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Stella magazine
Model citizen
She's been called 'the nice face of fashion' on account of her humility, integrity and work with charity. After a rare interview with the supermodel Erin O'Connor, Sabine Durrant can only agree
During a recent episode of The Weakest Link a contestant was asked whether Erin O'Connor was a) a javelin thrower or b) a British model. O'Connor creases her eyes, juts out her chin and emits a high note before letting out a full-throttle laugh in which her shoulders hunch forward and her whole body folds up.
She said: "She's a javelin thrower."' It's hard to tell what she finds more funny: the fact that she was compared to an Olympic athlete, or that they got it wrong.
She is curled up in a chair in an office at ICM Models, the agency that represents her. You hear a lot about Erin O'Connor being 'a freak of nature', and she can look so extraordinary on the catwalk - all jutting hips, jagged nose and towering height - that 'javelin thrower' doesn't sound too off the mark.
But here she is in person - the muse to Jean Paul Gaultier, to Valentino, to Lagerfeld - a delicate, pretty young girl, not that tall after all in her Jimmy Choo jewelled flats, effortlessly stylish in wide-legged Chloé jeans and a stripey top, her cropped hair pulled back, à la Mrs Mop, in an orange Topshop scarf.
At first, when you arrive in the room, you could be forgiven for taking her for an assistant if a second look didn't reveal her prettiness - less haughty Cleopatra or imperious Helen and more a quirkier Demi Moore.
'Gosh aren't you beautiful,' I say, sort of to apologise, and blow me if the woman who's launched a thousand shifts doesn't blush.
In the modelling world O'Connor is about as grown-up as you can get. In her 11 years on the catwalk and magazine covers and, most recently, as the face of M & S, she has accrued extraordinary personal wealth - she is one of the 50 wealthiest Brits under 30 in the Sunday Times Rich List.
She has been, among others, the face of Chanel, Givenchy, Versace, Dolce & Gabbana and Gucci, while (a brief fling with the broadcaster Jamie Theakston aside) managing to keep her profile relatively low.
Even more admirably, in an industry renowned for its bitchiness ('Er, yes it can be,' she admits, 'you have to take it head on'), she has kept a reputation as 'the nice face of fashion'.
She was one of the girls followed in the 2003 documentary This Model Life, and was breathtakingly level-headed and funny in it. As a friend to the model Karen Elson, who has admitted to anorexia, as well as in her new role as vice-chairman of the British Fashion Council, she has talked cogently about the responsibility the industry has towards models and the girls who try to emulate them.
She is keen to foster a better relationship with the press ('at the moment they want to vilify or victimise us'), she gives talks to each year's new faces and, through the BFC, she helps allocate sponsorship to new designers.
And - the reason she has agreed to a rare interview - she is appearing in, and helping plan, A Night in Fashion, the opening of the Tower Music Festival in London and a star-studded catwalk show that will benefit two cancer charities.
We are having a suitably adult conversation about all this when her agent, Tori Edwards, comes in with the tea. Edwards, now one of the directors at ICM, has been by O'Connor's side since they both started out at Models 1.
'I'm not allowed to go to A Night in Fashion,' Edwards says. 'I'm never allowed to watch. We went on a trip to Texas last year and I had to literally not be near the stage. If she's having her photo taken, I have to turn round and not look at her. I was at the first show she ever did.
'She had to open the door and stand there [she mimes throwing open a door and striking a dramatic pose] and I was right there in front of her. It was like that feeling you get in church, it was awful.'
'Her shoulders were going up and down,' O'Connor says, laughing. 'We're too close. I can't have my family there, either. No, my boyfriend can't come. I don't think he's ever met my alter ego. I wipe the façade off quite literally when I come home. I collapse on the sofa and get the Wet Wipes out.'
When Edwards has left the room again, she adds, 'I couldn't be in this industry without her. Trying to find a balance of normality - that's what I personally need. Tori has taught me everything. "To be humble," she always says, "is to be sane."'
O'Connor grew up in Walsall, the middle of three girls. She was training to be a nursery nurse and 'struggling through her A-levels' when, in 1996, she was spotted at a Clothes Show Live event.
She has talked a lot about how uncomfortable she was with her body when she was growing up. She was called 'Morticia' or 'Witch's Fingers' at school.
'I outgrew my dad when I was 17. I outgrew everyone: aunties, sisters, mother, boyfriends.'
Success wasn't immediate, but years of ballet training meant she was a natural on the catwalk.
'Walking in heels felt like a holiday after pointes.'
Her big breakthrough didn't come until 1999 when, on a shoot in Brazil for Harpers & Queen, she chopped off her long hair.
'I found my femininity for the first time, my own version of it.' She taps her fingers to her heart, a gesture she makes often. 'Then it all went crazy.'
