Lily is our first home-grown supermodel since Kate Moss. Sure, other British models have edgier hair (Agyness Deyn) or better name recognition (Lily Cole) but in terms of sustained demand Lily Donaldson is way out in front. As anyone who's watched Britain's Next Top Model knows, superstar models need to be all-rounders with catwalk, editorial and campaign skills. Lily Donaldson can do all of those, backwards.
At 24, she has had nine international Vogue covers. She has worked with Patrick Demarchelier, Tim Walker, Nick Knight and Mario Sorrenti, and signed contracts with Burberry, Gucci, Lanvin, D&G, Nicole Farhi, Mulberry, Dior and MaxMara. She was first recruited by Mario Testino for his 2006 rooftop Burberry shoot alongside Stella Tennant and Kate Moss. Testino tells me he picked her because 'Lily has that very valuable quality in a model, that "English" look'. She has naturally baby-blonde hair and seven piercings in her delicate ears - she grew up in Camden, after all. Her voice has acquired a lazy transatlantic lilt, legacy of living in New York (in a $2.2 million apartment in Manhattan) for five years, and she has a cool, detached, otherworldly manner, rather as if she were a visitor from Planet Gorgeous, a place where you or I will never be permitted to land. 'I actually got bored of New York. I missed Marks & Spencer so I've moved back here,' she says. 'I'm back in town. Hopefully I'll find somewhere near Kentish Town, where I grew up. It's my roots calling.'
She grew up in 'a very artistic household'. Her grandfather is the Pop artist Antony Donaldson, who exhibited in the 1960s alongside Patrick Caulfield and Allen Jones. His work is in the Tate's collection - bright, abstract, over-sexed paintings inspired by girlie magazines. 'I love going to visit him in the South of France and hearing tales of Pop Art days and nights,' she says. Her father is the fashion and stills photographer Matthew Donaldson; in the mornings he always had to wait for Lily to finish customising her clothes before taking her to Camden School for Girls. 'Tutus? Maybe. Definitely ripped jeans and lots of safety pins. Super-original, hey?'
Camden was 'diverse, liberal. I was a bit of a class clown, often in trouble with the teachers. I guess I have a guilty face.' She pulls a rabbit-in-the-headlights expression. Lily's passion at school was art and she always intended to go to art school. Instead, she was spotted by a model agency scout when she was sheltering under an awning at Camden Market (she is currently represented by Storm Models). She became the face of Miss Sixty at 16; by the end of the year she had her first British Vogue cover. 'Being scouted was nothing to do with my dad. He was quite protective of me and possibly didn't even want me to do it.'
The pressure the modelling industry puts on girls to become size zero is legendary, but Lily says she was never particularly affected. 'I was a teenager, my metabolism was in overdrive anyway. It's more down to genes.' Today she's already started the day with eggs on toast ('I'm a believer in breakfast'). She looks healthy, in control and without any obvious food neuroses. Sure, she offloads half her crab cake on to my plate, but there's models for you.
'I've definitely been through lows in my career,' she says, 'but my friends and family have been a great support team.' Her parents divorced when she was 16; her mother, Tiffany Jesse, now lives in Devon and has 'embraced country living in major way. She has chickens, three dogs, three cats, a Shetland pony and some Indian Runner ducks I bought her. She's a great force for good in my life. She's been my guide in many ways, being so removed from the fashion industry.'
Caught up in the fashion whirl, Lily has had some crazy moments. A recent shoot with sexed-up Pirelli calendar photographer Terry Richardson('who is super-nice, actually') saw her cuddling a leopard cub, then two bunnies and then a python. 'I was fine with it. But then the handler said, "You'd better wash yourself to get rid of the smell of the bunnies or else the snake is going to go for you." So I was scrubbing and scrubbing and the second they put the snake on me it hissed in my face. I screamed. After all my bravado…'
A shoot she did in 2009 for Vogue Paris, photographed by Patrick Demarchelier, was a high-fashion take on chav chic. Lily posed with a fake pregnancy bump, her hair scraped back into a Croydon facelift, puffing on a fag. In one shot she is tossing a plastic baby over her shoulder. 'We laughed the entire time,' she recalls. 'When it came out I got text messages from people saying, "Oh, I didn't realise you had a bun in the oven." Fashion magazines support the whole industry, they're a big deal, but they're also about having fun from time to time.'
She has an eye for fashion, collecting jewellery. 'My best purchase? Probably a Victorian mourning ring that's a skull with two hands that close over it.' And for Vogue Paris's 90 years' celebration masquerade last Christmas, she made her own mask. 'I went to the fabric district in Paris and bought red tulle to go with my long red dress and wrapped it around my head. I had so much fun, although it kind of fell apart halfway through the evening.'
In 2007 she started dating artist Vladimir Restoin Roitfeld, son of Carine Roitfeld, then editor-in-chief of Vogue Paris. 'He's great, he's still a good friend. I speak to him and [his sister] Julia a lot.' Lily was subsequently linked to Michael Phelps, though why is still a mystery to her since she never even met 'the big fish-man swimming guy'. She is currently happily paired up with the writer-DJ-musician-whatever Brett Stabler, and becomes animated describing their recent trip to southern India. 'We got the train from Kerala to Goa, it was the real deal. The journey lasted 12 hours and there were mice. My boyfriend and I shared a bunk with a family of five and we had such a nice time. Only when I got off did I realise, "Oh, I need a shower." ' They also went freewheeling on a scooter, and chanced upon an orphanage. 'Everyone there was super-sweet. I'd like to go back and see what I could do to help. In the end I gave them everything I had in my purse.'
Now it's back to the daily life of modelling, except she sometimes likes to turn the tables. 'In New York I used to go to life class a lot. I like painting in oils, mainly naked bodies, or abstracted human forms. My paintings can be…' her voice grows shy, hushed, 'quite sexual.' Behind the angelic façade, it would seem, there's a dirty painter trying to get out.
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