In-between being the face of countless brands, running a skincare line and writing her third book, model mogul MIRANDA KERR talks to SANJIV BHATTACHARYA about her new love and her “modern family” with Orlando Bloom.
When Miranda Kerr moved into her Malibu home around a year ago, it took her only a few weeks to annoy her neighbors. “I had the kitchen and the bathrooms redone, so I sent them muffins – gluten-free, of course. ‘Really sorry about the noise, thanks for your patience.’ But no one replied,” she says, grinning. “No, ‘Thanks for the muffins, they were yummy.’ I also play my music quite loud sometimes, and run and jump in the pool naked! Do you know that [Sia] song that goes, Hey, I heard you were a wild one?”
There’s no skinny-dipping for now. I’m sitting at Kerr’s breakfast bar as she pads around the kitchen in a red mini dress. After a hectic week of jetting from an event in LA to a Givenchy shoot in New York, domesticity is what she craves. There’s a chicken casserole bubbling on the stove, and a piecrust ready for a dinner party tonight. The apple-cheeked supermodel, it turns out, is quite the Martha Stewart. She points to the pictures on her fridge, drawn by her 5-year-old Flynn (her son with ex-husband Orlando Bloom), which show Flynn outside and Mummy cooking in the kitchen. “Actually, I’m starving. Want some soup?” Kerr reaches into the exceptionally neat fridge and pulls out a jar of green broth. “It’s mung bean,” she sings. “I made it myself!”
You can’t blame her for being a homebody – this is a house fit for magazines. Perched on a private bluff with Pacific Ocean views, it’s bright and homely, as tidy as a show home: the lapping pool, the salt breeze, the crackling log in the fireplace (it’s only 75 degrees, after all). But as relaxing as it sounds, this is also headquarters for Kerr Inc. As the fifth highest-paid model in the world, Kerr, 32, is always on the go. Since moving in, she hasn’t even had time to walk along the beach.
When she’s not busy being a mom, taking “Flynnie” to school every morning, she is empire building – there are offices out back. Her Victoria’s Secret deal restricted her entrepreneurial ambitions, so she left in 2013 and today, on top of 16 modeling contracts, she runs popular skincare line Kora Organics, designs tea sets for Royal Albert and jewelry for Swarovski, and writes books – to add to her two motivational titles for young women, Empower Yourself and Treasure Yourself, there is a recipe book on the way called Nourish Yourself (the soup, incidentally, is excellent). No plans for Take Some Time For Yourself, though.
Her taste for loud music aside, Kerr is an acutely controlled woman. Despite her Australian roots, she has that classic LA combination of a mellow yoga vibe and a keen capitalist instinct. She’s big on energy and vibrations on the one hand – she speaks in a calming, almost sedated way, with a questioning Aussie lilt at the end – and yet, she is almost always promoting something. Her Instagram feed (8.2million followers and counting) is openly commercial. Her life is her business is her life. “My whole philosophy is to uplift people,” she demurs. “Everything has a positive intention behind it.”
To be clear, it was never Kerr’s intention to design jewelry or tea sets – Swarovski approached her, as did Royal Albert. But once they did, she introduced her New Age flavor. The Swarovski earrings are snowflake-shaped “to celebrate your unique magic”. Her teacups have little inscriptions on the bottom like ‘Love’ and ‘Blessings’, “so you can feel the blessings when you drink tea”. And she infuses all her skincare products by pouring them through rose quartz, “which I don’t talk about, but people feel it – it gives the vibration of love.”
She tells me about the late Japanese scientist, Dr Masaru Emoto, who claims to have shown that positive words can affect the molecular structure of water. “There was a study done on bags of rice,” she says. “One bag was told positive things like ‘I love you’, another bag was ignored, and another was told negative things. The first bag was perfect, the second started to disintegrate, and the last one was mouldy.”
Kerr has always been a believer. She had a religious upbringing in the small country town of Gunnedah in New South Wales. Her mother was just 17 when she gave birth to her, so the model was most influenced by her grandmother, who had, she says, the quality she most admires – generosity of spirit. “We didn’t have much, but our door was always open,” says Kerr. Her father read her self-help maxims from motivational authors like Og Mandino. She scrolls through her phone for a quote: “Here’s one: ‘Treat everyone as though we are going to be dead by midnight.’ Wow! See, if you died, I’d feel good about treating you kindly. You’re enjoying the soup, right?”
Her fairy tale began at 13, when a friend entered her into a modeling competition for an Australian magazine (naturally, Kerr won), but she doesn’t consider that her most formative teenage experience.
“When my first boyfriend [Christopher Middlebrook] died, I was 16, and it was really a turning point,” she says. “I was depressed and went to a few therapists, but then I realized the only person who could help me was myself.” She remains close to Christopher’s family, even naming her son after him – Flynn Christopher Blanchard Copeland Bloom.
Her second most testing experience in life came years later, when she and Orlando Bloom separated. “Flynn was two, so it was really hard to make the decision, but our son is our priority so you have to come from love,” she says. “You have to be kind.” After the divorce, she moved to Malibu after a decade in New York, to be closer to Bloom.
She was a little scarred at first, reluctant to get into another long- term relationship. But then she went to a “work dinner for Louis Vuitton” and was sat next to Evan Spiegel, 25, the whizz-kid billionaire who co-founded Snapchat. “You can’t close yourself off from love,” says Kerr. “I try to keep my heart open and not feel afraid.”
She found him “sweet, really kind and smart”, so they went on a date – to Kundalini yoga at Golden Bridge in Santa Monica, favored by Demi Moore and Madonna.
That was seven months ago. She and Bloom had a rule that they wouldn’t introduce anyone to Flynn unless it was serious. “We had to know the person for six months and feel good about them,” she explains. “Evan met Flynn, so yeah, things are going well. Orlando thinks he’s great. We’re just a modern family now!”
The reason it works, says Kerr, is because Spiegel is a homebody like her; an old soul. She certainly looks as though something, or someone, is making her happy. “He’s 25, but he acts like he’s 50,” she says, smiling. “He’s not out partying. He goes to work in Venice [Beach], he comes home. We don’t go out. We’d rather be at home and have dinner, go to bed early.”
So he doesn’t feel like a younger man then? “Well, in some ways he does,” she says, with a wink. “I’m telling you, I’ve got the best of both worlds!”
It's when you use the Tim Tam as a straw and drink the cup of tea through it.
Vogue Philippines December 2024/January 2025 : Eva Noblezada by Harold Julian (3 Viewers)
Vogue France December 2024/January 2025 : Loli Bahia by Mert Alas & Marcus Piggott (1 Viewer)