The misery of being a supermodel!
This isn’t how I’d normally spend Saturday evening. I’m in an old market hall in East London and I’m picking my way through the painfully stylish fashion crowd, gathered for the Vivienne Westwood Red Label fashion show.
There’s chattering and arguing about seats, there’s Pamela Anderson being snapped in the front row, photographers jostling for a spot and music filling the ornate hall. The place is buzzing.
As I take my seat, the first model steps out. The girls look incredible. They ooze attitude as they pout their way down the catwalk in terrifyingly high shoes.
’ve seen this all before, only from the catwalk. I wasn’t always a 40-something mother-of-two. Twenty-one years ago, it was me leading Vivienne Westwood on for her final bow at her Spring/Summer 1990 show. I took my newborn son Max on with me for the final outfit at Vivienne’s suggestion — only I didn’t wear the platform shoes in case I tripped and dropped him.
The audience stood up and applauded us: they’d seen me with my big belly in the previous season’s show. It was a really touching moment — all those people who would come to the show every season, showing us their affection is my favourite catwalk memory, and I’ve got a few.
I did my first Westwood show in 1985. I wasn’t even modelling at the time I went to the casting as I’d tried it already and been an abject failure. Some model agent sent me for the job and, because I’d been a punk, Vivienne — the most rebellious fashion designer — was a heroic figure to me, so I went. She wasn’t there, but I was cast in the show and she picked me out later to front a music project she’d dreamed up — a band called Choices. I did every show from then on until in 1991, often opening and always closing them.
And I would work with her in the studio when she was designing or travel around the world with her to different events. But it was the shows that were really exciting. People really thought her clothes were outrageous then — and the make-up too. The first one I did, we had smudged red lips and no eye make-up.
I went to the Ladies to sneak some mascara on and found Patsy Kensit and Sadie Frost, who were also modelling, in there doing the same thing. Champagne would flow before the shows and half of us were tipsy before we went on.
At Vivienne’s first show in Paris in 1991, I was waiting in line with Naomi Campbell to go on the catwalk, when legendary fashion photographer Ellen von Unwerth bounced up to me. ‘Sara!’ she said, ‘we’re shooting 20 pages for Italian Vogue tomorrow!’ I looked at her aghast. ‘I can’t,’ I said. ‘I’m supposed to meet my boyfriend and my baby son in this little village out in the countryside. If I don’t show up they’ll wonder what’s happened to me.’ ‘Can’t you phone them?’ she asked. ‘No,’ I said. ‘They’re in an old farmhouse! There’s no telephone!’
How many times have I kicked myself since? Italian Vogue! Twenty pages! With Ellen von Unwerth! Ellen was the hottest photographer in the world, and Italian Vogue is as prestigious as it gets in modelling. A game-changer, as a savvy career girl might say.
I was known for being Vivienne’s favourite model, was used to flying to Milan, Jamaica or Miami to shoot fashion spreads and advertising campaigns and had worked with top photographers such as Nick Knight and David Bailey, but I’d never done any editorial that serious — it would have taken me to a whole new level. It was a golden opportunity, the kind that could ‘make’ you, something you just don’t say no to.
I should have just left boyfriend and baby (Max, now 21) to manage without me for a day or two. Stupid, stupid, stupid! My new Paris agency sacked me on the spot and Ellen, though she said she understood, never worked with me again. In low moments since then, when things weren’t going so well for me — when money was tight, or I looked in the mirror and felt old, that decision has felt like my Sliding Doors moment.
That split second where Gwyneth Paltrow’s character in the film misses the train while her other self, in a parallel universe, catches it, going home to dump her love-rat boyfriend, achieve career success and get a cute new blonde hairdo. I have wondered about how doing that Italian Vogue spread might have impacted on my career and all the subsequent bookings I flushed down the drain.
Although I blew this huge opportunity, it wasn’t that incident that finished my modelling career. As the jobs started to dwindle, I decided to turn my hand to acting. It was something I’d wanted to do since I was a little girl and I thought I’d better get on with it (I was 26). So I got myself a great agent and got my first acting job — playing a model. Over the next few years I did The Bill nine times and did small parts in big movies — Brad Pitt cut my head off in Interview With The Vampire.
I even spent seven weeks on EastEnders, when I was recognised constantly. I was at the supermarket checkout one day after my run had finished. ‘Aren’t you on it no more?’ said the checkout lady. ‘No’ I said, ‘I’m doing a play.’
