SHEILA MCKAIN: Founder of Goldlightly

Welcome to my Inspiring Women in Fashion series, where I speak with women across the fashion industry about their career journeys, leadership lessons and the decisions that have shaped their success. Through honest conversations, we explore the realities of building a fulfilling career and sustainable in fashion and luxury today.

A lady in her late seventies, with a perfect chic bob and little quilted Chanel bag on her wrist, walks into a café near Place Vendôme and takes a seat opposite Sheila McKain. She opens the bag and tips a small fortune of gold and diamond jewellery straight onto the table. Sheila was transfixed. That afternoon, and the evening that followed in a Montmartre apartment overlooking the city, planted the seed for Goldlightly, the vintage jewellery business Sheila launched alongside her role as Clothing Director at The White Company.

Sheila’s impressive career spans nearly three decades across some of fashion's most storied houses, and she carries that experience the way she carries herself – warm, understated and unassuming, but you can absolutely see how she'd command the respect of any boardroom.

Goldlightly is the brand she's created almost entirely on instinct and curiosity, and it's grown the way the best things often do: slowly, organically, and through a real love for what she’s building.

From Textiles to Oscar de la Renta

Sheila's path into fashion wasn't a straight line. She studied textiles and moved to New York to work as a textile designer, before quickly realising it wasn't quite right. Living above a designer's shop in the city, she started chatting to the woman downstairs who handmade everything in store, and began helping out in the evenings.

“I think it really made me understand the direction that I wanted to go in, so following that I went back and studied fashion.”

She enrolled at the Fashion Institute of Technology, then landed nearly seven years at Oscar de la Renta – first on the women's collection, before volunteering herself to launch his accessories range. It meant learning leather work from scratch, travelling to Italy to understand construction, and working alongside jewellers in New York.

“To be working with someone who was iconic in the industry for many years, and such a kind human who really allowed you to grow – it was a fantastic experience.”

It was also, as Sheila reflects now, probably where the seeds of her own jewellery business were planted, long before she knew it.

Building Brands, Then Building Her Own

A move to London followed, where “love maybe intervened,” she laughs, and with it roles at Jaeger and as Creative Director at DAKS, where she was responsible for the catwalk shows and Fashion Week presence across initial concept, execution and commercial strategy.

When Jaeger asked her back as Creative Director, she had six months' garden leave in between roles. On a dare from a friend, she made a handful of what she called chic yoga clothes - something between Jil Sander and activewear, at a time when nothing like it existed.

“There was really nothing, nobody was doing that kind of thing. It was born out of what I wanted to wear because I couldn't find anything.”

A friend at NET-A-PORTER spotted the samples and asked if she could manufacture the range for the launch of Net-a-Sporter. What started as a whim became a six-year business, stocked at Lane Crawford, MATCHES and Selfridges.

“It just became this overnight athleisure business... I think that was maybe my first foray into being an entrepreneur.”

She returned to working for another London fashion brand once the business wound down, but something had shifted. The thrill of building something of her own and the autonomy, the breadth, the entrepreneurial mindset that came with it had got under her skin.

The Afternoon Goldlightly Began

Goldlightly began with a friend, a vintage jewellery dealer in New York, who called Sheila and announced she was coming to Paris for the weekend. While there, the friend asked if Sheila wanted to meet one of the dealers she bought from – the lady with the chic bob and Chanel bag full of diamonds in Place Vendôme.

“There's something about jewellery – you put it in front of people and immediately they have to touch it, have to put it on. It's really tactile, really intimate.”

Back in London, Sheila couldn't shake it. She started visiting flea markets, reading everything she could find on jewellery history, sourcing pieces at auctions and markets and found a London jeweller who taught her gold testing and stone identification firsthand. Sheila eventually became her friend’s London jewellery source and they agreed she should start selling under her own name, and Goldlightly was born. 

The name is a nod to Holly Golightly, though not a literal one. “It's more about someone who appreciates uniqueness,” Sheila explains. Individualistic, a little quirky, but with immaculate taste. It's also exactly the kind of customer the brand is built for: a woman who values vintage jewellery and luxury personal style as a form of self-expression, not a trend to follow.

