BACK IN FASHION
Yet supermodel Jodie Kidd tells how she could barely stand on her catwalk return
SUPERMODEL Jodie Kidd has revealed how she was hiding a painful secret after making it from casualty to her catwalk comeback.
Jodie, 41, made her breathtaking return to the fashion world at London Fashion Week alongside Naomi Campbell and Erin O’connor.
But she did it while battling through the pain barrier after an accident that left her needing knee surgery.
As we speak, a few days after her operation, she’s supposed to be resting.
But it’s clear that the adventure-loving model-turnedpub landlady is desperate to be up and about, digging the garden and chopping wood at her home inwest Sussex.
“I tore my cartilage in two so I’ve had some of it removed and the rest of it stitched,” she says with a wince. “I’ve had to keep my leg up and haven’t been able to do much.”
“Too much gallivanting, riding, climbing mountains, cycling and high-heel dancing,” as she says on Instagram.
Jodie was able to delay her operation until after London Fashion Week, where she appeared in US designer Tommy Hilfiger’s show.
“I’m lucky to have an amazing doctor. When I said I needed to do Tommy’s show, he said, ‘We’ll get you to the catwalk and as soon as LFW is finished we’ll get you into surgery’. I was really lucky and it was brilliant working with Naomi and Erin again.
“It was such a great flashback to my previous life and I enjoyed catching up with everyone. I’d love to do it again.”
Jodie’s got more projects in the pipeline, and says: “It’s nice to see someone in their 40s still out and about and being photographed and getting on catwalks.”
But the former model, who was a mainstay at fashion shows in the early 1990s, has been open about the fact that she struggled with the industry and the press scrutiny.
Now, she says, there are “support systems” in place for people suffering from panic attacks, and everyone is more “educated” about anxiety than they were 25 years ago.
“I had to stop that path, living in London under that huge scrutiny and in the public eye,” she says.
“Everything was too much, so I had to take a step back from modelling and understand what was going on in my body, which was anxiety and panic attacks.”
To recover, Jodie says, “I had to get back to sport and exercise and eating healthily and all those things I’ve been doing since then.
“It’s lovely to come back and do it in the right way. I understand what’s good for you and what’s not good for you.” Now, the Amazonian blonde has found the perfect balance in rural Sussex where she’s landlady of a pub, the Half Moon in Kirdford, just outside the South Downs National Park, near Chichester.
But although she says she loves the “fresh air and the quality of life”, she’s quick to dismiss her country life as calm.
In fact, it’s just the opposite. “It’s an action-packed life. You can’t sit back and let things happen.
“We’re always fixing fences or digging in the garden. It’s a working environment, which is what I love.
“In the industry I’m in, to come home and chase the chickens back in the coop and chop wood, it really is a leveller. It brings you back down to earth.”
Jodie posted a picture on Twitter of her partner, former Special Forces operative Joseph Bates, taking her son Indy, eight, to school, through the knee-high flood water that was pouring down their road.
“It’s been terrible, the worst January and February I’ve had since I got the pub.you can see how the country is so waterlogged and the water table is so high that any bit of rain causes major flooding.
“It doesn’t get into our house but it does affect access.there was one point when we could wade through it but the last two times it’s been very high and very fastmoving so it’s been really dangerous.
“We’ve been stranded a few times which has been a real worry.”
Luckily Jodie’s pub is on higher ground so the landlady has still been able to pull pints while watching the Guinness Six Nations Rugby Championship with fans.
Her friend Vogue Williams, the Irish model who was once married to Westlife singer Brian Mcfadden, came down before the England-ireland match and the pair enter