Supermogul Carolyn’s London Takeover

“MY DAUGHTER, Dylan, spotted the Kendall + Kylie collection and when the man on the speaker
said, ‘We’re closing in 10 minutes,’ she just started grabbing
things,” Carolyn
Murphy laughed of her late night shopping spree in London this
week. “I have to say, I actually grabbed a dress too and it is
really cute. We’re both crazy about Topshop. When we landed
and got to the hotel, I just wanted to sleep, but Dylan wanted to
go to Topshop, and then Louboutin to try some shoes. I was
at Céline, Prada, Bottega, and then tomorrow there are a
couple more shops I have to hit. Erdem, I love Erdem, and then the
new Christopher Kane store. I spotted it last night but it was
closed so definitely tomorrow. I love this street [Mount Street].
It’s good, but it’s trouble.”

Growing up with an “Anglophile mother”, reading “every
classic English novel” and spending time living in Oxfordshire
where her father was based while in the military, has led to a
romantic view of England for Murphy – who one day dreams of living
in London, where this week she hosted a dinner to launch her new
lingerie collection with British label Cheekfrills.

“There’s a chicness here,” she mused. “I have this theory
about London that it’s much softer than New York. I think because
of the grid system, New York feels so fast, but London just feels
more relaxed. Like, yesterday, it wasn’t even 5pm and there were
people out on the streets in pubs!” Murphy’s incredulous but
admiring shake of the head sums up the appeal of London for her.
Not just unknown but in many ways brilliantly
confusing. 

I started older. I’m actually the same age as Kate
but I didn’t start modelling really until 1993, when I was 18 or
19, but Kate started modelling when she was my daughter’s age.

Much warmer and more endearing than her icy-blue-eyed
perfection in photographs betrays, Murphy is nevertheless a
consummate professional. You don’t become the longest-serving
ambassador to a cosmetic company without knowing how to do your job
with grace and good humour. Enlisted by Estée Lauder more than 15
years ago, Murphy’s girl-next-door charm and all-American looks
allowed her to become that relatively rare entity in the industry:
a bankable commercial model who also does high-fashion work. Naomi
Campbell, Gisele Bündchen, and a handful of the industry’s new
supermodels – from Doutzen Kroes to Rosie Huntington-Whiteley -
have managed to straddle the two, but generally Victoria’s
Secret pops up in their career history. Only a handful of
top-earning models, including Kate Moss and Natalia Vodianova, have
reached the pinnacle of their career without help from the American
lingerie label – so was Murphy never tempted to don the famous
wings?

“There was a time when that became really popular: you’d take a
Vogue girl, which I was, and ask, ‘Could this
Vogue girl also do Sports Illustrated or
Victoria’s Secret’ but I have to say, I fought those things with
great resistance,” Murphy admitted. “I did a Victoria’s Secret
shoot one time, and I was more concerned about them having the
budget to retouch a tattoo I used to have. It just didn’t resonate
with me, it just didn’t feel right. Being on the cover of
Sports Illustrated was such an anomaly. I think there are
certain points in your career when you just try new things, and I
tried that and I got the cover. I actually was very shy about it,
and felt very intimidated about it, and I knew right away that
those two things – although I’m very grateful for having tried them
- were not the way that I wanted to be portrayed. I was never
really known as a swimsuit or lingerie model so I met that success,
if you will, with resistance.”

Resistance is a hot topic with Murphy, who is currently urging
her 14-year-old daughter to resist the urge to grow up too quickly,
despite her love of the Kardashians, high heels and her mother’s
Céline bags. This encouragement was one of the inspirations for the
new Cheekfrils collection, after Murphy found some very grown-up,
padded, underwired bras in her daughter’s wardrobe and was keen to
show her there was an alternative.

“I wanted to find something for her that was more like the
lingerie I wear; something feminine but still sweet and young,”
Murphy explained. “Dylan has grown up removed from the industry,
but also close to it because of me. She has access to wonderful
skincare, and she really knows about taking care of herself in
terms of eating well, grooming herself, and getting your first
underwear sets is kind of that rite of passage. So now it’s just a
matter of making sure the housekeeper knows whose is
whose.”

Murphy is enjoying the design process alongside
Cheekfrills co-founders Katie Canvin and Lily Fortescue and their
design team. What has begun this season as editing and suggesting
will by next season see more of her input, and – as a lifelong
lingerie fan – she certainly knows what she likes.

“I’ve learned over the years what I don’t like,” she told
us. “I don’t like having a strict seam on the front of the bra; I
don’t like full lace; I’m not a huge fan of thongs, but I know we
need them in the collection so how can we make them more
comfortable. I love being naked, really that’s the most attractive
thing, but you can’t sell that. Not yet. Things are always
changing! But creating this collection has made me much more
focused on the details. Even renovating all the houses I have, when
it comes to choosing the doorknob I am totally over it. I can see
the bigger picture, and the fantasy, but I’m usually not into it
when it comes down to the details.”

There are so many collaborations out there between
models and lingerie companies – many of which I love and actually
own myself – but I think that where we can really set this
collection apart is that we do appeal to a younger
audience.

Citing the same reasons as contemporary Kirsty Hume (whose wedding she
reveals was the “most fun, chic event ever – Shalom was there,
Trish Goff, Amber, I can’t remember if Kate was there, in this
medieval castle in Scotland – just beautiful and elegant”), Murphy
explains that she worked less when she lived, for the first 10
years of her daugter’s life, in LA. Partly because of the
logistical nightmare of the 10-hour cross-country commute, partly
because the move there and her baby’s arrival made her more
selective about the work that she did commit to, but either way, a
decade on and with an increasingly independent daughter, the
longing to work more returned. 

“When I think about my life at 40, and coming back to New
York and leaving LA, there was this idea of being back in
Vogue, and doing quality versus quantity, and having a
certain lifestyle that speaks from the creativity that I remember
in the Nineties,” she said. “It was just such a different time in
fashion – Galliano and all these fabulous shows – and having worked
with Penn and Helmut Newton, and working for Vogue so
consistently, I didn’t quite get it. But now, years later, I can
look back and I feel, reflecting on that, that it’s really, truly
incredible.”

Share and Enjoy