‘Aww,’ she said, as if to say, ‘you poor thing, you’re not on telly any more.’ And though I was happy enough doing my play, I suddenly felt as if the world saw me as a failure. Often, if someone has looked at me quizzically in the street and asked if I’m an actress, I’ve said no.
They look so disappointed for you — that you’re schlepping around on the bus with all the normal people and not whisking around on a private jet or shopping in Harrods, and you can end up feeling a bit disappointed for yourself. So I made a quiet living acting, did the school run, cooked fish fingers and dedicated myself to being a mum to Max, and then to my daughter Lelu. I lost touch with the fashion world, with Vivienne and the friends I had made in that time.
When I did take any notice of what was going on in fashion, I saw that the Westwood shows had all the supermodels now: Vivienne had gone up in the world, in a major way, and I was pleased because she deserved it — and because it was nice to see the world admiring her clothes instead of poking fun.
But when I looked at photos of those glossy shows, it was like looking through thick glass, at a world I wasn’t part of any more, and I have to say I missed it sometimes. If I was fed up, I would forget how lonely it could be flying around the world on your own. If I was a bit down I couldn’t always appreciate the nice normal life I had built and I would look around the school playground and wonder where my jet-set world had gone.
Conceited of me, really — why shouldn’t I be in a school playground or a supermarket like anybody else? I felt dowdy because I didn’t need to bother looking good. I never wore the labels in my cupboard. I just didn’t have anywhere to wear corset dresses and satin hot pants — I wasn’t invited to dressy parties. Which I should have been happy about because, funnily enough, I’ve always hated getting ready.
But I’d have to remind myself of that sometimes in newsagents, pushing a sticky baby past the magazines I’d once been on the cover of. My glamorous heyday seemed a million years ago. A friendly girl came up to me on the Tube one day and asked if I was Sara Stockbridge. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Oh you used to be brilliant!’ she told me.
During my mid-30s I started doing that thing most women do: peering into the mirror at lines that start to appear, realising the awful truth that you really won’t stay fresh for ever. If you’ve been a model there’s another whole layer of misery on top of that. On a bad day you don’t count the things you’ve gained with age — you just feel as if the whole point of you is fading away with your looks. The irony is that, like most of us, I didn’t really appreciate being pretty and young when I was.
If I look at old pictures of myself I think ‘look how cute I was’, but then I remember how ugly I felt that day. That’s the truth for a lot of models. They’re spending every waking hour obsessing over something that they don’t like about their face, or their body, where the rest of us see perfection.
Or they are comparing themselves, unfavourably, to the other girl on the shoot. And their beauty, the thing they’re trading on, can become a source of dissatisfaction. My daughter is tall and beautiful. She’s already appeared in Harper’s Bazaar (with Vivienne). She wants to be a model and I think that’s fine, but I hope she’ll have something else in her sights for later, and that she won’t think her beauty is the most important thing about her. Or let it make her miserable.
In the end, my acting career didn’t exactly set the world alight. I just didn’t have the drive or talent to pursue my childhood Hollywood dreams. As I got older, the work grew thinner on the ground, and instead of the lead role I found myself auditioning for the lead’s mother! Ouch. I started writing because I could do it when I wanted to, I didn’t have to chase off round the world and, although they were older, I could spend time with my children.
My first novel, Hammer, about the Victorian underworld, was published by Chatto & Windus. When Vivienne told me she thought it was ‘really great’ it meant everything to me. With my second book out now, I’ve finally found something I love doing — and am good at. In the end, I have found that how you see yourself in the mirror has everything to do with how you are feeling about yourself at the time.
As I have steered my way through life, I have grown to like myself better, and my reflection, too. I don’t miss the attention that came with being a model because I’ve grown up at last. It makes me wince to think of my attention-seeking antics on the catwalk if I’m honest — all that prancing about, blowing kisses, showing my knickers.
Now, what makes me happiest is my family and the writing career I’ve slowly carved for myself. I’m no longer haunted by my Sliding Doors moment. I saw Ellen von Unwerth at a party a few years ago. ‘Hello Ellen,’ I said. ‘Do you remember me? We did a lot of pictures together about 1990.’ She looked blank. Or maybe not so blank. ‘Sara Stockbridge?’ I ventured. ‘No’ she said. ‘I don’t remember.’
Sara Stockbridge’s novel, Cross My Palm is out now at £11.99. Her band Rooster play the first Friday of every month at the Queen’s Head, Stockwell Road, London SW9.
. Photo Source:gono.com
