Modeling FW19’s most covetable coats, British model JEAN CAMPBELL gives a rare glimpse into her world as she talks to GILLIAN BRETT about doing her first Burberry campaign on crutches and her favorite (royal) runway moment.
Jean Campbell is a Gemini. Though she isn’t much of a star sign person, it’s difficult not to draw comparisons between the 22-year-old and the sign most renowned for its duality: the British supermodel possesses a rare, era-defying beauty that is at once otherworldly and ultra-modern. And while her ascent has been stellar, in person she is down-to-earth and self-effacing. In fact, when she modeled for Burberry and Louis Vuitton while she was still at school, she kept her burgeoning career hidden from her friends as best she could. “I was super secretive about it because, I guess, I’m just quite private,” she explains between sips of a cappuccino in a café in west London. “I’d say I was going to the dentist or whatever. But if you’re doing the Burberry campaign, it’s a bit difficult to hide.”
Aged 16, Campbell had her first-ever ad shoot, starring in Burberry’s SS14 campaign – and then modeling exclusively for the brand for six months. She was eight weeks out of having an operation to rectify her hip dysplasia when Burberry approached her to star in then-creative-director Christopher Bailey’s ‘English Roses’ campaign, alongside Malaika Firth, Matilda Lowther and Neelam Gill. Though she was still recuperating, Campbell jumped at the opportunity. “I was on crutches and I thought they were going to say, ‘So, you can’t do it, then?’ But I was like, ‘No, no, no! I will!’ They were so amazing with me, [and made sure] I was lying down or sitting in every photo.”
Her eagerness to do the campaign is testament to Campbell’s strongminded work ethic. In school she was so driven to get good grades that she wanted to wait until she’d completed her GCSE exams before she accepted a career-defining opportunity to work with legendary stylist Joe McKenna. “I took my schoolwork quite seriously,” she explains. McKenna, who is a friend of her mother’s, had spotted a photo of her on a fridge magnet in her home and asked to shoot with her. Following her exams, she shot a British Vogue story styled by McKenna in Montauk. “That was a really surreal experience – I was so not clued up about how lucky that was. Obviously, I felt really lucky and excited by the whole thing, but I didn’t really realise what I was getting into: they ended up running the story across like 20 pages. It was really great.”
Not long after, she was snapped up by modeling agency Viva London and went on to sign a two-year contract with Louis Vuitton under Nicolas Ghesquière. She still counts the brand’s SS15 show, in which she strode out among digital avatars and lasers, as one of her catwalk highlights, along with British designer Richard Quinn’s FW18 show, which was famously attended by none other than Queen Elizabeth II. “There was a rumor going around [backstage] that a royal was going to be there, and maybe it was the Queen,” Campbell recalls. “I walked out and my earring fell off immediately. Then I saw the Queen sitting opposite and totally forgot about the earring. It was a moment I’ll never forget, and I am so happy to have been there.”
Today, she wears a boyish dark-denim jacket shrugged over a black silk camisole and layers of gold necklaces of varying lengths. Her signature long and pin-straight (naturally) blonde hair hangs loose around her shoulders, framing her fine features. Raised near Nairn in Scotland, until her family moved to London when she was eight, Campbell grew up the eldest of four siblings and describes her childhood as “wholesome”: “Where we grew up in Scotland is literally in the middle of nowhere. There’s no phone reception, there isn’t any Wi-Fi. There’s no one around really, and it was so wild, and raw, and beautiful. The things we used to get up to there were totally nature-based; we’d play outside the whole time.”
Once she graduated from school, Campbell went headfirst into modeling and, with her mix of ethereal beauty and Brit-girl cool, landed in a rarefied space where she was shooting cover stories for indie titles like Dazed & Confused and i-D while booking prestigious castings such as the Valentino couture runway. At 19, she decamped to New York alone. “I was living in Nolita, [where] I had this lovely little studio flat,” she recalls fondly. “In Manhattan, it’s like 120 percent all the time, and that’s something that is so amazing about New York; that energy is just so contagious.” Galvanized and in high demand, she shot campaigns for the likes of Ralph Lauren and Carolina Herrera, became the face of the Narciso Rodriguez for Her fragrance, and was a ubiquitous presence on the runway, walking for Fendi, Alexander McQueen, Miu Miu and Isabel Marant.
She animatedly reminisces on some of her ‘pinch me’ career moments, such as a trip to Jaipur with fashion editor Sara Moonves and photographer Ryan McGinley. “It’s such a beautiful place. We went around all the temples – which was such a feast for the eyes. I wouldn’t have had that access any other way.” More recently, she traveled to Montana to shoot the Miu Miu FW19 campaign with photographer Eddie Wrey and stylist and creative director Katie Grand. “[Grand’s] productions are always quite exciting, but this one was particularly spoiling, because we stayed on this ranch where we all had little wood cabins. I shared with [model] Adut Akech. It was really fun. To spend your day ‘working’ and in between [shots] to be able to lie on a riverbank in the sun is so lucky. Also, to be surrounded by so many interesting, creative, talented and different characters is really inspiring.”
After two years, she decided to return to London, where she bought a flat and took some time out to consider her next steps. “One of the biggest things that struck me being [in New York] was choosing how you want to spend your time, rather than wasting your time. When you’re really busy or traveling a lot, you see your in-between time as ‘my rest day’, when actually you need to seize every day and make it a valuable addition to your life,” she says. Now, she plans to study a business degree online, which she can fit around her modeling work. “It’s really important to keep your mind stimulated,” she says. “I basically made a deal with myself that when I got a property, I would incorporate something else into the mix as well.”
She also spends her downtime back in her beloved homeland when she can. “I feel most at peace when I’m in Scotland because it’s very raw and wild up there, you can just be calm.” Having grown up with a cherished family dog and surrounded by wildlife, Campbell – who hasn’t eaten meat since she was 11 – is passionate about safeguarding animal welfare, and she often uses her Instagram account to raise awareness around elephant poaching and protecting the planet. “I cared for animals when I was younger, so therefore I didn’t want to eat them. However, now I wouldn’t eat meat for environmental reasons,” she explains. “I feel that raising awareness in any way you can is important as we need to take climate change seriously. If people start recognizing that it’s a real, real problem, then the government and the media have to start taking it seriously, too. Nothing is going to really get better until changes start being made from the top, so raising awareness for it is a good thing.”
