Mick Jagger’s granddaughter Amba, 30, opens up about ‘taking a lot of drugs and being a borderline alcoholic’ at uni
MICK Jagger’s granddaughter Amba Jackson, 30, has revealed she was “taking a lot of drugs and being a borderline alcoholic” while she was at university.
Amba is the daughter of Jade Jagger, 54, and her former partner, artist Piers Jackson.
In her debut Substack post, artist Amba wrote: “I went to University to study Fashion Design in New York because, at 19, I wanted to be Edie Sedgwick in Factory girl.
“I was taking a lot of drugs, and the school was easy to get into.“
Amba, who was struggling to cope with life at the prestigious Pratt Institut, continued: “‘For a highly sensitive, neurodivergent, mentally unstable, borderline alcoholic adolescent.
“Who wanted to spend a significant amount of time getting drunk and chatting sh** with her equally unstable friends, keeping up with schoolwork was challenging.
“I felt completely broken by the expectations and couldn’t understand why I seemed to struggle so much more with tailoring than my peers.”
However, in a 2015 Harper’s Bazaar interview with her family, Amba was described as academically successful.
Her older sister Assisi Jackson, 34, said Amba was ‘working her socks off’ at Pratt.Institute
But, Amba has now said she had been struggling with feelings of shame and inadequacy at the time.
She explained: “Looking back, I realise I convinced myself that I was superior to all my classmates to avoid the experience of belonging to the group, and to cope with copious amounts of shame.
“I adopted the identity of cool and aloof, mature and slightly messed up English girl, who lived off campus and did her own thing.”
Amba eventually found an outlet for her passion while spending two years working with experimental artist and fashion designer Susan Cianciolo in Brooklyn, where she helped make clothes, quilts, collages and dolls.
At first she struggled to understand Susan’s unconventional approach but she eventually came to see the studio as a place where the sensitivity she had tried to conceal could be expressed without judgment.
And now Amba is now hoping to create a similar environment in South Devon.
She says she is seeking planning permission to convert stables on her land into a community art centre, following six years studying art therapy.