Daisy Lowe: ‘Life without sticky toffee pudding? Horrible!’

By
Lydia Slater

PUBLISHED:

18:01 EST, 21 June 2014

|

UPDATED:

18:32 EST, 21 June 2014

Daisy Lowe has a dilemma – she’s a supermodel with a serious sugar addiction. Now to satisfy her cravings, she has produced her first cookbook, a paean to healthy treats

Daisy with her white maltese Monty

Daisy Lowe certainly knows how to make an entrance. There is a clatter of heels and a volley of shrill barks as she sashays into the room wearing sunglasses and chattering loudly into her mobile, followed by her entourage: an agent, a publicist, a minder and Monty, her tiny, absurdly fluffy white maltese. Really, Daisy has been born into the wrong era; she would have been a smash in the golden age of Hollywood. At 25, she oozes old-fashioned femininity. Her skin is creamy, her eyes and hair glossy brown.

She is dressed all in black, in a crop top that shows off her generous bosom, tiny waist and a tummy that is soft and pale, rather than flat and brown, as today’s aesthetic demands. She opens a huge bag and takes out a box of puffed brown rice and a carton of almond milk. ‘Do you mind if I eat breakfast while we chat?’ she asks politely. For Daisy is not only a top model who has worked for some of fashion’s biggest names, from Chanel and Vivienne Westwood to the luxury lingerie brand Agent Provocateur, she’s now bidding fair to be the new Nigella Lawson. 

Her latest project is a cookery book, Sweetness and Light, covering everything dessert-related, from lemon cheesecake to sticky toffee pudding. But unlike Nigella’s creations, all these recipes are wheat- and dairy-free and with no refined sugar. The sticky toffee pud, for instance, is made using organic dairy-free margarine, gluten-free flour and coconut palm sugar, drizzled with a sauce based on oat cream. ‘I had to come up with a sticky toffee pudding recipe, because otherwise I would have a horrible life. Actually, I think it’s better than the real thing,’ she says. ‘And you don’t have to feel bad about eating it.’

Daisy is blessed with many physical advantages but she has a genetic stumbling block: a very sweet tooth. When she was a small child, her grandfather used to buy her bags of sweets every morning, which she ate on her way to school. Her mother Pearl Lowe, the singer turned fashion designer, taught her to bake when she was small. ‘My fondest memories are of me standing on a chair, covered in flour, trying to stir the mixture.’

Now, this is not what one might call model behaviour. Two years ago, her fellow mannequin Sasha Volkova suggested that if Daisy hadn’t been part of a famous family she would have been ordered to lose weight. Which would seem like pure cattiness – Daisy is, after all, only a size eight – but for the fact that Daisy herself says she was dropped from an Italian fashion show for being too big. ‘I flew out to Milan to do the show and they cancelled me and sent me home,’ she says airily. ‘I was 17.’ Ouch! Was she crushed by this rejection? ‘Actually, I was really happy because my boyfriend at the time was playing a gig and I wanted to see it!’ she says. All the same, she says it took her many years to accept her body. ‘In the run-up to fashion week, I’d bake loads of cakes to rebel,’ she laughs.

She still experiences moments of self-doubt. ‘Living in our society, it’s hard to feel happy in your own skin,’ she says. ‘I still have days when I wake up thinking, “Why can’t I be really bony and skeletal?” But I love eating.’

‘My fondest memories are of me standing on a chair, covered in flour, trying to stir the mixture’

‘Embrace your femininity! I want people to be proud of their bodies’

A year and a half ago, feeling bloated and lethargic, she had herself tested by a kinesiologist, who diagnosed wheat and lactose intolerance. So she returned to the kitchen and experimented with recipes that would satisfy her sugar cravings without making her feel unwell; she cut out the wheat and also started to use natural sugars such as maple syrup. ‘I didn’t want to feel guilty about what I was putting into my body, and then I started wanting to pass that to my friends, that feeling of enjoying food without the aftereffects. And then my mum turned round and said, “You need to share this with the rest of the world.”

‘I started collating recipes because so many young girls on Twitter were asking me, “How do you stay in shape?” or saying, “Oh dear, I just ate some cake and now I feel so depressed because I’m really fat…” I would reply, “Go and watch an old film and look at the figures – embrace your femininity!” I want people to be proud of their bodies, whatever shape or size. And these recipes will help you feel lighter and brighter.’

A cookery show seems like the obvious next step – after all, not only is Daisy photogenic, she’s also proselytising this year’s anti-refined-sugar message. And with Nigella keeping a lower profile these days, there’s clearly a gap in the schedules for a wooden spoon-wielding glamourpuss.

Daisy is cautious. ‘The thing is, I’m not a chef,’ she says. ‘I’d be kind of scared. But maybe it would be fun. Since writing all these recipes, I’ve learnt so much.’ She already has some TV-presenting experience, co-hosting a fashion show for the digital channel Fiver with her friend Peaches Geldof, whom she had known since childhood. 

After Peaches’s death from a drugs overdose in April, as every celebrity and wannabe rushed to Twitter to express their emotion whether they had known her or not, Daisy’s response was simple and heartfelt: a tweeted emoji of a broken heart. She hasn’t said anything publicly since, and when I ask her how she’s coping, there is a pause of at least a minute while she fiddles with her phone and avoids my gaze. When she finally looks up, her eyes are pink and her voice wobbles as she politely says she’d rather not talk about it.

