Women CAN be sexy (and seductive!) in midlife
Wonderbra shot her to fame at 19. Now 45, Eva Herzigova is back in a new lingerie ad. In a startlingly frank interview she insists ...
Almost a quarter of a century has passed since model Eva Herzigova stripped down to a pair of black lace panties and an exceptionally uplifting bra to share her fabulously fulsome cleavage with the world.
she was 19 and the star of the 1994 Wonderbra campaign, one of the most famous advertising campaigns ever. In one picture, blown up on motorway billboards and captioned ‘Hello Boys!’, she looked down at her bosoms and giggled. In another, she looks up and smirks: ‘or are you just pleased to see me?’ she oozed sex, promise and fun.
men drove off the road, into each other, into parked cars. Women rushed out and bought 30,000 bras a week. the campaign won endless international awards, turned its chief creative trevor Beattie into a star and boosted Wonderbra sales by 41 per cent.
Eva, meanwhile (after embracing the first flush of fame — who wouldn’t?), vowed never to trade on her wondrous boobs again. ‘I tried to steer away from lingerie after having Wonderbra written on my forehead every time I walked out,’ she says in her sexy, soft Czech accent.
Instead, she married a rock star, got divorced, lost weight, reinvented herself as a high-fashion supermodel, gracing countless Vogue covers and working for everyone from Chanel to Versace. (she is currently the face of Dior’s luxury beauty line). she also fell deeply in love again and became a mother.
so what a surprise it is to see her back in her undies again, aged 45. she’s in the same poses and, decades later, astonishingly unchanged — a glossy blonde vision of flat tummy, smooth skin and
impossibly slinky thighs. But this time it’s for Italian brand Yamamay rather than Wonderbra and, to chime with the changing times, with a tagline not for all those slavering men of the Nineties, but a message of strength and togetherness for the sisterhood: ‘Hey Girls! #myconfidentbeauty.’ It’s a call from eva, apparently, to modern, successful women at home and at work.
‘This is about confidence, the whole movement is that women should be comfortable with who they are,’ she says. ‘It should be inclusive. It’s about looking for one’s self. It’s for everyone — whatever your gender, body shape, size or colour.’
Which is a wonderful and very important message. Not, of course, that eva’s body is quite like the rest of ours.
YeS, she’s a middle-aged mother wrestling with sleepless nights, hormones and three gorgeous bouncy boys. But she’s also very tall, very slim, very beautiful and boasts a midriff of steel, despite, she claims, neither dieting nor doing a minute of formal exercise — no pilates, no yoga, no gym, not a single sit up.
She tells me she did the Yamamay campaign with less than 24 hours’ notice, for goodness’ sake!
even Liz Hurley admits she’s had to semistarve herself on not much more than raisins before modelling shoots. For years Kate moss embraced detox cleanses.
‘oh it’s just good lighting! A very good photographer!’ she says. ‘But thank God I was waxed!’
of course she was; she is an utter professional. When we meet, she’s shattered — floaty, almost, from lack of sleep — after being up since 1am with her five-year-old son. But instead of cancelling, she slaps on a bit more make-up and a see-through maroon floaty dress instead of her usual jeans.
‘I was like, oh my God, I can’t show up like that!’ she says.
She is also refreshingly chatty about everything — from bikini lines to unwelcome sexual advances, the huge changes in the modelling industry to the loves of her life. But given it is eva and we’re here to talk lingerie campaigns, it seems appropriate to start with her world famous bosom which, she admits, was slow to blossom.
‘I was a late bloomer! And I was very skinny,’ she says. ‘When I arrived in Paris aged 16 I went through puberty and everything just exploded!’ she giggles.
eva was never quite like the other supermodels. She hails from the former communist Czech republic, speaks five languages fluently, prefers architectural magazines and cookbooks to fashion mags and, inspired by her strict father, has a strong work ethic.
Not many models could make the transition from sexy pin-up. or, for that matter, work solidly for three decades. ‘When I started, a modelling career would usually end at 24,’ she says. ‘reach 28 and everyone would be going “wow”!’
She also dismisses out of hand any thought of cosmetic enhancement to smooth things over a bit.
‘Have you seen the models lately? oh my gosh!’ she says. ‘I don’t like those frozen looks. It’s not my thing. I want to be inspirational that way to women. Age is inevitable. You change and it’s fine. I want to be an example that you don’t have to do it.’
She isn’t even very bothered about skincare and insists she doesn’t have a bathroom full of face creams.
‘I’m a very pragmatic person. For me it is a waste of time. I cannot lie down somewhere and pamper myself,’ she says. ‘Probably I should do more! But I wash my face, I hydrate. It’s important, but as I get older my skin is so reactive that the less I do the better.’
As well as never dieting or going to the gym (‘I run around with my boys instead — they are like firecrackers!’) she never, ever, weighs herself.
‘It is such a silly thing for people to do. ‘oh, I’m half a kilo more!’ What does it matter?’ she says. ‘of course your weight fluctuates.’
Instead, she’s far too busy juggling work, kids (there’s no live-in nanny) and a home life which, from her Instagram feed, looks more like an eternal interiors shoot than the messy reality that the rest of us inhabit.
It must all feel light years from her own childhood in the town of Litvinov, where her fierce but much-loved father — a mining