Interview: Erin O'Connor, supermodel

Published on Sunday 13 February 2011 11:02

Erin O'Connor is used to being judged on her appearance. The 33-year-old English supermodel whom Chanel's Karl Lagerfeld once described as "one of the best models in the world" is so striking that the eyes of everyone in the room linger on her angular, disarmingly symmetrical features and elongated frame.

Her aesthetic – one which has the biggest fashion designers in the world clamouring to send her down their catwalks – is haughty, regal, otherworldly, so it's surprising to find her so, well, down-to-earth when we meet in a dark corner of the May Fair Hotel in London.

In a black tailored suit, ox-blood brogues and red lipstick she is at once softly feminine and androgynous. Her posture and bone structure seem somehow aristocratic, but she is, famously, a working-class girl from Walsall near Birmingham. She can be frivolous, but is generally serious, speaking in confident, measured tones, but occasionally breaking into a laugh that's akin to a squeal. She loves fashion, but doesn't follow trends. Couture designers adore her, but she became one of the faces of Marks & Spencer in 2007 ("they called me their 'wild card girl'") . And while she is a self-proclaimed "freak of nature" she's unnervingly beautiful.

"Someone once referred to modelling as being like winning the lottery gene pool," she says with a confused laugh. "It's such an odd way to put things but what is different about modelling is that the industry often picks you. And a lot of models are, like me, from small towns, who often felt a sense of isolation growing up, of not being accepted amongst their peers because they were different. And I do think modelling offers up that sense of 'well you are different, and that's quite alright.'"

Growing up, O'Connor was 6ft by the age of 15. She was flat-chested with large feet and a large nose, and hid behind waist-length black hair, earning her the nickname "Morticia". Teaching was her chosen path, before serendipity struck during a chance encounter with a model scout while rummaging in a bargain bin at the Clothes Show Live in 1996.

"At first I thought that she thought I was stealing something," O'Connor says with a chuckle. "She produced a Polaroid camera and I'd never really seen myself that way. Growing up, we took endless photographs and the films were shoved in the drawer and never developed. So it was quite an instant reaction to see myself like that on Polaroid film. I was wearing braces and everything else and she liked what she saw before I could really understand what the appeal was."

Within months she was modelling for Versace, but the lanky girl who was used to being teased for her height still couldn't understand what all the fuss was about. "I really did need that push because I was quite happy where I was, thank you very much," she says.

"And then all of a sudden I had to believe in fate because it was a relatively ordinary day but my life changed forever. I think naivet was my armour and I allowed myself to be completely carried by that so I literally got the bus to the train station, landed in Victoria, put on a nice outfit and never looked back."

Where O'Connor couldn't see the appeal, the rest of the fashion world could. At a time when supermodels, from Cindy Crawford to Claudia Schiffer were every fleshy inch the male fantasy, she heralded a new era of androgynous "freak chic". Lagerfeld said: "Her face is like a Roman vase – not a standard beauty, but a modern anti-beauty," while actress Anjelica Houston told her "You'll never be pretty but you'll always be magnificent."

"She isn't only a model," said Jean-Paul Gaultier. "She is quite like art. She is like theatre … I should love to be with her every day."

Gaultier was right of course. She is far more than just a model. Not only has she strutted and posed for most of the top luxury brands in the world and become the face of the British high street thanks to Marks & Spencer, but she has become the friendly spokesperson for an industry that's often perceived as aloof.

As a past vice-chair of the British Fashion Council, she has a strong association with London Fashion Week – which kicks off on Friday – and it's a relationship that goes far beyond stepping out on the catwalk. In 2007 she founded the Model Sanctuary, a relaxing space during Fashion Week where models can have access to nutritionists, osteopaths and life coaches, and generally take a break from their hectic schedules. They see over 300 models a day, most of whom are in their late teens.

"First and foremost they're young people in their own right," she says. "It's about ensuring that they not only survive the industry, but thrive in it as well. Being self-sufficient, for me was a really important ambition to realise and it's about instilling that confidence and conviction in them. As a model you are constantly being put on a pedestal whereby you are judged and often appreciated for the way your features lie, and even if other people can't see the benefit of getting to know the human being inside, it's good for these young models to know that that confidence is a crucial part of building their character, and a sense of who they are."

"Confidence" is a word she uses often. She's overflowing with it now, but it took her a long time and a lot of work to get here, she says.

In the early stages of her career, it was suggested that she get a breast augmentation and a nose job. She had moments where she couldn't fit into designers' tiny sample sized clothes. And a few years ago, she found herself at the eye of the size-zero storm when a national newspaper ran a full-page image of her, criticising her body.

