LoveBeth: Cork businesswoman Beth Haughton's new vision for jewellery

She made her name with her eponymous boutiques and her lauded restaurants. Now, Beth Haughton has created a new jewellery line. She shares her vision for LoveBeth with Marjorie Brennan

Jewellery designer Beth Haughton’s daughters, Tessa and Phoebe, pictured modelling pieces from the new Lovebeth collection. Picture: Chani Anderson

Beth Haughton cuts a very glamorous figure when she appears on my screen, looking radiant in a gorgeous off-the-shoulder number.

“If you saw what I looked like from the waist down, it’s not a good look,” she laughs.

This Zoom chat is the longest she has sat down and talked to someone in over a month, she says. 

Uppermost in her mind at the moment is her new business, the online jewellery brand LoveBeth, which went live recently. 

She’s the perfect advertisement for her own product and is adorned with her handiwork, crafted from a selection of brightly coloured beads, stones, crystals and pearls.

Beth Haughton has always been creative but it is only since her newest project, the Lovebeth jewellery collection, was launched that she feels she has found her true passion. Picture: Chani Anderson

The challenge of launching a new company is not new to Haughton. 

The businesswoman will be a familiar figure to many Cork people, from her boutiques which brought the chicest of fashions to the city and also her presence front-of-house at the stylish restaurants she has run with her husband, Harold Lynch.

“As a rule, I think I run on the adrenaline of the madness of my life. At the moment, I wouldn’t mind another few hours in the day. Obviously, since the website launched, the last month has been a bit of a whirlwind,” she says. 

“I was hoping it was going to be busy and I’m almost scared saying it now but I just wasn’t ready for how it took off. It has been amazing.”

Haughton has come full circle to her latest enterprise. Now living in Blackrock, she travelled a lot in her early years, which inspired her interest in bright colours and design. 

She says: “I’ve always loved jewellery, and not necessarily jewellery that is expensive. I am a magpie in the sense that I love colour. I lived abroad quite a bit when I was younger. For a while, my parents were living in the Far East and they would bring home pearls and crystals that my mother would get in the markets and I would make jewellery. It’s in my blood.”

In her early 20s, she worked for well-known jewellery designer Vivien Walsh, who had a shop in Dublin, and she began to design and make her own jewellery.

She says: “Vivien was groundbreaking at the time; she stocked labels like Jean Paul Gaultier and had a stunning range of clothes and shoes. She definitely was one of the people who inspired me in my love of things that I can’t afford.” 

Jewellery designer Beth Haughton’s daughters, Tessa and Phoebe, pictured modelling pieces from the new Lovebeth collection. Picture: Chani Anderson

When Haughton opened her own boutique, Beth, in Douglas in the mid ’90s, it quickly became a destination for the fashion-conscious from the city and beyond. She eventually moved to a larger premises in French Church St and business boomed until the recession hit. 

The boutique closed its doors in 2009. It was a monumental blow. She and Harold had also opened the Club Brasserie restaurant on Lapp’s Quay in Cork city, while they were still paying rent on their previous premises in Douglas.

“We said, ‘OK, if things go belly up and there’s any real problems, at least we know we can both work in the restaurant.’ The shop was doing very well even up until the end but it was just the stress of all of them together. It was July and I was in London buying a pre-spring collection. I remember I rang my accountant and said, ‘No, that’s it, I can’t do this.’ The stress was just too much and we closed the shop. I was devastated. I actually felt like my heart was taken out of me. It took me a long time to get over it because it was my everything – I lived and breathed it.”

Tessa Haughton Lynch models some of the vibrant pieces in the Lovebeth collection. Picture: Chani Anderson

Haughton and her husband concentrated their energies on Club Brasserie, which later became Dockland. It closed in 2022 and the couple went on to reboot the Ballymaloe-influenced cafe in the Crawford Art Gallery, which they named the Green Room.

Taking over the much-loved institution would be a daunting proposition for even experienced restaurateurs but the fact that it was a short-term proposition, given the upcoming revamp of the gallery, made the decision easier, says Haughton. There was also a pleasing symmetry in the move for her husband especially.

She says: “Working at the Crawford has been great. We knew we weren’t going to be there for long because obviously the Crawford will be closing later this year. We always knew that they were going to be difficult shoes to fill because the people who had been there before had been there for a long time. But Harold trained in Ballymaloe and he cooked there. His first job when he qualified from the cookery school was in the Crawford, so he used to drive up with Myrtle Allen from Ballymaloe.

“The people in the Crawford are incredibly nice to work with, we’ve enjoyed it, but we always knew that it was going to end.”

Jewellery designer Beth Haughton’s daughters, Tessa and Phoebe, pictured modelling pieces from the new Lovebeth collection. Picture: Chani Anderson

She says her husband and family are her greatest supporters. It has been all hands on deck recently as her two daughters and son have rowed in to help with the restaurant and the new jewellery business.

