Model and writer Laura Bailey

The model and writer on packing light, taking photographs and getting a new tattoo

SEP TEMBER. LONDON ( MOSTLY ). Shiny shoes and back-to-school-style resolutions: more reading. More sleep. More boxing and Bodyism. More letterwriting and old-fashioned cards and Scrabble. Less iphone. Fewer emails. Less angst. AFTER A CLASSIC European-tour kind of summer of love, I’m still packing and unpacking endlessly. From Positano to Pari s for work, home briefly, and then to the Venice Film Festival the first week of September. Whatever the occasion I travel light, if somewhat chaotically. A pile of impractical favourites (vintage lace, old-lady kaftans, a long, sheer black and eggyolk yellow dress by Shrimps) all tangled up with sensible basics (a grey marl hoodie, boyfriend shirt, Nikes), and ruthlessly edited last minute. A couple of pairs of dangly earrings (Simone Rocha and Céline), my favourite scent (Boy Chanel) and a hardback novel are more feel-good useful than an extra pair of heels, and my loveworn Miu Miu swimsuit doubles up for evening with a denim skirt.

Packing for Venice, I rolled my red carpet dress (Emilia Wickstead’s Vita gown) into a shoe -bag and grabbed a purse full of emeralds by Solange Azagury-partridge. My trusty quick-fix make-up palette( Ch an el Palette Essentielle in Beige Clair) and oversized Zanzan sunglasses help create an illusion of glamour when I have to go out before I’ve really checked in. THIS TIME LAST YEAR, somewhat overwhelmed, I announced to my beloved circle of girlfriends (suppers with them are the only events in my diary that never get cancelled), that I was taking a sabbatical. They still tease me about that.

And yet, by being prepared to let go of many of the things I imagine d defined me, I found the courage to take a chance: I showed my photography publicly for the first time, encouraged by – and working with – my friend and mentor, super-stylist Cathy Kasterine.

Private photo-diaries from adventures with friends and my Save the Children trips quietly led to special projects and commissions. I got my tummy button pierced and then promptly fainted on Portobello Road

I still hate handing in my work, cripple d with s elf- doubt and the overwhelming desire to destroy everything and start over. But it ’s different with photography. I can breathe and play, led mostly by intuition – and, of course, 20 years of modelling. It does feel like a full-circle moment – casting, producing, shooting, worrying about lunch. (When I started modelling I couldn’t believe the decadent breakfasts!) Though mostly, I work alone, on the road – strangers in hotels or teen volleyball goddesses on a deserted Portuguese beach. Stolen moments and a Leica Q. Mostly just for me. No rush. That was what my so-called sabbatical became. LAST WEEK I strolled innocently into Love Hate, the newish tattoo parlour in Notting Hill, to buy a voucher for a friend. That same friend, Jonathan, held my hand 15 years ago when, in a moment of madness, I got my tummy button pierce d and then promptly fainted on Portobello Road. I woke up dazed and confused in the local bookmakers – he’d carried me there, police circling suspiciously, and I couldn’t look at the bloody hoop for a week.

The same thing happened when I had my one and only tattoo – a tiny copycat heart on my ankle when I wanted to be just like my best friend Leona, who piggybacked me unconscious into the nearest air-conditioned cinema. So why did I write on Jonathan’s birthday card, ‘I will if you will’ and start doodling tiny stars on my wrist?