"I think I was frozen with shock," she says. "As a model, part of my job is to be critiqued physically. I can handle criticism but this article was discussing whether or not I was capable of having children, guestimating my weight and asking whether or not I regularly menstruated. I did get upset but for the first time I saw it from the readers' perspective and I suddenly realised that though this debate was quite painful to me, it was necessary.

"Over the last decade models have become this sort of commodity where it's easy to disassociate the human being from within the clothing. As the debate raged on they talked more and more about the influence models were having on women and I could see that a lot of what was said had certain truths. But it was the way in which it was handled, I couldn't believe the level of aggression, but I had to accept that there was a lot of anger out there. People felt quite persecuted by limitations that they felt the industry imposed upon them. It was a big eye-opener for me. How I reacted to hearing criticism of my body, I thought: 'well hang on a minute, I'm a grown up here, what must a young person feel like?'"

And so she co-founded the All Walks project, which aims to encourage diversity on the catwalk, and acknowledges that the fashion industry's portrayal of beauty has a very real impact on how millions of women around the world feel about their appearance.

"Fashion is intoxicating and it plays a part in all of our everyday lives," she says. "A lot of people use it as a form of escape, of realising a fantasy, and in some ways that becomes an unobtainable norm. But I think we undermine the consumer by insisting on having such a strict remit in terms of body ideal as well as appreciation of beauty. I see All Walks as being a really positive thing, allowing both designer and model to feel less pressure, and perhaps showcasing the designers' credentials by demonstrating their ability."

As part of the project, All Walks is putting on an exhibition of images – shot by Scottish fashion photographer Rankin – of models of varying sizes and ages at the National Portrait Gallery during London Fashion Week. It's yet another date for O'Connor's busy LFW diary, but that hasn't prevented her from taking on yet another project.

She has teamed up with her friend, the stylist Kate Halfpenny, to create the clothing line "She Died of Beauty". The duo have just launched their first pieces – a collection of five T-shirts – and are planning on branching into more high-end wares. For now, they insist upon crawling before they can walk, keeping the collection simple and shooting the campaign in a photo booth, with O'Connor doing her own hair and make-up. The project was inspired by her work with the Self-Employed Women's Association and Traid (Textile Recycling for Aid and International Development), and makes the argument that ethics and style needn't be mutually exclusive.

"I had this staggering realisation that I'd been working in this industry for over a decade without ever having truly considered how those garments are made," she says. "The range is ethical and it's about trying to combine the ideas of style and conscience. For me it's been brilliant being a part of something whereby I wasn't directed and I wasn't a commodity, because it's very much something that I'm going to have to build and work really hard on myself."

In between her many side projects, she still finds time to walk the runways. Models starting out today have notoriously short careers, but at 33 she remains in demand among designers, particularly those who exhibit at Couture Week in Paris. The drama of the catwalk is one of her favourite elements of the job.

"With high fashion, it's a performance," she says excitedly, striking a dramatic pose to illustrate her point. "You're trying to interpret a fantasy in a very physical way and you really are playing a character. I've played men, dead people, famous people, historical icons, and it's no mean feat. It's quite an insular experience even though the crowd is in front of you and there's an expectation. With Marks & Spencer, my job initially felt quite a lot harder because I was playing myself. And I've never actually done that because being a model I was able to hold back quite a lot of myself. There was this feeling of self-preservation which was incredibly important. So smiling in front of a camera and being on the telly..."

She trails off with a shrug that suggests that this very different type of exposure is more unnerving than any couture show. However, her M&S gig did have the advantage of helping to explain to her family and friends back home what her job actually entails. Her mother, a nursery teacher and father, a foundry worker had always been supportive of her career, but many of the arty European magazines she has been featured in didn't appear on the shelves of the newsagents in Walsall.

With the M&S campaign, suddenly she was getting proud texts from her mother saying she'd seen her daughter on a billboard, and her father even went into his local branch of the store to ask if he could get one of the posters from the window once they'd finished with it. "He said they looked at him like he was a dirty old pervert!" she says with her trademark squeal of laughter. "But he got it. I think I've gone a bit floppy hanging up in the garage."

Her father had always told her she was beautiful, but she'd never believed him, and even when a model scout echoed his words she refused to accept it. But today, as one of the most successful models on the planet and a spokeswoman for her industry, O'Connor's finally come to recognise her beauty, to be comfortable being judged by it, and to embrace it.

• London Fashion Week runs from Friday to 22 February; www.shediedofbeauty.com

This article was first published in The Scotsman, 12 February, 2011