Jean Paul Gaultier has said that O'Connor is 'an interpreter, she makes you go further. She is not just a model. She is like theatre. She is art.'
She talks about it as a job. 'It doesn't make you vain, because it's not really about your looks. You get into character, you fulfil a role. You're not just a woman wearing a beautiful outfit.'
Her face, she says, has two aspects, which she has always found useful. 'As a teenager I had two options. I could have my jaw broken to straighten it, or I could have my teeth fixed - five years of train tracks, head sets. I couldn't stand the hammer and the breaking so consequently I was left with a lopsided jaw.
'This is my friendly side' - she turns to show me her left cheek in which the lines all point upwards - 'and this is my snooty side [the lines all slope down]. It's been quite helpful, really.'
She knows what she can and can't wear. 'A razor-sharp suit, for example - I'll feel very empowered by that because something that's harder than my body makes me feel instantly feminine. What I can't - and won't - wear is swimwear. I detest the very idea of having to stand on set in a bikini. For me, that's not my job.
' For me, my job is to wear clothes and make shapes with them - very simply in order to make them desirable enough for people to want to buy them. But it's not about my body. It's about how I use my body to interpret what I'm wearing. It's very different to me.'
For some years O'Connor lived 'half in New York, half in Claridge's'.
This Model Life followed her as she looked around her new $1.5 million flat - the interior designer discussed wood and light; typically O'Connor professed herself most 'tickled pink' about owning a rubbish chute.
At the end of last year, though, she made the decision to 'anchor herself' in one place. She sold the New York flat, chute and all, and has been doing up a house in south-east London with her boyfriend, John Paris Kent, a television producer and friend of Edwards.
The two of them met at Glastonbury two years ago. 'He was dancing in front of me to Chas & Dave. I said to Tori, "Who's he?" He was in his own little world, having a whale of a time.' What kind of clothes does he wear? 'Cords. Nice little vintage shirts. He has a penchant for hats. He's a basic young cool guy.'
They've had the builders in for ages, and O'Connor has just had two months off 'to settle and enjoy it'. She's not a cook - 'When it's my turn we go to the Greek next door' - but she's 'fanatical about housework', and together they do things not automatically associated with modelling - camping and gardening. 'We put a fence in recently.'
She loves shopping - 'though I'm lazy and impatient and anyway I know my body so well so I never try on' - and has time to do a bit of that.
She has a new column for a weekly magazine that she's enjoying but has shelved the autobiography she was writing for Bloomsbury: 'I did a 360-degree turn. I thought, "Hang on. If I'm so keen to hang on to my privacy, the most stupid thing I could do in the world is write a memoir and put it on the stands and make money from it." So I gave my advance back and walked away.'
Her time off has come to an end, which is probably a good thing. 'I got a bit restless. I bleached my hair. I'm not sure why; sometimes these things need no explanation. It was dreadful. I put a red sheen over the top. The eyebrows were real buggers. The first three attempts they resembled a thatched roof.
'It's just about OK now, though someone the other day compared my new colour to that of a Hungarian vizsla, which I thought was particularly charming.' She roars with laughter again. 'Also I'm an obsessive plucker. I have a little pluck every day.'
Next January O'Connor will turn 30, a fact she mentions several times. 'I'm rather proud. I feel like I'm about to be reborn.' She says that Edwards, who is pregnant, has been telling her she needs to start thinking about babies.
'I've lived in this bubble for ten years and I'm kind of coming out of it now, being at home and having a routine. But I'm not ready for kids yet.'
For a model, like a footballer, 30 is practically retirement age, though O'Connor says she is more in demand now than ever. 'When I was 21 I had quite a grown-up look. It was classic, ageless, you couldn't pinpoint me, so I think I can sort of carry on. Anyway, there's this bizarre phenomenon - in the age of digital photography, you are retouched on set. Your age disappears. I'm not mad about that.'
No Botox for her then? 'I worked hard to be at peace with my looks, with things not being your average, so I really want to see what I'm going to be like in ten years' time, the natural process of all that. I'm kind of intrigued to see how I turn out.'
Recently she has returned to ballet. She hates the gym, but has been 'weasling' her way into a friend's ballet class.
'My posture's dreadful. I'm a 36B and I slouch like this.' She slumps forwards in her chair. 'Also on the catwalk' - she stands to demonstrate - 'it's all about the S-bend. That famous Valentino quote about directing your hips towards the chandeliers - because what else would you direct your hips towards?'
Her body is contorting into a sashay, both elegant and weird at the same time. She looks like a prehistoric bird. I say that directing your hips towards the Ikea light fitting maybe isn't quite the same.
Her body collapses, and she's a young girl again. 'No,' she says, laughing. 'But it would be great if it was.'
The 3rd picture works fine for me when I click on it
