She is one of the original ’90s supermodels, yet HELENA CHRISTENSEN is as effortlessly beautiful as ever. Showcasing the new soft-power pieces on her phenomenal body, she talks to ESTHER ADAMS ACHARA about the wisdom of a life lived simply.
Of all the glamorous stories Helena Christensen could recount after two decades as one of the world’s most iconic supermodels, it is a chance encounter with some Russian teenagers, while on a shoot trip to Communist-era Soviet Union in her early twenties, that lingers most prominently in her mind. “I remember young people coming up to me in the street, begging me to tell them what the rest of the world looked like, or stopping so I could trade jeans with them,” Christensen recalls in her soft Danish lilt. “They’d say, ‘Don’t look at me, I’m going to walk next to you, but we can’t look like we’re talking.’ Experiences like that had a huge effect on me. You feel very fortunate for the life you live.”
By contrast, Christensen’s glamorous trajectory from the early ’90s onwards was captured by legendary lensmen Mario Testino, Patrick Demarchelier, Herb Ritts and Peter Lindbergh for the hallowed pages of Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar. While clocking up runway miles, the half-Danish, half-Peruvian beauty with the trademark piercing green eyes also made a cameo in Robert Altman’s 1994 fashionable comedy Prêt-à-Porter, walked as a Victoria’s Secret Angel in 1997, and was one half of an unforgettably epochal relationship with INXS frontman Michael Hutchence. That she chose instead to recall that grass-roots human encounter in place of the giddy glamor surrounding her status on the world stage, only serves to reveal something of how the multilingual (English, Spanish, Swedish, German and French), multi-hyphenate (model, designer, photographer) approaches her life.
“None of the girls ever cared much about the actual supermodel phenomenon,” Christensen says. “We just worked really hard and put ourselves into each shoot 100 percent. If you work at a level where you’re fortunate enough to travel,” she continues, “then you learn about people, psychology, languages, cultures, history… It’s literally one big visual experience.”
If that sounds like preparation for some higher creative calling, it certainly appears to be how she viewed it. “It was like being in photography school,” she enthuses. “I never really felt like I was modeling so much as being a fly on the wall and absorbing everything. I mean, modeling was fun, but it was like, ‘Ok, I’m going to have to do this in order to get all the rest in’.”
Photography, of course, has grown into more than a hobby. Most rewardingly, Christensen has been capturing images of countries affected by climate change, in her role as an Oxfam ambassador, a position she has held since 2010. “It’s hugely humbling,” she admits. “I try to do as much as I can with recycling and sending out cheques to different organizations, but at the end of the day, it’s not a lot. It’s a question of awareness and if one person sees a picture and reacts, then that’s enough. Photography is a way of reaching out to people.”
Despite her rock’n’roll past and, to some degree, her present (her current partner is Interpol frontman Paul Banks), Christensen seeks out the type of green-leaning, nature-loving lifestyle you would expect from someone who grew up roaming the beaches of Denmark. Yes, she maintains a healthy lifestyle by boxing and running “whenever I get around to it”, but what she really craves is time away from it all, swimming and reading at her farmhouse in the Catskills on weekends. “I love New York, but it’s cool to have the balance,” says Christensen. “When you are surrounded by trees, things make much more sense; it is not a spiritual thing, it’s just literally fact for me. How good do you feel when you are in the ocean, floating, looking up at the sky? That is sometimes all you need to equalize everything and feel normal again.”
Though firm in guarding her privacy, Christensen is effusive when it comes to her inspirations and work, speaking measuredly but in a stream of consciousness, refusing to be interrupted and yet consistently falling into the generalized second person, as if to keep a safe distance from her public persona.
She talks knowledgably about passions as disparate as the Duomo in Milan and jazz music, which she has on constant rotation in her West Village apartment (her son, Mingus, 14, is named after jazz composer Charles Mingus). “I’m like Pippi Longstocking, a finder of objects curious and peculiar,” she quips of her home’s interiors. “Every piece tells a story.”
Similarly, Christensen's closet still brims with the type of billowing antique dresses that caught the imaginations of designers when she first went to fittings in Paris. “They would pull them away and study them,” she recalls nostalgically. And although she often slips into Prada, Isabel Marant or Nina Ricci, along with a heady blend of kaleidoscopic finds from Peruvian markets over the years, even now, those venerable dresses are her go-tos for a sweep of the red carpet. “A beautiful vintage dress is always easiest for me. There’s no pressure, there’s no stress and I feel very comfortable. We have a certain amount of time on earth,” she continues. “When you look in your wardrobe, you wear what’s at the front, you know?”
With that, she has to go; she has friends to meet. It seems that alongside her interest in the bigger picture, Christensen’s strength, and perhaps the secret behind her staying power, is an unwavering commitment to living every moment to the full.