“Both of my daughters, Tessa and Phoebe, do the modelling for the jewellery. Tessa has just finished studying global commerce in Galway and is helping me with all the packaging and putting manners on me, making me work on systems and ensuring I do what I’m supposed to do.

“I do all the photography and graphics and Phoebe, who is the baby, is in the restaurant every day looking after customers. My son Nathan has been encouraging me for the last year to get the website up.”

LoveBeth is not Haughton’s first online venture – she showed admirable foresight in setting up an online shopping portal in the early days of e-commerce. 

However, she says the timing of the site was unlucky as, hard as it may be to believe now, the public had not yet fully bought into the concept of online shopping.

She adds: “You can sometimes be too far ahead. I had the first online boutique in Ireland, which at the time was six months after Net-A-Porter had launched, and everybody thought I was bonkers.”

Jewellery designer Beth Haughton’s daughter, Tessa, pictured modelling some of the new Lovebeth collection. Picture: Chani Anderson

Her determination and resilience in the face of setbacks is inspiring. She acknowledges that things haven’t always been easy but optimism is just part of her mindset.

She says: “Financially it can be so hard if you work for yourself and you can be very lucky and sometimes not so lucky. Some people just have it and, no matter what they do, it turns to gold, whereas I’d say we’ve had more of a rocky road. We’ve had our ups and downs but I try in general to be a positive person.

“I’m not scared of hard work and I have a fabulous family, I don’t feel sorry for myself. I’ve never wanted a big car, I’ve never wanted a big diamond or those things. I do love the blue sky and the blue sea – if you put me in a little taverna right now in Greece with the cheapest bottle of plonk and a Greek salad, I would be extremely happy.”

Each piece of the irresistible feminine and gloriously colourful Lovebeth jewellery collection is unique and handmade by Beth Haughton. Picture: Chani Anderson

That she isn’t scared of hard work is evident – Haughton designs and makes all the jewellery on LoveBeth herself, underlining the care and craft that goes into the pieces. 

However, reaction to the website has been so positive that she’s considering adding someone else to the team.

“I like being organised and it is quite chaotic at the moment. This is what I want to do so I have to give it 110%. Our house has been turned into a bead factory – I’m slowly taking over the whole house, you have to eat on your lap,” she laughs.

It’s clear that Haughton thrives on being outside her comfort zone and also on the transformative power of beautiful objects.

“That’s the fun thing about jewellery – they are small things that can change everything, how you feel and how you look, while also spreading a little joy.”

• See lovebeth.ie

SHOCK OF GREY earrings, €75, at CREATE at Brown Thomas.

The CREATE 2024 Jewellery Edit:

The much anticipated CREATE at Brown Thomas is a celebration of Irish design across fashion, millinery, accessories and jewellery. Now in its 14th year it continues to champion the very best of Irish design with a dedicated area in-store showcasing the work of 26 of Ireland’s most interesting designers. The designs of Dennis Lawler, the NCAD x Brown Thomas Designer to Watch award will also be on display.

Capulet & Montague by Lisa McCormack

Often copied but never equalled, Lisa McCormack was one of the first people in Ireland we saw producing acrylic jewellery and her particular way with colour really makes her stand out amongst the competition. For this year’s CREATE, her beautifully named Capulet & Montague brand introduces a new collection entitled Faro to Fennils Bay. This collection blends reprocessed acrylic with coastal-inspired hues, reflecting the designer’s journey from County Cork to Portugal. Known for her bold silhouettes and organic designs, this new collection offers a fresh interpretation of her distinctive style - great news for customers old and new.

FiorSó Jewellery

Founded in Co. Kerry by lawyer turned designer Sara Ross, FiorSó Jewellery has fast become popular with customers for its beautiful feather-light statement pieces which are inspired by the Art Deco and Art Nouveau movements. Ross’ delightful earrings are key pieces which are inspired variously by flowers such as cherry blossoms and calla lilies as well as Art Deco architecture. Her exclusive Tropicana collection for Brown Thomas features delicate gold pieces resembling fluttering butterflies and geometric shapes in tropical ombre tones perfect for summer.

SIADBH

Designed in Co. Kilkenny, the SIADBH Empowered Collection features circle-shaped crystals symbolising wholeness and timelessness, offering wearers pieces that empower and resonate with natural beauty. With crystal jewellery all the rage these days, this brand makes pieces that are on trend and yet somehow timeless, while the ethically sourced crystals and the certified recycled metals are aspects we can definitely get on board with.

Shock of Grey

Sarah Carroll Kelly started her brand Shock of Grey as a labour of love during lockdown and it has since become a full time business. If you love colour, then Shock of Grey is for you with bold, bright statement pieces in unpredictable materials such as wood and brass.

• CREATE 2024 runs on Level 3 at Brown Thomas Dublin from 3 July 2024 to 11 August 2024.
• brownthomas.com