Υasmin Le Bon: Supermodel-Hoarder-Petrolhead

It is hard to imagine that life isn’t a bed of roses for the successful and beautiful rock star wife Yasmin Le Bon. But in an interview with Red magazine this month the 48-year-old has revealed that being a mother of three isn’t easy, even for a supermodel.

Photographed on a glamorous location by Jonty Davies Yasmin models pieces by designers such as Giorgio Armani, Stella McCartney and Phillip Lim and Roland Mouret, as well as High Street label Monsoon Heritage. 

Supermodels are always late, aren’t they? They’re notorious for it. But when Yasmin Le Bon was running late for our interview, she sent me a text half an hour before our appointed time, to warn me. Now that’s polite, by anybody’s standards.

And it got better – she suggested I meet her where the hold-up was occurring, at her hairdresser’s. So my first sight of this famous beauty was swathed in a polyester gown with a head of tin foil. She still looked like a goddess, of course, her perfectly symmetrical features, the impossibly beautiful caramel skin, barely touched by her 48 years, framed by a halo of foils. As icebreakers go, it was a good one. Especially as it just wasn’t a scenario I’d ever pictured this iconic brunette in – having sun-kissed highlights before her summer holiday.

The right to do as she pleases, unlimited by others’ expectations, is something Le Bon holds dear. ‘I just hate the idea when you get older of people saying, “You shouldn’t do this and you shouldn’t do that…” That will just make me go off and shave my head and wear a nun’s hat. I would shoot myself if I had to follow rules like that. I think it’s even more important as you get older to do what feels right for you.’

And once the tint was rinsed off and the stylist had started the blow-dry, it somehow seemed as though her hair had always been like that, rather than black and slicked back, as it so often appeared on the covers of magazines in the 1990s. Which is, of course, exactly the quality that makes a great model; however they look in that moment seems like the only way any woman should look, ever.

As the tousle-headed, choppy-layered, sunkissed Le Bon emerged, all the staff in the salon crowded round for a look, cooing in universal approval. It was a fun, girly moment, just what you’d expect of the mother of three girls (Amber, 24, Saffron, 22, and Tallulah, 19) and further stoked by the warmth of her friendship with hairdresser Charlie, to whom Le Bon has remained loyal, following her from salon to salon, for 18 years. Which, in fashion years (like dog years, but a lot more flighty), is more like 500.

Then there are the fashion friends she’s held on to for so long: Cindy Crawford and Gail Elliott, who remain her besties although they now live on separate continents. And not forgetting the supermodel buddies: Naomi Campbell, Helena Christensen and Eva Herzigova, who she persuaded to appear alongside her and Cindy two years ago in a truly amazing video for Duran Duran, husband Simon Le Bon’s band. If you haven’t seen the resulting Girl Panic! film, where the supers play the boys in the band, get thee to YouTube now.

Which all adds up to tell us quite a lot about Yasmin Le Bon. She’s loyal, her friends love her, she has the manners to let a journalist know she’ll be late. And as we talk, the words that come up again and again are ‘lucky’ and ‘grateful’. There doesn’t seem to be an iota of entitlement in her. In the most easy and natural way – she’s no holier-than-thou goody-goody, or guru-following karma convert – she has an attitude to life the Dalai Lama would approve of.

When I ask  what advice she gave her oldest daughter, Amber, when she started modelling five years ago (expecting it to be warnings about the perils of eating disorders and the dodgy characters that lurk on the fringes of the scene) she answered, ‘Have respect for people. It’s the same advice I would give her for life. Never judge too quickly, be respectful, be kind. Especially when you model. These are people you’ve got to work in a team with, they’ve got to care about you. Why on earth would anyone care about an arsehole? You’ve got to show that you have empathy, that you respect them. If you want to get the best out of life and people, and have a better experience of everything, that’s my only advice.’

Which is probably why, of all the brands on Britain’s high street, the ethically minded Monsoon – which runs an impressive charitable trust supporting disadvantaged women and children in India and Afghanistan – is the perfect fit for her. ‘I’ve always enjoyed the English high street,’ she says. ‘We have certain brands that we should be proud of, which speak to women of all socioeconomic backgrounds. I think everybody shops on the high street, don’t they?’

She and Amber shot this summer’s 40th anniversary campaign for the brand together in India. Was it odd modelling alongside her daughter? ‘We started doing a few things together when she was about 18, the odd show, which was quite strange actually, changing next to your daughter backstage at a fashion show. But we loved doing the Monsoon trip together. We had a real laugh because we know each other’s foibles and little vulnerabilities, and we can tease each other without anyone even realising we’re doing it.’

This is the part of Le Bon’s life I was most looking forward to talking about because, while there was a time when it would have been the glamour of the fashion shows and touring with her rock-star husband that gripped my attention, a quick pre-interview survey of my friends revealed it’s the Le Bon family’s closeness we’re all interested in now. So how has she kept her high-profile marriage together (it will be 28 years this December) and raised a happy, well-adjusted family in tandem with their high-octane careers?

‘When they were little, we’d take it in turns. So the girls got used to this life where their father was away but, when he was back, he was really around a lot, and then we’d make an effort to see each other. But I think the times apart were quite useful. It allowed me to give the girls a real routine. It is a struggle sometimes, but life isn’t perfect, is it? What is perfect? I think we muddled through it somehow.’

