Role model Meet curvy cover girl Ashley

The top model’ s on a mission to re shape the fashion world

Ashley Graham is trying to convince us we’re wrong about bikinis. Short of a burkini, we say the more material, the better. She has other ideas. “I love a string bikini,” she tells. “But I would walk around naked all the time if I could – it’s just more comfortable.”

It was far from bikini weather in London when

Woman’sDay sat down with Ashley, 30, who was dressed for winter in a jumpsuit and navy-blue coat. She’d just arrived from New York ahead of the Harper’s Bazaar Women of the Year Awards, where she took home the Model of the Year trophy. “I’m excited to see Victoria Beckham,” she told us.

Picture Ashley next to Posh and you can’t help but imagine that the designer would be swamped by Ashley’s overwhelming femininity. She’s gorgeous – like Eva Mendes’ curvier twin, with a body that can out-hourglass an actual hourglass.

And what a laugh! She has an enveloping, full-bodied roar that manages to seem both conspiratorial and booming. It bubbles up whenever Ashley is delighted or relishes having said something borderline shocking, which is often.

“Oh, yeah, I wear a night guard [to stop teeth grinding] to bed,” she confides in response to a dry question about what she keeps on her nightstand. “One time, I had sex with my husband when my night guard was in. Later, I went to the bathroom to take it out and he was like, ‘That thing was in the whole time?!’” Another laugh rolls through the room.

Ashley is one of the world’s top 10 highest-paid fashion models, the only curvy model (she wears a size 16-18 and hates the term “plus-size”) to rank alongside Kendall Jenner, Bella and Gigi Hadid, and Gisele Bündchen. She’s also a body activist, TEDx Talk-giver, lingerie designer, swimwear designer, author, TV presenter and, well, she’s quite the pin-up.

In 2016, she became the first model who wears above a sample size ever to appear on the cover of Sports Illustrated’s illustrious swimsuit edition.

Covers with American and British Vogue followed. But what really makes Ashley feel she’s made it is the Barbie that Mattel produced in her image. “She’s got thighs that touch, lower-belly fat and round arms,” she tells with satisfaction. Those Vogue magazines reside in a storage box and Barbie lives on a shelf in her kitchen.

Ashley says she’s “always been an old soul”. She was scouted in a shopping mall, aged 12, and on modelling jobs as a minor was subjected to sexual harassment. During a recent appearance on a chat show, she described being cornered by a photographer’s assistant on a shoot when she was just 17.

“He lured me into this hallway, pushed me into

a closet ... He exposed himself and he said, ‘Look what you did to me all day long. Now touch it.’” The encounter left her “freaked out” and worried that nobody would want to hire her if she spoke up.

Too hot for TV!

She knew she had to say something, though, when two US TV networks rejected a 2010 Lane Bryant advert because it was “too sexy”. In it, Ashley flits around a house in a bra-and-knicker set until she gets a diary alert to “Meet Dan for lunch”. She slings on a trenchcoat and walks out the door – not exactly postwatershed material. Ashley believed the ban never would have been imposed had the ad featured a less voluptuous model and called the networks’ decisions “sad”.

The publicity led to more work and she also secured her own lingerie line. Then

Sports Illustrated came calling. “That was a game-changer,” Ashley tells. “It was historymaking and it also made women feel better about being in a swimsuit.

“I also get emails from men, saying, ‘I’m finally having sex with my wife with the lights on because she’s more confident in her lingerie.’ That’s an amazing compliment, right?”

Ashley thinks of herself as a role model, and replies to as many emails and direct messages as she can. She posts videos of workouts with her trainers and shares intimate snaps with her husband Justin Ervin, a cinematographer she met at church when she was 21.

The couple remained chaste until they married a year later and, seven years in, she says,

“I had no idea that marriage could be this fun. The main thing we do is laugh.”

There’s also swimwear and lingerie – including plenty of un-retouched shots with visible cellulite – on her Instagram account. “I’m standing up for all the girls out there who have been told they’re ugly, who’ve been told they’re fat, who’ve been told they’re unhealthy,” she says.

As she’s become Brand Ashley Graham, she has also made strides into the luxury fashion world. At New York Fashion Week this year, she walked in shows for Prabal Gurung and Michael Kors, and says she would like to do more runways and editorial shoots.

“Designers want to design for me, but it’s a timing issue. A sample size, you could lend out the same dress to a couple of people. For me, you have to create a whole new dress.”

But she has created ample options in her new jeans collection for Marina Rinaldi. “I wanted to make denim that would fit my body but also fit many other different types of bodies.”

Her favourite pieces include a button-through denim skirt. “You can have as high a slit as you want,” she says. Then, true to form, she lets out a hearty guffaw and you can’t help get the feeling that Ashley is the kind of woman who always gets the last laugh.