'This is my last-ever lingerie shoot': Marie Helvin on keeping in shape at 62 and her guide to a good life
She started modelling when she was 15 and, as these stunning pictures show, still has what it takes nearly half a century later. But as she tells Liz Jones, she’d much rather eat pizza than do another lingerie shoot…
‘Lingerie modelling is extremely difficult to do and it’s stressful at my age. It takes a great deal of work to maintain a good silhouette: I train like an athlete,' said Marie Helvin
When my mum died last August, I didn’t get an email from my maid of honour. Or my best man. Or my ex-husband. Or my ex-boyfriend. But I did get an email from Marie Helvin.
She offered a shoulder to cry on, and told me she knew how I must be feeling, as she had lost her father a few months earlier.
He’d moved to Las Vegas, to live in a hotel, and been found unconscious in his room by the cleaning staff; he’d slipped and hit his head. He was 89.
Marie got the call to say her father was in hospital, but ‘I didn’t fly out there because he was already dead. We don’t do funerals in my family.
'We will have an ash ceremony back home in Hawaii, hopefully in August, with my sister, Naomi, who lives in Bangkok, and my brother, Steve [Marie’s younger sister Suzon died in a bicycling accident aged 23].
'My father didn’t want a ceremony, or an announcement, no phone calls; he wanted to just disappear. That’s how I want to go. It’s a terrible thing to lose a much-loved parent.’
We’d become email friends after I interviewed her for YOU back in 2008, although she went silent for a few weeks after the piece was published – her ex-husband David Bailey was annoyed she’d said of him, ‘My God, he’s fat and bloated.’
Marie is the face and body for a range of lingerie for the older woman, designed by Aliza Reger, daughter of the legendary Janet
In that interview, she also blamed Jerry Hall for encouraging her to leave Bailey: ‘Jerry was constantly on my case about Bailey’s affair with a model, Catherine.
'I was brought up by parents who embraced the 1960s and taught me that being faithful isn’t the be-all and end-all. It was only Jerry who had a problem. It was transference.’
Meeting today, over lunch at a private members’ club in Soho, London, where she arrives in H&M jeans (‘I hardly buy any clothes these days, just five pairs of jeans at a time, that’s £100’), a black polo-neck jumper (‘I don’t like exposing my neck’), moccasins and a fedora over newly bleached curls, I remind her how upset she’d been about her own loquaciousness.
‘I don’t blame Bailey for being annoyed. I don’t understand why I felt it was necessary to be so mean.
'It’s not really like me and all I can say is that I’m ashamed of myself. I have no excuse and I would feel angry and upset if he had made those comments about me.
'You know, we were both young at the time of our marriage and we both did some things right and some things wrong. It was such a long time ago and I feel only fondness and respect for him today.’
I’d also written in that interview how hard-up she was.
Despite working as a model since the age of 15 (at 62, she’s still signed to Models 1 and works part-time ‘though I’d love to work more’), she only rents a flat, and told me, over lunch in Harvey Nichols, when Earl Spencer had come over to say hello (his sister Princess Diana was a friend), that she dyes her hair at home. She drank back then, too, ordering a bottle of wine.
She was still beautiful, not menopausal (Marie is nothing if not open and unguarded: today she tells me she went on hormone replacement therapy to cope with hot flushes), but I worried about her.
'While my body is not anywhere near a 30-or 40-year-old’s, it is in good shape and it gives me great pleasure to be so healthy and fit for my age,' said Marie
Today, as we meet to talk about her new role as the face and body for a range of lingerie for the older woman, designed by Aliza Reger, daughter of the legendary Janet, she seems so much happier in her own skin – which, by the way, is amazing, despite the fact that she spent so many years slathered in baby oil, posing in a swimsuit.
‘I have sun damage. I cover it up with make-up,’ she tells me when I show her a Vogue cover I have with me, from May 1976, where she’s brown as a nut.
Does she have photos from all those shoots on the walls of her flat?
‘God, no! I might have a few in a box somewhere. I’m sure if I asked Bailey for an original print, he’d give it to me. There is just one picture of me on my wall, and that’s because it’s of me with my mum.’
Marie modelling swimwear in 1974
When did she last see Jerry Hall to reminisce?
