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CO VER STORY
Yasmin Le Bon on the breakdown that put her life on hold
One of the original supermodels, YASMIN LE BON appeared to have a gilded existence with her rock star husband and family. But, she explains to Victoria Woodhall, beneath the surface she was struggling to hold it all together
yasmin Le Bon gives a good impression that, at 51, she’s falling apart. When she can’t think of a word, she worries that it’s ‘early-onset dementia’ (or perhaps it’s the menopause, she decides). Her back is shot, her knees and her hips are going, her chestnut hair – lustrously bouffed on umpteen magazine covers in the 80s and 90s and elegantly slicked in the noughties – is frustrating: ‘It’s so demoralising when your hair starts to thin, it starts to take all your femininity.’ She can no longer carry off the granny-chic tweed Prada dresses she wore in her youth as one half of an era-defining power couple (it hardly needs stating that she is married to Duran Duran frontman Simon Le Bon, and was once the highest paid model in the world). ‘There’s no irony any more. I actually look like someone’s grandmother.’
Also mothballed are the vest tops and jeans that for many years were her signature look. Having gained about a stone in her 40s, she now has cleavage. ‘Agh, the boobs! It’s quite a shock to develop breasts later in life. I’ve always felt very masculine; I’ve got a strong jaw. When I wore a vest and walked down the street, suddenly I had these things jiggling around and people were looking – I was mortified. It was like part of me had disappeared.’
Her home, ‘a big old double-fronted house’ in Putney, Southwest London (she can’t remember exactly how many bedrooms), is ‘very lived in, to put it nicely. You have to be careful what knobs you pull and how hard you throw yourself down on the sofa. Things could explode.’ She refers to herself as a woman of ‘very few grey cells’ and is only partly joking about the luxury retirement homes she’s seen in a magazine for herself and Simon, 57.
She may claim to have wear and tear like the rest of us, but, quite frankly, only she has noticed. From where I’m sitting, I see clear olive skin, shining eyes, a rocking outfit (Sofie D’Hoore shirtdress, bright blue Christopher Kane trainers, neon yellow socks – ‘I apply a bit of rock ’n’ roll to everything’) and a woman who segues intelligently between Brexit and boxsets – specifically Simon’s annoying habit of watching them without waiting for her. She talks as easily about the emotional power of the minor key as the antisocial nature of social media: ‘I can’t stand it when you’re out to dinner with people and suddenly they see an Instagram opportunity. Let’s just live in the moment and enjoy it, please.’ She defends Mick Jagger’s impending fatherhood at 73 – ‘People have been so rude about him, I find it really distasteful, so ageist’ – and wonders if it really is hot in the room or whether she’s having a hot flush. (‘Can we open a window? Is it me?’)
While the superficial things in her life have changed, the big-ticket items have remained absolutely solid: her marriage to Simon, which has lasted 30 years; her modelling career, which has endured even longer (this year she modelled for Giorgio Armani – ‘Yes, I still get wheeled out!’); her almost umbilical relationship with her daughters Amber, 27, Saffron, 25, and Tallulah, 22, who all, to Yasmin’s gratitude, still live at home. ‘We’ve grown up together. I’m completely open with them and we’ve got to the stage where if it’s OK for them to offload on to me, it’s OK for me to offload on them. They are pretty good at listening and giving advice. Our house is a mad place; people come and never leave.’
The current head count at Le Bon towers includes Yasmin’s niece, Saffron’s boyfriend and a friend of Tallulah’s. People come and go; no one pays rent: ‘Obviously, I am a hopeless businesswoman.’ Yasmin has been told off ‘by one of my daughters for not having enough house rules, which is hysterical. The roles have reversed.’ Simon’s mum, 81-year-old Ann-Marie, lives in the house that backs on to theirs and there’s constant traffic between the two.
The day before we meet was Saffron’s graduation from the University of West London: ‘I’m so proud of her. She worked hard and now has a first-class BA in music performance.’ Saffron is the only one in the family to have a degree. Simon dropped out when the band took over, Yasmin was scouted in her home town of Oxford at 17, Amber started modelling after school and Tallulah went straight into work as a booker at Models 1, Yasmin’s agency.
Yasmin is proud of all her daughters – not that they didn’t put her through the wringer. The stress of their teenage years, combined with the pressure Yasmin put herself under as a working mother, pretty much tipped her over the edge. ‘Nobody can tear your heart apart within a couple of words like they can,’ she says. To cope, she developed the habit of nipping to the bathroom for a quick cry.
She laughs when reminded that Amber once described her as ‘a right dragon’. ‘Yes, I was a real disciplinarian when they were little. It’s not as if
I didn’t give them love, I just felt that they needed boundaries. I had to be able to take them anywhere – around the world, on an aeroplane, backstage – in quite adult situations. I needed to be sure that they would be welcome and that they were going to make friends, and they did. That’s because they listened and never questioned me. They were quite exceptional.’
But it wasn’t sustainable. ‘They get to a certain age and you’re exhausted because you can’t keep up that level of discipline. By the time they got to their teenage years they could walk all over me.’
Yasmin wasn’t coping, and a friend had a quiet word. ‘She made it blatantly obvious that I needed to do something. My energy levels were terrible, I was sleeping very badly, my ability to recover after exercise was not good. I needed to address things in my past that I hadn’t really dealt with. They were mounting up and making everything a lot worse.’
What things? ‘Nothing terrible – just the drip -feed of life; things that have happened, that have been said, situations that you have parked somewhere until your body can’t take it any more.’
Would she describe what she went through as a breakdown? ‘Yes, I have been at that level, absolutely.’ But for her there was no single tipping point. ‘That is the misconception – that there must be a fault. But there is no major drama, it’s just trying to live. We hold on to the weirdest things. There will be one little comment I made to somebody 25 years ago in a mindless moment that still hurts me. Those just build up and unwittingly start to change the shape of things.’
Yasmin is convinced that the crippling back pain she suffered when the girls were in their teens was 50 per cent emotional. ‘You are so linked to all their moods, all their anxieties… I had been a punchbag for a long time and it was having an effect. That whole emotional drain pushed me over the edge with my back. I couldn’t cope with the pain; I was in a dark place – but, hey, that’s what friends are for.’
She stopped her wing-chun martial arts training and gained weight, which she is philosophical about. ‘My entire wardrobe no longer fits me, but maybe it’s time to get some new things. I’m never going to be that size again and I don’t want to be, because I know I wouldn’t feel good; I would be living on the edge again. I think you have to be a stone over your prime weight – that’s what keeps your joints happy. You need to be a healthy weight or you pay the price for it later with osteoporosis.’
Plus, she feels it’s only right that as a model, she should look her age. ‘I have to be honest about who I’m selling to. At 51, I’m not the weight I
My entire wardrobe no longer fits me… I’m not the weight I was at 25, but I’m happy I’m healthy