Daisy Lowe: ‘You have to develop a whole new level of patience’
Like many, model Daisy Lowe has moved back into her mum Pearl’s house for lockdown. Jessica Barrett asks both generations how it’s shaped their relationship…
eight weeks into lockdown and the Lowe/goffey household – like countless others around the country – is in uproar. Pearl Lowe, 50, designer, musician and reformed member of the infamous Primrose Hill set, and her daughters Daisy Lowe, 31, a model, and Betty Goffey, 14, are bickering as they try to get our Zoom call to work from their kitchen table at the family home in Frome, Somerset.
As they fuss over where the Wi-fi connection works best, scoop up Daisy’s dog Monty, and try and move Danny Goffey, Pearl’s husband and the drummer in Supergrass, out of the way (‘This is our interview, butt out!’ Pearl shouts), they finally settle down to talk to Grazia about how their family dynamic (which also includes brothers Alfie, 23, and Frankie Goffey, 21) has been affected by living all together under one roof.
‘It’s been chaotic,’ says Pearl, ‘and very loud.’ She’s not overstating it. During our chat there are countless interruptions, squabbles, glares designed to stop one another talking over each other and bouts of hysterics – all things most families living in one another’s pockets for the last two months will recognise.
And yet Daisy, who sits flanked by Betty and Pearl (all looking far more glamorous than the standard Zoom caller, Daisy and Pearl with their dark hair and eyes and red lips, and Betty with her blonde hair and blue eyes), says that they haven’t really argued. ‘If you had told me six months ago that I’d be living here solidly with all of us for two months with no let-up, without a single row, I would have said that you were mad. You have to develop a whole new level of patience, you have to let things go that you wouldn’t have before. I’m actually really grateful for the quality time. I was very sad when Betty said she wanted to go to boarding school, she’s the only one who wanted to go, and we would never have had this sister time before.’
Daisy explains that she left her London flat, where she was living alone, to be with her family a week before the lockdown was announced. ‘I wasn’t very well – I’d had a very bad high temperature and felt really fluey for three weeks before lockdown, so I’d already done three weeks’ self-isolation. I spoke to Mum every day and she just said, “Come on, you’re going to lose your mind on your own, you don’t know how long it’s going to be, come home.”’
As mother and daughter relationships go, Daisy and Pearl have always made their own rules. During her twenties and thirties, Pearl, the former frontwoman of an indie band called Powder, was a permanent fixture in the Primrose Hill set, partying with the likes of Kate Moss and Sadie Frost. This meant that Daisy, who was born
when Pearl was 19 (her father is Gavin Rossdale), was often taken care of by her grandparents, Eddie and Leila. Pearl went on to develop a heroin and cocaine habit, but in 2004 decided that she needed to turn her life around in order to survive, and began to get clean with the support of husband Danny.
In 2006, Pearl decided she wanted to find some peace in the Somerset countryside and left London with Danny, Alfie, Frankie and Betty. Four years later, they found their dream home, all 11 bedrooms of it, on the outskirts of Frome and set about decorating it in Pearl’s signature style, a gothic glamour with dark lace, vintage furniture, eclectic art – and one huge dressing-up cupboard.
While the tumultuousness of Daisy’s childhood hasn’t affected how close she is to her mum, this is the first time the two have lived together for years. When Pearl left London, Daisy stayed on with her grandparents to finish her A-levels, though soon dropped out of school to model fulltime and has since worked for the likes of Chanel, Vogue Italia and Marc Jacobs.
While one by one all of their children had moved away, lockdown has seen Pearl and Danny’s Georgian home in the country filled with family once again. Daisy was joined by Betty, who arrived back from boarding school, as well as their brothers Alfie and Frankie, who are all now under one roof with Pearl and Danny – and they have been learning how to be one big family again while weathering some personal storms. ‘I thought I was going to have this year on my own because Danny was going to be on a year-long tour with Supergrass – now it’s the opposite,’ says Pearl.