‘I don’t reminisce. It was a year ago, when Bailey shot us for a cover.
'I didn’t have much of a conversation with her. [Before that] it had got to the point when we didn’t have much in common.
'She was a mother, and I’m not really interested in children. I was at the time of my life when I wanted to go out and have fun – I didn’t want to talk about breasts leaking. Do I have friends with children? A couple. I like really small children, but once they become teenagers… I don’t know, maybe Jerry dropped me.’
She doesn’t want to discuss Bailey at all.
‘I am embarrassed when I’m asked questions about him. It was such a long time ago and I think it’s discourteous to Catherine [his wife] and the children.’
Instead we talk about the new campaign, and how she seems to have barely changed since she first posed in Janet Reger, in Vogue in 1972.
She can’t remember that shoot, and tells me that of course she works hard to look as good as she does.
‘It’s my job. Lingerie modelling is extremely difficult to do and it’s stressful at my age.
'It takes a great deal of work to maintain a good silhouette: I train like an athlete.
'I go to the gym four times a week for 45 minutes to an hour without fail; I like using weights for muscle tone and the bike and rower for my heart rate. I do quite a lot of floor exercises.
'While my body is not anywhere near a 30-or 40-year-old’s, it is in good shape and it gives me great pleasure to be so healthy and fit for my age.
Modelling funky boots in 1971
'The only thing I can’t change is the elasticity of my skin. I use the time spent in the gym as meditative therapy as well – I switch off completely.
'But I very much doubt I will accept another lingerie job. This one will be my last. In your 60s it’s just too much – I think I’d rather eat pizza!’
She looks much thinner than when we last met.
‘I’m a size six. I was surprised by the amount of weight I lost since giving up champagne, which is pure sugar! I lost 10lb, which on my small frame is a lot.
'I had to compensate by adding foods that I’d never had in the past, such as full-fat milk and yoghurt.’
Was that why she stopped drinking?
‘I didn’t want to reach 60 and be a party woman.
'I used to mainly drink in restaurants – I’d eat out five times a week in nice restaurants. I don’t know if I feel better, because I felt good when I was drinking, but I like the clarity.
'I grew up a child of the 60s trying every kind of drug I could get my hands on.
'Now, it’s a different kind of high – being focused.’
In her disarming way, she points out to me the way her body is letting her down.
‘My breasts are the same size they have always been, but they are in a different place now: I have to wear a bra. And look,’ she pulls up the leg of her jeans to show me varicose veins.
‘I still go out with bare legs, I just cover them up with make-up. I’ve never owned a pair of tights.’
But it’s her face I’m most intrigued by: the eyes, with her naturally black, curly lashes, are even more catlike. The mouth is full. Has she had work done?
Marie with Steve Strange, Jerry Hall and Issey Miyake in 1982
‘Plastic surgery is a personal choice. I’m not going to say I haven’t done anything, I’m not going to say I have.
'I’m very honest but I find that when you start talking about things like that it defines you, it becomes everything that’s written.
'My mum never had anything done but when she was diagnosed with a brain tumour at 85 she said to me, “There’s only one thing I regret – that I didn’t do the face-lift.”
'Even in hospital she asked me to bring in her false eyelashes. I used to think, “Oh, I can’t wait until I’m 70 because by then I won’t care,” but, of course, I will still care.’
She says she mostly uses Boots products, and has only had ‘three or four facials in my life – I hate them’. I wonder if it has been harder for her to age gracefully, as she was once so improbably beautiful.
‘I work at it because it’s my job. Nobody pays my bills, I didn’t get a big settlement [she left her marriage to Bailey in 1985 with just £100,000], I don’t have a rich boyfriend.
'But I remember the day when I realised my career as a high-fashion model was over. It was 1985, at Valentino, and I could no longer get into the clothes, and this was ready-to-wear, not couture.’
I wonder if there was any racism at play, which meant she didn’t land the lucrative beauty campaigns.
Her mother, Linda, who died in 2007, was Japanese; her parents met when Marie’s father, an American GI, was posted to Japan, where Linda was working as a translator.
