A Body to die for ... but a disaster of a love life
She’s got beauty, brains and a business empire. But as Elle Macpherson ‘leaves’ her husband
FOr decades, Elle Macpherson’s name has been a byword for a certain kind of stupendous physical perfection. Sporty, strong and sexy, with a curtain of tousled blonde hair, the midriff of a limber teenager and the longest and most tanned legs on the planet, ‘The Body’ has reached middle age without middle age reaching her.
She credits ‘good skin, good teeth, good hair and a good mood’ for the fact that, at 53, you could easily believe she was 20 years younger.
Unfortunately, though, her disastrous private life has enough shocks and disappointments in it to last most of us several lifetimes — and the repeated failures of her romantic hopes would surely dent the sunniest of moods.
The latest setback is the end of her marriage to beetle-browed U.S. property developer Jeff Soffer, who is said to be worth an estimated $1 billion or around £700 million. They had been together for only four years, but she is said to have told friends that they are ‘definitely over’. According to reports, she seems to have taken exception to his friendships with other women, although he denies any wrongdoing on this front.
A source told the New York Post: ‘He has been linked to some other women, but insists they are just friends.’
Miami gossips note that, by reputation, Jeff takes after his father Don, 84, who has been married five times, including to former Miss World Marjorie Wallace.
it’s all rather embarrassing given that Elle recently moved her family from London to Florida for the sake of this grand love, and was to be found only last year extolling his great qualities as a parent and their compatibility.
The couple have five children between them: Elle’s two teenage sons from her previous relationship with financer Arpad ‘Arki’ Busson — Flynn, now 19, and Aurelius Cy, 14 — and three children (two girls and a boy) from Jeff’s former marriage.
in one interview, Elle told Vogue: ‘Becoming a stepmother has been the biggest gift, and i cherish my relationship with all five children.
‘i think love does wonders for every woman. Being a mother is my greatest achievement and my sons are a credit to themselves.
‘We have a deep respect for each other’s profound commitment to parenting, so we would both probably say that the children come first.’
She added: ‘And that means, at times, we are separated because of where the kids are, and it takes quite a mature person to allow each other to do what we need to do in our families’ lives.’
But now she has reportedly moved out of their sprawling £15 million Dynasty-style house (which boasts a swimming pool in the front garden) in Miami, and is looking for a new home with her younger son — her older boy, Flynn, having moved out to attend business school in Boston. So why can’t this princess find her happy ever after? Maybe the trouble is Elle’s habit of choosing millionaires with playboy reputations.
Or perhaps Ms Macpherson is a high-maintenance proposition (she’s said to be sharp, grand, and mistrustful in nature), and this doesn’t make for marital harmony.
Certainly, interviewers come away from encounters with the Aussie supermodel-turned-lingerie flogger having been impressed by her looks, but not bowled over by any personal charm; she has a reputation for being cold and stand-offish.
Even her fans must admit that — for a woman who has won the genetic lottery — she seems surprisingly unlucky in love.
PriOr to Jeff, her most significant romance was a ten-year liaison with minted multi-millionaire banker Arki Busson, 54. in a similar vein, she spent three years on the arm of playboy Tim Jefferies, handsome and wealthy heir to the Green Shield Stamps fortune, but did not induce him to settle down.
Another one who got away was singer Billy Joel.
They met in a bar in St Barts. She charmed him into a year-long romance from 1981-82 and Billy is said to have written several songs about Elle, including This Night and And So it Goes.
But eventually he dumped her for model Christie Brinkley, whom he had met that same first night, and married her instead.
Then there was Elle’s marriage to fashion photographer Gilles Bensimon, now 73, in 1985, which lasted less than five years. So what happened this time? To be fair, few gave the union with Jeff Soffer much of a chance.
Before they married, Soffer had reportedly broken up their liaison to dally with a 25-year-old Colombian bikini model, before they reunited in 2012.
A connoisseur of famous blondes, he is also said to have romanced both Gwyneth Paltrow and actress Kate Hudson between his first marriage and his relationship with Elle.
The story of Elle and Jeff begins at The Little Nell Hotel in Aspen, Colorado, in February 2009.
Soffer was fresh out of a romance with another model — he had seen in the New Year with Molly Sims, a toothsome blonde, familiar for her bikini pictures in Sports illustrated magazine.
However, during the skiing season, his path crossed with Elle’s. They had already met at a party in London previously, and he asked her on a date. They were seen dining together in the hotel, which is the epicentre of the town’s social scene.
She had previously emerged from a long and turbulent romance with Gallic financier Busson. She and Arki had two sons together, but there had been signs of unhappiness for some time. Her former assistant said that Elle consulted lawyers over a split from Busson several years before they eventually parted in 2005.