Still, she admits it’s been calmer than she was expecting. ‘Betty and I are very volatile, but we haven’t clashed once during lockdown,’ she says. Daisy says she thinks it’s because they’ve had to put smaller differences that they would normally fight over aside for sanity’s sake. ‘We all know what’s going on, and we know we’re locked into the house with each other for the foreseeable. The only one who is annoying right now is Danny, because he’s telling us what to say from behind the computer.’ Danny, the self proclaimed lockdown chef of the house, appears alongside them to give me a quick thumbs up before heading off to Facetime his best friend, actor Rhys Ifans who, Pearl says, is self-isolating alone but still keeping their spirits up with their hilarious daily chats.
So what has the family been up to? So far, they say there’s been baking, candle making, dance classes, murder mystery nights, painting, life-drawing, redecorating – plus they’ve learned how to do gel manicures, Betty’s dyed her hair five times, and the girls dyed Pearl’s for her. (‘It was jet black. Danny said I looked like Mystic Meg.’) It’s like a strange hybrid of Keeping Up With The Kardashians and the wholesomeness of an Enid Blyton novel.
For all the activity, though, Daisy admits lockdown has often felt like an emotional roller-coaster. ‘The days are very up and down. If it’s hard I’ll just tell Mum, you know, that I’m feeling really overwhelmed now and take myself for a walk. You need to go and have your own space and time – everyone’s in the same boat,’ she says. The family endured a tough time when Betty’s best friend from school passed away recently, with all of them attending the Zoom memorial. ‘That was really hard,’ said Betty. ‘I couldn’t see any of my friends and we were all going through the same thing. It was beautiful, though. Daisy cried too.’
Pearl adds that she’s worried about her mum Leila, who lives alone in London. ‘It’s horrible and she’s really upset about it,’ says Pearl. ‘I can’t imagine what it must be like for her, because we only lost my dad a few years ago. I think this has been the hardest aspect of the whole thing actually. We think she has had [coronavirus] as well, but she’s fine now. My brother was then taken to hospital with coronavirus, so it was hard when they were sick and I was here.’
Looking for lockdown silver linings is something we’ve all been forcing ourselves to do over the last two months. For Pearl, one was her 50th birthday last month. ‘It was scorching hot and we had a picnic in the garden. Daisy and Betty made me a rainbow cake. As the time has gone on, it’s become a weird but sometimes wonderful experience because we’re all usually not together.’ Daisy is also grateful to have this quality time with her family when she’s normally so busy, particularly being able to do a dance cardio class every morning, which she forces her mum and sister to take part in (last week’s was to the Thong Song by Sisqo: ‘The three of us had to get on the floor and twerk, and mum does the whole thing in a tea dress,’ says Daisy).
Meanwhile, work for both of them has fundamentally changed. Pearl’s business is normally based around selling her vintagestyle dresses, but sales have fallen. ‘No one seems to want pretty dresses right now, which is understandable,’ she explains. So in order to make herself useful she decided to branch out into mask production, with the profits from the £25 creations going to the ambulance service in the South West. ‘I know I’m doing something to help and I feel very good about that. You realise there are people dealing with so much loss and pain, and when they announce the death figures each day it’s so heartbreaking. But at the end of the day you’ve got to keep safe and do your bit, that’s why we’re trying to do what we can to help the NHS.’ She’s taken over 500 orders and the family has formed a factory line to fulfil them from home.
Daisy, meanwhile, worries about the future when it comes to work as a model. ‘My job involves having to be around a lot of people for shoots, so there is a concern there,’ she says. Still, the industry is learning to improvise: ‘I did my first Skype shoot yesterday. It was with a friend I’ve known since I was really young so it was easy to feel comfortable across a screen with her.’
For all the anxiety, though, they can take positives from the past two months. ‘I’ve learned to be more patient,’ says Betty. Daisy says to Pearl, ‘I’ve realised how lucky I am that you are my mum, because we have such a giggle together.’ Pearl agrees, and says she’s been grateful for Daisy’s sense of order and routine – and for forcing her to do these dance classes. She adds, ‘There should have been hidden cameras for that Thong Song one though, if only to catch me twerking.’