to come along to a noon thing. We’ve launched, um, we launched our trip to Luxor last week. We’ve already sold 15 places. There’s only 20 on the trip, so if you wanna come, really do get on with that NOON.org.uk for the details.
And we’ve also got a whole load of March and. I’m doing a circle in London next week, which I think is sold out, but there are a whole load of March Circles if you’d like to come along. And the other thing is we’ve got, um, two Wasing retreats this summer. That’s where we go to the incredible Wasing estate in Berkshire.
It’s just near Reading off the M4 and we have the run of their 3000 acres of this most beautiful estate. It’s a wonderful lake with a sauna. We do lunch, we do yoga, we go for a walk through the woods. We all sit in the sauna. It’s really good fun. Lots of laughs, always. And lovely Leslie, who I used to work with, comes and does the yoga and we just really have a fa fantastic day.
So if that, if you’re, if you’ve been thinking about coming along to a NOON thing, and weren’t sure what to do, or don’t fancy a Circle, or, you know, can’t spend a whole week doing a trip, coming onto a Wasing retreats just one day. It’s not expensive, and that would give you a real sense of what we’re trying to do here.
So have a wonderful week. Thank you so much for spending this time with me this morning. I really appreciate it and I look forward to, um, seeing some of you at anything soon. Take care and remember if you really like, if you’d rather, um, read these in future, you wanna hear about us at NOON, it’s www dot noon as in the middle of the day, dot org uk.
And I’m Eleanor Mills. Thanks. Bye.
