Despite her best endeavours – a low-key shopping outing, coffee with her mother, an afternoon by the pool – Miranda Kerr has kept the paparazzi busy since she arrived in Sydney a few days ago with her photogenic baby and film-star husband in tow. This morning, as we gathered outside the Australian model’s favourite café for our first Vogue shot, a blacked-out car sidled up and a camera attached to a hairy arm slid out the window. Snap, snap, snap.
“You can’t be, like,
‘Oh my God, I can’t believe my arse is jiggling.’
You have to be, like, ‘I’m really great.'”
Our next location is at a private waterfront mansion, supposedly sheltered from prying eyes, but a balding man clutching a camera tries in vain to hide his girth behind a fig tree as we arrive. Such is her allure, the pictures are
on British websites just hours later, but Kerr remains coolly detached from the attention. Inside, our hostess offers us tea. Although Kerr politely declines, preferring to sip from an ever present beaker of green vegetable juice, her husband, she says, would probably like some Earl Grey. In the garden, Orlando Bloom, on a break from filming The Hobbit in New Zealand, reclines in the shade with their baby, Flynn.
Hair and make-up done, Kerr saunters out to see her boys. There’s a lot of “love” and “darling” between the couple, who wed in 2010, as they debate including Flynn in the shots. Bloom agrees, on the proviso he gets a picture for the family album, and proudly watches mother and son pose under the frangipani tree. With Flynn in her arms, Miranda’s all earth mother, balancing her child on one hip as he holds up a blossom to her. But put the 29-year-old in a bikini or short skirt and an irrepressible sex kitten emerges, all cheeky winks and playful smiles. Lucky Orlando. “I dance for him,” she says coquettishly, with a naughty grin, swaying her hips.
A star Victoria’s Secret Angel, it’s no surprise that Kerr is at ease in the skimpiest swimwear. The key to walking the catwalk with aplomb, she says cheerfully, is positive thinking. “You just have to enjoy the music and have fun. You can’t be, like, ‘Oh my God, I can’t believe my arse is jiggling.’ You have to be, like, ‘I’m really great.'”
A week after the shoot we meet for dinner at Otto’s, one of Kerr’s favourite Sydney restaurants. Her high heels clack on the stairs as she descends, an infectious dimpled grin at the ready. She’s paired a crisply pleated yellow Lover skirt with a Stella McCartney jacket over a tight white-and-blue striped Bassike vest top, a hint of leopard-print bra peeking from beneath – the perfect off-duty-model uniform. A vast diamond encrusted engagement ring
catches the light.
She immediately calls for the menu, announcing that she’s starving. “Working 16, 17 hours, you need to know how to take care of yourself or you’ll fall off the wagon. I know it’s clichéd, but I feel health is wealth,” she says. Since Flynn’s birth, she admits it takes extra effort to keep in shape, but success means a personal trainer on hand and she does yoga and Pilates daily. “I was lucky for a while there, I just did yoga. Now I’m exercising a whole lot more, but it’s for my job.” It’s comforting to know that even those born with good genes have to put in the miles. She also swears by daily supplements (noni and aloe vera juices, goji berries, chia seeds, maca powder, raw cacao, among other things). “It is a lot of work!” she grins.
Based in Los Angeles and New York, Kerr is in town for three weeks to work on a department store campaign and will squeeze in a friend’s wedding while she’s here. But top of her list is catching up with her parents and her brother, Matt, who all work on the Kora Organics skincare brand she launched two years ago. She attributes her determination and positivity to her close-knit family. “My parents are solid people, they have been together
since my mum was 16,” she says, her voice a gentle Australian singsong.
Despite her cosmopolitan life, Kerr is a country girl, raised in the small town of Gunnedah in New South Wales. “It was so wonderful growing up there, having the horses and spending time on my grandma’s farm,” she says of a
childhood spent climbing trees and making mud pies with her cousins. “We’d play schools – I was always teacher,” she deadpans, “telling everyone what to do.”
She relates how, during her pregnancy, her grandmother delighted in sharing the secrets to a successful relationship with her. “She was, like, ‘Now, love, don’t let yourself go.'” “Men are very visual and I think it’s important that you wake up in the morning and get yourself together. Don’t slop around the house all day in your pyjamas,” Kerr laughs. “It’s true,” she says. “They tell you, ‘It doesn’t matter what you wear or what you look like, I love you anyway,’ but they notice when you make a little effort for them.”
Bloom’s name creeps into the conversation often. They met in 2006, after he asked Kerr’s agent for her number. Initially she resisted the actor-dates-model cliché, preferring to remain friends, which naturally only made her more appealing. “Romance Blooms” were the headlines when the two appeared together in 2007, but the press were caught on the hop when they married in secret in July 2010, only a month after announcing their engagement.