True to her fashion training, Sheila approaches the curation like a design house rather than a market stall. Every piece is sourced, and made with great consideration – she describes herself as a curator and a treasure hunter.

“I don't want to find pieces that feel out of sync with a contemporary wardrobe. I approach it almost like a fashion company – photoshoots, showing how you'd style it, how you'd wear it.”

What to Look for When Buying Vintage Jewellery

I confessed to Sheila that although I love the aesthetic and feel of vintage jewellery, I don’t know much about what to look out for to make sure I invest wisely. Sheila shares some practical advice for anyone starting to build a vintage jewellery collection:

Buy from reputable sources. Look for sellers with a track record – reviews, a following, a history you can check. “You can usually see how people are doing, and you can read the comments,” she says.

Understand carats. Knowing the difference between, say, 9 carat and 18 carat gold explains why two similar-looking pieces can be priced so differently – it often comes down to gold weight, not just design.

Know the difference between gold and gold-plated. Plated jewellery is usually brass or another base metal dipped in a thin layer of gold, and that layer wears off within months of regular wear. Solid gold doesn't.

Think of it as an investment, not a purchase. Unlike fashion, which loses most of its value the moment you take the tag off, gold doesn't depreciate the same way. 

“I've had customers who bought a piece a year ago, and it's now worth more than what they paid, just in gold weight alone.”

A Business Built on What You Love

Sheila still works full-time as Creative Director at The White Company, building Goldlightly alongside it and she's candid that the two feel completely different, even when the inspiration overlaps.

“When it's a passion project, the hours you put in – waking up early to answer customer questions – it never feels like work. It just feels like you can't wait to do it.”

There's no marketing machine behind it. Growth has come from word of mouth, styling Substack posts, and a genuine love of the customer interaction – people sending her photos of how they've styled a piece, asking questions she's only too happy to answer.

The mornings before her day job start early: packing boxes, filling out shipping forms, answering customer questions, posting – then doing it all again in the evening. It helps, she notes, that her children are that bit older now and don't need the same hours she once gave them.

On whether building a personal brand alongside a full-time creative role ever feels like a conflict, Sheila doesn't see it that way at all.

“I often find with creative ideas one ends up inspiring the other. They all flow from a place of inspiration and having my own brand has really taught me so much about the role of the customer”

Her Substack carries the same instinct, bringing together styling notes, sourcing tips, restaurant and hotel recommendations, and a playlist she's currently putting together. Not built for a brand, she says, just things that she likes and feel relevant to share.

When asked what's mattered most across nearly three decades in fashion, Sheila doesn't hesitate: resilience, and staying close to the customer, no matter how senior the role.

“You have to believe it's right. If you don't, you're not going to convince anybody else.”

My Take

What I love most about this story is how unintentional Sheila’s journey with Goldlightly has been. Sheila was in Paris quite by chance supporting her friend, but saying yes to joining an impromptu meeting that afternoon changed Sheila’s future path entirely. I find that really inspiring, and it's something I've been thinking about a lot in my own life recently. Saying yes to more things like coffee meetings with no agenda other than to connect with someone interesting, or invitations I might have previously talked myself out of (the introvert that I am!). Some of the most interesting things happening in my work right now have come from exactly those kinds of chance conversations. You really do just never know.

I also really related to Sheila’s point about working across two different things and the way they feed each other creatively. I notice this with my own projects across clienteling consulting and coaching, where inspiration and creativity seem to flow so much more easily when I’m not just doing one thing. Making space to look around is just as important as the work itself.

When I met Sheila, I was thrilled that she brought some of her pieces along and told me the story behind one of them - where it had come from, the hands it had passed through. I was completely captured by it in a way I hadn't expected. I love the thought that vintage pieces have already had a life before you, and imagining all the stories they could tell.

Goldlightly is what happens when thirty years of creative experience meets a completely unexpected afternoon in Paris. The spark was accidental, but with Sheila's experience and passion behind it, Goldlightly's future will be anything but.

Follow Goldlightly at www.goldlightly.com and Instagram, TikTok and Substack at @goldlightlyjewellery

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About the author: Pippa Mellor is an accredited fashion career coach and luxury retail consultant with 15+ years' experience at NET-A-PORTER and MATCHES.