They must have done something right, because all three girls still live at home. ‘We’re like a big happy commune, really. A shabby B&B I call myself. We’ve been in the same house in Putney a long time, 21 years. It’s a real family home. Moving there, out of the spotlight of central London, was the best thing we ever did. We’re a very connected family and we do a lot together, but it’s the everyday things that mean the most, not the big experiences. Simon plays the guitar and they all sing alongs like the Von Trapp family.Christmas is really good at our place, I tell you… the Christmas carols are really good.’

It all sounds pretty idyllic, but she’s happy to admit that, like any of us, there are times when she’s had to grit her teeth and work at it. ‘Life doesn’t always go your way, but you can’t be frightened of the things that aren’t easy in life, otherwise you’re never going to get to the good bits. There has to be some pain and struggle, and at the end of that, there’s the glory. That’s a very important part of a relationship; how you work things out and find out who you are and whether you share the same values. I think it’s important to test a relationship. In many ways you test each other on a regular basis. I take each day as it comes.’

As well as those deeper issues, there are some little domestic details in the Le Bon home that will sound very familiar…‘I’ve spent years cooking, but I don’t call it cooking, I call it feeding. So I feed them, it’s fresh, it’s fine, it’s nothing to write home about, but they’re happy with it. But Simon’s one of those people that, whatever he decides to do, he does well, so when he cooks something he cooks it really well. Annoying. He doesn’t clean up very well, though… although he’s got a lot better about that. It used to be like a crime scene in the kitchen. That’s years of me being disgruntled afterwards.’

She’s also honest about her own household foibles – like a tendency towards hoarding. ‘I’m renovating my house and I’m having that big 21-year clear-out. I needed to. Those TV shows about hoarders are scary – that’s me. I hoard good packaging, carrier bags… I’ve got a cupboard full of face masks from the 1970s. They’re becoming collector’s pieces.’ She laughs about it. Then we end up practically crying and laughing together when I ask her, genuinely, as the mother of an 11-year-old girl who has turned overnight into a champion eye-roller, for some advice on coping with the tricky teen years.

‘All I can say is brace, brace… It’s when the shoulders keep coming up. Every time you walk into a room, the shoulders come up. It’s actually hysterical to begin with, then it stops being hysterical quite soon. I found it very difficult, I really did. I found myself crying every day. I felt very sorry for them, too – equally you can see them going through a lot of pain – but there is nothing like it, nothing comes close to how your children can hurt you, it’s extraordinary. But I had it down to a fine art, I could cry really quickly. Not spend hours wallowing. I could do it in five minutes, tops: in the toilet, get it all out, then I could move on.’

Did she think it was harder for her, taking the brunt as the mother of three girls – or was it more complicated for Simon being the outnumbered male? ‘You can imagine what the hormones are like in our household. Sometimes he has to stand his ground. The girls are very close to their father and sometimes I think they’re a bit too close and could be a bit more respectful, but he’s not a pushover, Simon. He’s a pussycat, but not a pushover. We think we’re completely normal, but we’re probably barking. He certainly is. I’m completely normal…’ Pause. ‘Note hair.’ She’s referring to the highlights she’s just spent the afternoon having done for her own fun, and will have to have tinted back to brunette for work as soon as she comes home from holiday.

It’s just the latest in many different styles of hair she’s had over the years. Which of them felt like the real Yasmin Le Bon? ‘They all feel like me, they’re just phases. In the early 1990s I had it short. I just had it cut off one day on a Peter Lindbergh shoot and loved it, that androgynous, deconstructed thing. That fashion has never gone away – strong, masculine, brogues with a chunky knit and wide-cut trousers. I love that, but it’s harder to pull off as you get older – a bit more weight, a bit more on the boobs – but there are ways you can do it. This shoot inspired me to go there again. Mind you, a shoot with Nicola [Rose, Red’s creative director] is always expensive – I was planning my shopping list while we were shooting.’ Which is interesting, because a taste for cropped hair and brogues is very much in keeping with an aspect of Yasmin Le Bon that really took me by surprise.

I’d expected her to be warm and funny and articulate and intelligent, because I’ve heard as much from fashion editors and mutual friends over the years. I wasn’t at all surprised to see she was reading contemporary fiction in the hairdresser’s (Allen Kurzweil’s A Case Of Curiosities). But what I hadn’t understood about her is that she’s a full-on petrolhead, a football fanatic and a serious martial arts expert. She reads magazines about cars and Formula 1. Really.

‘I think I was meant to be a boy and then just at the last minute I popped out a girl. Not that women can’t do these things. I honestly think I’m really feminine. I adore fashion, design, art – I loved being drawn by Nelly Dimitranova [Red’s artist-in-residence] on the shoot – but I’ve always done football, car racing and fighting, as well… youcan do it all.’

The fighting she’s talking about is Wing Chun – the same martial arts and meditation discipline Bruce Lee practised – which she did for years, after discovering her personal trainer was a master in it. ‘As soon as I found out, I think he could see I had the look in my eye, he knew I was a natural fighter. It’s actually a good thing I didn’t discover martial arts earlier, because I think I would have been a fighter, I really do. I’ve had to give it up due to injuries… I still wouldn’t want to meet me on a dark night, though.’

If that wasn’t enough of a revelation, wait until you hear what she likes to wear to kick around her local hood: ‘My youngest daughter’s school trackie bums. That really upsets them, because they’re not just tracksuit bottoms – they’re the waterproof ones. But I really don’t give a monkey’s what anybody thinks.’ And as she heads back to Putney to show her family her new hairdo – the one nobody asked her to have, but she just felt like trying for her holiday – I believe her.

 

The full interview appears in the November issue of RED, on sale October 2. Also available as a digital edition.