Samantha Gwendoline Cameron, Baroness Cameron of Chipping Norton (néeSheffield; born 18 April 1971),[2] is an English businesswoman. Until 2010, she was the creative director of Smythson of Bond Street. She is married to David Cameron, who served as Foreign Secretary from 2023 to 2024 and was formerly Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 2010 to 2016. She took on a part-time consultancy role at Smythson after he became prime minister.
Samantha Sheffield's birth was registered in Paddington, London.[5] She grew up on the 300-acre (120-hectare) estate of Normanby Hall,[6] five miles (8.0 km) north of Scunthorpe in North Lincolnshire, though not in the Hall itself, the family having moved out in 1963, some eight years before her birth.
The couple have had four children: Ivan Reginald Ian Cameron (8 April 2002, Hammersmith and Fulham, London – 25 February 2009, Paddington, London), Nancy Gwen Beatrice Cameron (born 19 January 2004, Westminster, London), Arthur Elwen Cameron (born 14 February 2006, Westminster)[11] and Florence Rose Endellion Cameron (born 24 August 2010, Cornwall). Ivan was born with a rare combination of cerebral palsy and severe epilepsy and died at the age of six at St Mary's Hospital, London.[12] Florence Cameron's third given name, Endellion, is taken from the Cornish village of St Endellion; she was born early at the Royal Cornwall Hospital while the Camerons were on holiday in Cornwall.[13][14]
Work and politics
Cameron was a creative director at the British accessories brand Smythson of Bond Street, from 1997 until May 2010, winning a British Glamour Magazine Award for Best Accessory Designer in 2009.[15] She took on a part-time creative consultancy role at Smythson after her husband became Prime Minister.
In 2013, Cameron was named in Tatler's Top 10 Best Dressed List. In 2015, Cameron was named In Vanity Fair's International Best-Dressed List.[17]
In 2017 Cameron founded Cefinn, a womenswear brand based in London[18] that launched its first collection in February of that year. The name Cefinn (pronounced 'Seffin') is an acronym of her four children's names, Ivan, Nancy, Elwen, and Florence, between the first and last letters of Cameron.[19]
Charitable causes
Cameron is active for several charitable causes, and in June 2013 became a patron for Revitalise.[20] Cameron has volunteered for Dress for Success, a nonprofit organisation that gives free clothes and advice about job interviews to unemployed women.[21] In October 2012, she held a benefit for them at Number 10.[21]
On 11 December 2015, it was announced Cameron, one of sixteen celebrities, to participate in the Great Sport Relief Bake Off, which aired in 2016 as part of that year's Sport Relief fundraiser.[22]
Cameron is an ambassador for the charity Save the Children. In March 2013, after visiting Syrian refugees in Lebanon, Cameron said: "As a mother, it is horrifying to hear the harrowing stories from the children I met today, no child should ever experience what they have. With every day that passes, more children and parents are being killed, more innocent childhoods are being smashed to pieces."[23][24]
^Melonie Clarke, Helena Gumley-Mason, ”Samantha Cameron's Sari Diplomacy” in The Lady, 26 November 2013, archived here
^"Roedean's Royal Connection - Olive Middleton (Lupton 1896-1900)". Roedean School. Retrieved 24 January 2019. (page 12) Olive Middleton (Lupton, Roedean School 1896-1900) - Born in 1881, Olive, with her three brothers and sister grew up in opulent surroundings at the family's ancestral seat of Potternewton Hall Estate, near Leeds...
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Victoria Lambert (29 March 2014). "Why everyone wants a Marlborough missus". The Daily Telegraph. Archived from the original on 10 February 2015. Retrieved 9 February 2015. Most famous, of course, is the Duchess of Cambridge, "wife of" our future king. But see also, Samantha Cameron, "wife of" the Prime Minister. Frances Osborne, "wife of" the Chancellor. Sally Bercow, "wife of" the Speaker. Diana Fox, "wife of" the Governor of the Bank of England.