Daisy with mother Pearl and stepdad Danny Goffey

From left: Daisy strolling in London with her father Gavin Rossdale, his wife Gwen Stefani and two of their children, Kingston and Zuma; and on the front row at the Topshop Unique show last year with, from left, Pixie Geldof, Samantha Barks and Suki Waterhouse

Daisy was brought up in Primrose Hill, North London, by Pearl, then singer with a band called Powder, and her stepfather Danny Goffey, the drummer with Supergrass. The pair – who now have three other children, Alfie, 17, Frankie, 14, and Betty, eight – were dubbed the ‘Posh and Becks of the indie world’ by NME.

It was a glamorous but rackety lifestyle. As Pearl subsequently revealed in her autobiography All that Glitters, drugs played a huge part in her social life (although Daisy didn’t notice – the Diptyque candles were always lit before the children got up to mask the telltale smell). They hung out with a starry crowd: Sadie Frost and her then boyfriend Jude Law, Ewan McGregor and Jonny Lee Miller, Liam Gallagher and Patsy Kensit, Kate Moss and Pete Doherty, Damon Albarn. But it was a source of sadness to her that she had no real relationship with the man she believed to be her father, Bronner Handwerger, a New Yorker whose marriage to Pearl ended a year after Daisy’s birth.

More devastating still was Daisy’s realisation, when she was 14, that because neither of her parents shared her blood group, Handwerger couldn’t be her father after all. Pearl admitted to having had a fling with Bush star Gavin Rossdale and a DNA test revealed that he was Daisy’s father. But Rossdale was so furious at being forced to take the test, he cut off contact. Daisy was devastated, spending days in tears, according to her mother, and Pearl later admitted her relationship with her daughter was ‘a bit hairy for six months’. When the Goffeys decided to move to the country to escape the Primrose Hill set, Daisy refused to go with them and moved in with her grandmother instead.

It seems like more than enough to send any teenager spinning off the rails. But Daisy is Saffy to her mother’s Edina. She meditates twice a day and drinks ‘once in a blue moon’. As for her mother’s admission of a drug habit, she says ‘she was so open about it, it made it uninteresting’.

She was focused on her GCSEs at South Hampstead High School (she got nine, including A*s in all her science subjects). Her plan was to study neurolinguistics or biochemistry at university, but she was spotted by a model scout and signed to Select. Since her turbulent mid-teens, Daisy’s life seems much more settled. She and her mother are now closer than ever. ‘Because Mum had me so young, we grew up together. Seeing her with Betty, she’s very different.’

‘My wonderful dad is such an amazing cook – he has a really sweet tooth as well, so I¿ve got it from both sides’

She has quietly rebuilt a strong relationship with her father, who now lives in Los Angeles with his singer wife Gwen Stefani and their three sons, and credits him in her book as ‘my wonderful dad’ who taught her to be inventive in the kitchen. ‘He’s such an amazing cook,’ she says to me. ‘But he has a really sweet tooth as well, so I’ve got it from both sides.’ She rolls her eyes.

Meanwhile, her career has gone from strength to strength. She has walked for everyone from Burberry and Chanel to Henry Holland, appeared in campaigns for Marc Jacobs, Pringle, Louis Vuitton and Whistles and in magazines from Vogue to Playboy. Her private life has been equally newsworthy. Her first serious boyfriend was Will Cameron, of the band Blondelle, with whom she appeared nude on the cover of i:D. She has also dated producer Mark Ronson and former Dr Who Matt Smith. The latest rumours link her with Theo Hutchcraft of the band Hurts. ‘No! He’s my friend. There’s definitely no truth in that one.’ What about Harry Styles? She shakes her head with a laugh. Currently, she insists, Monty is the only significant male in her life, and she felt sick with the responsibility when she bought him.

So any thought of babies would seem to be a very long way off. ‘The older I get, the less broody I become,’ she confirms. ‘I always thought because my mum had me so young that by 23 I would be a mother. But there are so many more things I want to do before that.’ And changing the nation’s eating habits is just the first item on the list.  

• Daisy’s recipes will be used at the summer rooftop restaurant at Selfridges, London W1, selfridges.com

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Phoebe,

London,

3 hours ago

Self indulgent crap

watfordwend,

Watford, United Kingdom,

5 hours ago

Daisy is someone who’s in the public eye because of her parents. Yes, she’s pretty but she has no talent of her own to offer.

triona,

Antrim,

6 hours ago

she’s stunningly gorgeous and very grounded her mum did a good job

heathy,

Royal Wootton Bassett, UK,

15 hours ago

See this woman has the perfect healthy body. She’s not a skinny rake, she’s spot on.

Desperatefor sun,

Sunderland, United Kingdom,

15 hours ago

The link to the book doesn’t work

Lulu,

London, United Kingdom,

16 hours ago

Lynndy13 I think you need to go to Specsavers!! Daisy is stunning!

Lynndy13- London,

London, United Kingdom,

17 hours ago

supermodel-don’t be ridiculous! SHE IS NOT EVEN REMOTELY PRETTY

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