Kristen McMenamy.

Interview

5 Oct

‘I will defend the fashion world to the end because I know it personally. From the outside it might look like a project of vanity and marketing and capitalism, but from the inside, it’s a lot of great people,’ exclaims supermodel Kristen McMenamy, who rose to fame in the Nineties after being recognised for her eccentricity and atypical beauty. ‘I don’t think I was specially phenomenal-looking,’ she admits, ‘because I wasn’t. I had to work a little bit harder than the others. You look at some girls and they’re just so incredibly beautiful. But some of those beautiful girls don’t last because they don’t have something, that magic. I would say some supermodels, and the top girls, you gotta have something more than just the way you look.’

I meet Kristen in her far-from-humble abode in West London, where she lives with art dealer husband Ivor Braka and 15-year-old son Eddie. Stained glass windows look in on a rich, gothic interior. As the church-like arched wooden door opens, I am met with Kristen’s beloved shadow, Larry – a friendly blond German Shepherd. ‘He follows me everywhere,’ she tells me as we walk through the art-filled utopia that resembles a stately home mixed with the lair of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. The five-foot-ten lady of the manor, with her wavy, white hair that falls past her hips, fits right in.

Kristen was born in Buffalo, New York, but it wasn’t long before she and her family upped and moved to Pennsylvania around the age of five. Belonging to a strict Roman Catholic family, teenage Kristen did not possess the same sense of belonging that she has now – nor did she want to, because that would have meant having to conform, dulling herself down for the sake of convention. ‘I went to Catholic school, and I was really tall and really not confident and the kids picked that up. It was a horrible experience; I hated school, I hated it. But,’ she squeals, her eyes widening as an excitable grin takes over her face, ‘I loved it for who it made me. Because all of the tripping down the halls and everyone laughing at me and all that stuff – if I think about it now, I think: “How did I get through that?” But it made me who I am.’ As a teenager, Kristen would draw on black lip liner, aggressively over-lining her lips, and then fill them in with white lipstick, purposely trying to exaggerate her look in an effort to appear ‘freakier’. ‘I remember just hating myself,’ she reflects, ‘and thinking, if only I could be anybody else, anybody else. Why do I have to be me?’ And so Kristen chose a career path where being herself was not a necessity. She became a model, playing countless characters and transforming into whoever she needed to be on the day. Because what makes for the perfect model? The ability to be a blank canvas, a chameleon.

‘The Chameleon’ was a name originally bestowed upon Linda Evangelista for her ability to suit any given hairstyle and being able to metamorphose whenever a camera was pointed her way. But then came Kristen, and the next generation of supermodels, and Linda Evangelista was forced to make room for another chameleon. It was rumoured that the pair had somewhat of a rivalry, but now, decades later, McMenamy admits that it was all part of the fun. ‘I think in the industry, some of the girls were so catty and bitchy with each other. I never felt that; I played at it. Once, with Linda – I love Linda,’ she assures me. ‘I love all those girls from that time. I was in Milan and we were doing Versace and we were at the Principe hotel – it’s where everyone was. I was in the lobby and we were having drinks, and she walked in and I had just dyed my hair bright white [and] cut it really short, and she walks in with the same hairstyle. It wasn’t like “how dare she”, it was like “I have to be different than her”. She went to my hair colourist and he did her hair that colour, that was my memory of it. I went up and stomped up to my room – of course I was drunk – took out the scissors and cut all of my hair off. I put it in an envelope, sent it to the hair colourist and said, “Here’s your hair, take it back.” I love drama, it’s so much fun!’

Needless to say, this kind of ‘drama’ was not an isolated incident between the two women. In an interview for Love magazine in 2010, Donatella Versace talks of how bored she was with the industry at the time. ‘Now is a bad moment. Now we need something. We need a special personality. We need to feed the egos of these girls. Somebody like Kristen.’ After meeting Kristen, I understood Donatella’s admiration for her, the vivacity, the relentless positivity. But ego? That wasn’t my impression. Maybe back then, when models were experiencing more fame than could ever have been predicted, a playful exaggerated diva mentality was encouraged. But now, Kristen has no need to compete. She has earned her stripes.

On the 3rd April 2021, Kristen joined Instagram, captioning her first post: ‘Here I go down the slippery slope…’. She tells me that she had resisted for a while. ‘Everyone said, don’t do it, it’s a trap! But they’re all having fun doing it – why are you telling me not to do it? So I started thinking, I love wearing clothes, I love fashion – I absolutely adore fashion, I love dressing up. I really don’t go out enough to dress up all the time, but with Instagram it’s like I go into my wardrobe and I’m grabbing that and that, and “hey let’s put it with that”. And I’ll take a picture, just like get my son, or the PA or the nanny, or my daughter – reluctantly, always – and I’ll set myself up, and they’ll take the camera and take the picture. It’s a really spontaneous thing, and it’s fun and it’s creative and it allows me to wear all the fabulous clothes I have in my closet because I get a chance to experiment.’

Kristen’s most popular Instagram post so far? A topless photograph of herself, posted on Sunday 23rd May, with the words ‘CANCEL ME’ written across her chest in fuchsia pink lipstick with a heart outlining it. At first glance, this could have looked like a funny jab at the age of cancel culture – which it was – but Edward Enninful picked up the reference straight away commenting, ‘I styled the original picture for i-D over 20 years ago… I remember that day so well.’ The image in question was taken by Juergen Teller. Kristen had recently found out that she had been cancelled from a Versace campaign, which was a huge slap in the face, especially as it was the fashion house that had afforded her supermodel status. She told Nick Knight in 2014: ‘Versace at that point was… that was it. If you were in with Versace, you were in. You are top. You get cancelled? You’re a loser. It’s over.’ Fast forward seven years, and now everyone is in the firing line and no one is free from the possibility of being cancelled. Kristen isn’t here for it. ‘Pointing things out is different. Cancelling somebody and ruining their lives is not. These young people are not thinking about what they’re doing to themselves because one day they’re gonna be the ones that the finger is pointed at and they’re not gonna be able to point back.’

I ask if she has ever had moments of feeling awkward or uncomfortable in front of the camera. ‘I’ve got this thing… Even when I was in Pennsylvania working with wedding photographers, and wildlife photographers and taxidermy photographers, I never felt awkward in front of the camera, I always felt switched on. I wanted it so badly that I just don’t remember feeling that awkwardness ever. The first time I did a nude was weird. It was with Peter Lindbergh, and there was a Japanese stylist – I wish I could remember her name, she was so lovely. She came over, and I had a blouse on, and she just opened a couple of buttons and I was like, Oh my God, my breasts are out. Roman Catholic from Pennsylvania – this is not cool. My mother would kill me! But quickly I got over that,’ she laughs. ‘Then they couldn’t keep my clothes on!’

For many, the fashion industry appears to be an impenetrable realm, the sort that belongs in the pages of fantastical novels. But once you break through and are welcomed into this world of hideously beautiful weirdos, who funnily enough are more afraid of you than you are of them, the realisation hits: the fashion industry, for all its nepotism and pomposity, is a place of refuge. ‘If I had to tell a child who is an oddball, I’d tell them just stick it out. I was a nerd, I was laughed at school, I didn’t have many friends, if any at all. I have met such beautiful and wonderful people in the fashion business ’cause I think we’re all, you know… We’re all oddballs and somehow rejects in the real world,’ she laughs. ‘And we’re there to create.’