Elle had entered rehab in Arizona in 2003 for post-natal depression, and reportedly again in 2004.
‘i just needed to clear my head and get some rest,’ she later said.
She no longer drinks any alcohol and even eschews aspirin.
in 2007, Arpad went on to become engaged to actress Uma Thurman, with whom he now has a daughter, four-year-old rosalind.
Soffer was her first serious boyfriend after Arki. When she met him, he had just emerged from a long
marriage and was fully enjoying the single life.
Soffer’s first wife is model and actress Kim Faze. Now 48, they met when Kim was a successful model living in Miami and were married in 1997, separating in 2008. They had daughters Madison, 20, and Summer, 17, and son Logan, 14.
Kim’s mother Irene said: ‘The divorce was very difficult for my daughter. She did not really want to end the relationship, but things were not working out. They were spending too much time in separate states and then they grew apart.’
The first bump in the road for Soffer and Macpherson came quickly in May 2010, when the magazine US Weekly reported that Soffer was in a romance with actress Kate Hudson. The magazine quoted a source saying: ‘They are dating. It’s been maybe a month. Jeff and Elle are done.’
The story given was that Soffer had had ‘a thing’ for the actress for years — and Hudson was seen overnighting at his home with her son. Her publicist commented: ‘Mr Soffer is a close friend of Kate and her family.’
Despite appearances, he and Elle were not ‘done.’ They were seen again numerous times in Miami before, in March 2012, the couple split. It was reported that this time Elle had been thrown over in favour of an unnamed Colombian bikini model 20 years her junior, and was distraught.
She consoled herself by dating Roger Jenkins, a brash bald British banker worth £300million. It didn’t last.
She and Soffer were brought together again by a tragic accident in November 2012, when he was a passenger in a helicopter which crashed attempting a landing at a golf club on Great Guana Cay in the Bahamas. Lance Valdez, a tax attorney who was one of Soffer’s greatest friends, died. The pilot and other passengers were injured.
Mr Valdez’s widow Daria filed a £61million wrongful death lawsuit against Soffer, claiming that he was at the controls of the helicopter and had flown in low over the golf course to show off his house and yacht. Soffer denied it, and the suit was later withdrawn. He suffered fractured vertebrae in the accident and required hospital treatment and long rehabilitation. Elle jumped onto the first plane out to Miami and helped nurse him back to health. They patched up their romance, and got engaged in 2013, marrying in a discreet ceremony in Fiji in July of that year in front of just 15 guests. The intimate ceremony took place at the spectacular Laucala resort, which is a private island in the archipelago. A friend told People magazine: ‘Jeff ’s really normal and a relaxed kind of person. In that way, actually, he’s almost Australian [like Elle]. The family think he’s great.’ Local columnist Lesley Abravanel, says of Soffer: ‘He is the Bruce Wayne of Miami,’ referring to the secretive alter ego of Batman. ‘He is one of the most under the radar, low-key billionaires out there. ‘Sure he has the toys, bells and whistles, but is truly a class act. He doesn’t hang out in the Miami scene at all, he never really has. ‘The splashiest thing he has done, besides snag Elle Macpherson, was his 40th birthday in which he threw himself a party in a hangar at the Miami-Opa Locka private airport and Prince performed. But you didn’t see him drunk with a lampshade on his head. He is not a socialite.’ In truth, despite all the protestations of utter bliss, the marriage came at a tricky juncture for Elle. She was reeling after the licensing deal with underwear makers Bendon, on which her £60million fortune is founded, was cancelled.
WOUNDINGLy, the company instead hired rival supermodel Heidi Klum — nine years her junior — to be the face of its numerous underwear lines. The importance of that business partnership can hardly be overstated. It lasted 25 years and was so successful that Elle Macpherson Intimates was said to have a turnover of around £500 million annually.
In the immediate aftermath of the announcement, Macpherson, who had been living in London for decades, completed a move from her three-bedroom London flat to Miami. In an interview last year she said somewhat bitterly of the professional break-up with Bendon: ‘That they took my clothes and ripped out the labels and put somebody else’s name in . . . that’s one way of doing business.’ She started a new lingerie company, in which she is a 50 per cent investor, and supervised everything from concept, through design, marketing and finance. It is currently sold via the online retailer Figleaves in the UK. She has also started a venture selling a powdered green protein and vitamin to drink, which is supposedly ‘alkalising’ and said to have health properties. Her Super Elixir costs around £50 a pot, and there is a version for children.
She is, of course, the best advertisement for her own wares, and nobody can imagine that she will be single for long.
That megawatt smile, though, may be sheathed for a little while.