The couple have his and her homes in Los Angeles and New York, leftover from their single days. She admits their tastes are very different. “I like classic and Orlando likes Forties and Fifties vintage. I like big, white sofas, he likes wood and brass.” They try to split their work commitments so one can always be with Flynn. “He’s a hands-on dad, very capable. I’m lucky,” she says.
“I was lucky for a while there,
I just did yoga.
Now I’m exercising a whole lot more, but it’s for my job.”
Their family life is the perfect antidote to the heady fashion world she’s conquered; with an estimated wealth of $11.5 million, Kerr has successfully married high with commercial fashion. She turned down offers to walk only at Chanel and Miu Miu this season, after a bumper spring/summer appearing on the catwalk for Dior, Lanvin, Loewe, Viktor & Rolf, Stella McCartney and Chanel. She currently fronts the new Balenciaga resort and Bally’s international campaigns. And, of course, since 2007 she’s been one of the most popular Victoria’s Secret Angels, alongside Adriana Lima, fellow new mother Doutzen Kroes and Erin Heatherton. Last year she won the ultimate Angel accolade, closing the show wearing the diamond-encrusted $2.5 million Fantasy Treasure bra.
It’s a world away from her first outing, aged 13, after winning a modelling competition for Australian teen magazine Dolly. She began modelling in earnest when she left high school, celebrating her eighteenth birthday in Japan in a
tiny apartment with six other aspiring models. “It was an experience, I can tell you,” she shrugs. Often rejected for being too commercial, too cutesy, too chipper to fit in with her wan-faced peers on the Paris catwalks, Kerr persisted. “More than any other model that I have represented, Miranda has always had this unwavering sense of her own self and just believed that she was going to make it happen,” says her Australian agent Danielle Ragenard. “Oh yeah, there’s nothing getting in my way once I make up my mind,” Kerr says. Aged 10, she found a book next to her mother’s bed on how to deal with a strong-willed child. “I was, like, ‘What’s that all about?’ Mum just raised her eyebrows.”
The tipping point in her career came in 2009, when Willy Vanderperre photographed her for V magazine. “People were, like, ‘Wow! Who’s that?’ That’s Miranda, the girl that’s been here for many years, who you’ve kind of ignored,” she says, triumph creeping into her voice. In September 2010, Steven Meisel shot her for an Italian Vogue cover and Nicolas Ghesquière signed her to walk exclusively for Balenciaga.
Now she fits the climate. In the face of bleak economic prospects, fashion is putting a bright face on things, unleashing vibrant colours and splashy prints on models wearing big grins. “Works for me, doesn’t it,” quips Kerr. “Smiling comes naturally to me. It’s quite hard for me to walk down the catwalk and be serious.
Just as Kerr’s moment arrived, she fell pregnant, and now with a toddler and husband to consider, dropping everything at a moment’s notice for a shoot is not so easy. I first met Kerr four years ago, and her vitality and work ethic set her apart from her contemporaries. At the time, she told me about the book that she wanted to write, as well as the skincare line she was planning to launch. “Yeah, you thought, good luck with that,” she laughs, when I remind her. In 2009 she published Treasure Yourself, a self-improvement book filled with inspiration and affirmations for young women. “When I was growing up, I’d have found it useful to know everyone has their own challenges.” Now she’s working on a follow up.
And the skincare line is a successful reality. She created Kora Organics after struggling to find products that included her beloved noni juice. She hired an organic-cosmetic pharmacist, briefing him to pack her products with rose-hip
oil, macrobiotic salts and, of course, noni, and launched 21 products, sold in Australian department stores, pharmacies and online. Now she wants to expand internationally. “No decision is made without my authority and I’m the one that invested the money, put the products together and made it all happen,” she says, hinting at the steel beneath the swimsuit. She’s also savvy enough to take advantage of her position, committing to causes she loves – she’s an Earth Hour ambassador and speaks out against bullying and teen depression.
Orlando rings at that moment, beckoning her home to say goodnight to their son. So, the obvious question is, with the modelling career, handsome husband and adorable baby, is her life as perfect as it appears? She sobers: “It’s
unrealistic to think that someone has the perfect life, because nobody does. I am very lucky, and I recognise that, but I can’t feel bad about what I have, because I worked very hard for it. I especially worked hard pushing out that
baby,” she jokes. “I’m no rocket scientist – that would be something to be really proud about – but I’m doing my bit the best way possible.” And, with that, she downs her napkin. “Now I’m excited about going home and seeing my son and getting a big kiss.” She demonstrates, puckering up. “Very slobbery, but my favourite thing.”
Published in Vogue UK July 2012
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