With Jerry in 1987. 'I was at the time of my life when I wanted to go out and have fun – I didn’t want to talk about breasts leaking… I don’t know, maybe Jerry dropped me,' said Marie
‘I never found that because Jerry, Iman, Janice [Dickinson] and I would stick together and negotiate. It was important we stayed strong and demanded a certain amount.’
I tell her Janice Dickinson, who has ravaged her lovely face with surgery, was my favourite model of the 70s: her beauty was slightly more earthy and attainable than Marie’s.
‘She was a nightmare to work with. She was crazy. If you’re a shy person, which I kind of was, it was scary. I remember she poured a bottle of champagne over her head just before she went out on the catwalk.’
What does she think of the models today? Cara Delevingne?
‘Never heard of her. I don’t buy Vogue or any fashion magazines. M&S seems to be using Twiggy less and less. You go in the store and the only model you see is Rosie [Huntington-Whiteley].’
I’m not sure she’s too keen on Twiggy, as she adds: ‘Twiggy was not considered high fashion. She didn’t do runway.’
Doesn’t she agree, though, that fashion is changing, that there are more older role models?
‘It would be nice to see a fashion range that is geared towards a vibrant, sexual, confident 50-something. When I was a young model there was nothing for my age group.
'Now, it’s completely geared towards that very young market, yet I continually read that the “baby boomer” has all the spending power.’
Marie with David Bailey in 1981. 'We were both young at the time of our marriage and we both did some things right and some things wrong. It was such a long time ago and I feel only fondness and respect for him,' she said
What’s the problem?
‘I think it’s to do with the fact that most people who work in advertising are young men, and their idea of a 50-plus woman is not a positive image.’
Isn’t she perpetuating the ideal: posing in her 60s, looking amazing in her underwear?
‘It’s a fantasy,’ she says. ‘It’s not supposed to be reality.’
I wonder what she thought of the photos of Cindy Crawford that showed her stomach on the beach as it really is, like a bowl of porridge.
‘I think she’d be upset, of course. Let’s be honest, when you’re doing swimwear or lingerie with any part of your body exposed, if you’re a certain age, it’s really hard.
'Let me tell you, doing this lingerie shoot was not a piece of cake. You put your body in a position where this part doesn’t look good or that part doesn’t look good, so it’s really hard. I felt sorry for her.
'We all look like that when we’re not holding in our stomach at a certain age. But she was not considered high fashion.
'High fashion for me is doing runway for the top designers – Dior, Chanel – and working with their rules.’
Marie worked with all the greats. Her funniest story is when she was being fitted by Yves Saint Laurent – he grazed her head with a hat pin, drew blood and fainted.
Marie with the Duchess of Cornwall's late brother Mark Shand in 1984. The animal conservationist died in April 2014, after falling and hitting his head outside a New York hotel
When I tell her she can be glimpsed on the catwalk in L’Amour Fou, a documentary about his life, she says she hasn’t bothered to watch it.
I’m staggered she’s so uninterested in an industry that was, and still is to some extent, her life. She sold all her Azzedine Alaïa dresses not long ago, which is just as well, as she’s about to move house, away from her beloved Chelsea.
‘My landlord wants the flat back. So I’ve found somewhere else. I don’t want to own anything. I like to be able to just go.’
She is most worried about moving her two cats. She shows me photos of them on her phone. Does she regret not having children?
‘I came off the pill once when I was with Bailey, when Jerry persuaded me. But when three months were up, I went back on it again.
'But I did want a baby, once. It happened just a few years ago – can you imagine! It makes no difference because he [an ex-boyfriend] is not in the picture, but it was ridiculous.
'I was already in my 50s and it was the first time in my life when I thought, “Hmm, I would like to have a child with you.” But it was too late.
'Everyone around me was having babies, but my mother was adamant that you had to be sure.’
Last time we met, at a party on Sloane Street, her ex, the actor Neil Pearson, had been with her.
‘We’re not in touch. There is no reason to be. We weren’t friends.’
Another ex, Mark Shand, the animal conservationist and brother of the Duchess of Cornwall, died in April 2014, after falling and hitting his head outside a New York hotel.
On the front row at Matthew Williamson S/S 15, with Poppy Delevingne, Mary Charteris, Alice Naylor-Leyland and Cat Deeley
‘That was sad. I’d not had any contact with him for 20 years, but I have fond memories of our time together.
