The Great Dane

Model and photographer Helena Christensen has always been one of the most intriguing of the original ‘Magnificent Seven’.

Sarah Charlston

A long with Christy Turlington, Cindy Crawford, Linda Evangelista, Naomi Campbell, Elle Macpherson and Claudia Schiffer, Helena was one of the seven supermodels who reigned supreme back in the day when The Supers ruled the world. But there was something slightly removed about her even then – she seemed more private and less upfront than the others.

Perhaps it’s her Scandinavian upbringing that made her shy away from ‘becoming a brand’. Instead, the Danish beauty has worked slowly and steadily since the ’90s, rarely lending her name to anything – choosing, instead, to take on a wide variety of small projects. ‘Whether it’s modelling, photography, designing, whatever I’m doing, I like little intimate projects,’ she says. ‘Most of what I’m doing now as a photographer is for little underground magazines – not something that everyone is going to see. When someone approaches me, and says, “We have this great project; it will have millions of viewers,” I think, “Oh god, no! That sounds horrible!”’

After she left über-trendy magazine Nylon (New York – London) which she helped launch in 1999, she started a clothing line – Christensen & Sigersen – with her old friend, Leif Sigersen. And five years ago she collaborated with Triumph to design a really beautiful range of lingerie, which (as a passionate collector of lingerie herself), she says, she really enjoyed: ‘I’ve learnt how different female body shapes are, and how many little details you need to consider when you’re creating lingerie,’ she said. ‘How to enhance the parts of a woman’s body that are beautiful, how to shape the parts that need to be shaped – and then how different we all are. I try not to create from just an aesthetic approach, but also consider comfort; the technical details are very important.’