'I was travelling in the Arctic when I got an email telling me that he had died, and to contact Prince Charles’s office as the family wanted me to attend his memorial service. I’m glad I didn’t marry him, though. I don’t want to be married to anyone.’
Does she want to meet someone?
‘Of course I hope for love to come into my life. I haven’t been asked out by someone my own age for years. But I like being independent and I enjoy making my own decisions.
'I love my single life. There are times when I need solitude.
'For me, the perfect relationship is not living together and not seeing each other all the time!’
I tell her I’m engaged, and she says, ‘Oh God, you’re not going to have to share a bathroom with him, are you? I never shared a bathroom with Bailey. Even in a hotel, I’d always book a suite so we didn’t have to share; Bailey would be furious at the expense.
'The happiest time in that marriage was when he was gone. I like the luxury of being on my own.’
We order lunch, and we both have spring risotto, which Marie toys with, but doesn’t eat.
She later emails me: ‘That risotto was good! I don’t normally eat “white food” unless I’m on holiday!’
I don’t think Marie will be pigging out on pizza any time soon…
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MARIE'S GOOD-LIFE GUIDE
'The year I turned 60 I decided to give up alcohol,' said Marie
WELLBEING
I am a great believer in removing the nonessential – it’s a Buddhist discipline, one that I’ve practised my entire life. Your 60s are a time for meeting people and creating new friendships. So many people as they age get stuck doing the same things, making the same mistakes. I try not to worry about things that are not important – it doesn’t bother me that my bottom is not as high and firm as it once was. And I have become very discriminating with my time – I don’t like wasting it.
DIET AND HEALTH
The year I turned 60 I decided to give up alcohol as I felt it had no place in my life: I didn’t enjoy it any longer and it was not how I wanted to spend my free time. I like to do more physical, adventurous things, pursuits where I need to be alert and focused, such as diving.
I wish I’d known that just by stopping drinking my skin colour and tone would improve, my eyes would be brighter, sleep would no longer be a problem, and my energy levels would soar. I stopped smoking at 40 and I haven’t eaten meat for nearly 50 years. I rarely eat bread, although if I’m in Paris I cannot have just one buttery fresh croissant! For breakfast I usually have a bowl of berries and Greek yoghurt with unsweetened granola and extra seeds. I eat my main meal at lunchtime, usually before the gym, and if I’m at home, an apple and a wedge of cheese is enough for dinner.
I like to fast for one day a week on one type of fruit or vegetable and as much water or herbal tea as my body needs. I take a good multivitamin with added B and C, fish oil, ginkgo biloba, and CoQ10 enzyme for my skin, hair, nails, joints and brain. I’m in the best health of my life.
BEAUTY
Throw away old looks and try something new. The easiest way to start is by being more adventurous with lipstick colour and perfume. Get a professional makeover – you can do this at any department store. It’s easy to get stuck with a make-up look and sometimes someone who doesn’t know you can help you shake it up. Experiment with hair colour, too, although just because you are getting older doesn’t mean you have to cut your hair.
I apply a facial moisturiser with sunscreen daily, right down to just under my breasts, and don’t forget hands, feet and ears. I’ve been using Erno Laszlo soap for over 30 years; it’s expensive but it lasts a year. I also believe in exfoliating my face a couple of times a week: find an exfoliator that is gentle and use it on your hands, elbows, feet and even bottom.
After exfoliating, I use a very heavy skin cream (Boots) that I doctor with coconut or almond oil. I am a great believer in doctoring beauty products – I add serums, oils and vitamins such as A and E. I use an electrical gadget every morning to tone my face for about 15 minutes. I also use a body brush in the bath. I like to leave coconut or almond oil in my hair overnight: put a plastic shower cap on and wash it out in the morning. Above all, be kind. That truly makes you beautiful.
FASHION
I dress the way I have always dressed. I never liked short skirts and, though my dresses are not as low-cut as they once were, my overall style is the same. I still show my arms. My heels are definitely lower – nothing higher than four inches. Find a good seamstress as nothing you find on the rail will fit you perfectly. I read recently that Jennifer Aniston alters all her T-shirts. Why not? You want even your casual clothes to fit perfectly.
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