After watching a dress rehearsal at the Howick Little Theatre, you get the feeling that once she's reclining - starkers - on a faded-rose chaise longue, she will be comfortable in her 55-year-old well-rounded skin.
L'Estrange-Corbet expects to be nervous, but not simply about being naked. This is her first time acting on stage, other than mute bit-parts in school plays almost half a century ago; and she's playing one of the lead roles in Sitting Pretty when it opens tonight. More than anything, she's terrified she'll forget her lines.
She's told few about her theatrical debut - not even her daughter, Pebbles - chiefly because she has a fair idea of how her 25-year-old only child will react. "She will be mortified at the thought of her mother appearing nude in public. But kids need to realise that's what parents are for - to embarrass them in old age." She initially fibbed to her former husband and business partner in the World fashion empire, Francis Hooper, when she went to audition. "In all the years I've known Francis, I've never lied to him. But I just couldn't tell him."
Instead, she conjured up a trip to the shopping mall at Sylvia Park but she doubts he was fooled by that improbability.
L'Estrange-Corbet has often been labelled brave, but her latest, revealing challenge takes it to a new degree, especially as one of the most-recognised faces in New Zealand fashion - a realm revolving around image.
"In the fashion industry, they're consumed and obsessed with how they look, what they eat, how they portray themselves. But I've always been true to myself; this is my brand, this is me - what you see is what you get," she says.
Even if this time, she admits, you may be getting more of an eyeful. But she's sticking true to her motto: "Who cares?"
She says: "For women in their 40s and 50s, it all starts turning to custard - the wrinkles, the potbellies from having children; like an old pair of knickers and the elastic's gone. Everyone's so obsessed with how they look - it's all Botox, plastic surgery, stomach stapling; there's a paranoia about getting old.
"I don't have that hang-up but sometimes I wonder if I should. I just embrace what I've got - my grey hair, my wobbly bits.
"I don't want to get to the point of falling off this mortal coil and thinking 'I should have done this and I should have done that'. I honestly don't care what people think of me, and I'm happy with who I am and what I've done. I believe if you really want to do it, just do it ... though that obviously doesn't include robbing banks."
Sitting in her Freemans Bay lounge with a platter of cheeses and chocolate chip biscuits, and two hungry chihuahuas hovering, L'Estrange-Corbet isn't sure if she's in the throes of a mid-life crisis.
"Maybe I am. My daughter moved out of home a year ago, and I've found myself with a little more time on my hands to do things I want to do," she says.
Or perhaps she was simply bored - she admits to getting bored easily. "I have the incredibly short attention span of a gnat. So I try to put myself in different situations out of my comfort zone."
She's still mystified as to what drew her to the ad she spotted in the Weekend Herald, calling for actors for the comedy-drama written by Amy Rosenthal, daughter of late British playwright Jack Rosenthal - who penned 129 episodes of Coronation Street - and actress Maureen Lipman.
"I saw the part of Nancy - mid-50s, chubby, English, suffers from depression, and has just lost her job as a shorthand-typist. I was four out of the five, so it was like it was written for me," says L'Estrange-Corbet (although she was once a typist in London). Today, she's still very much employed, as the chief executive of World, working on the winter collection for 2016.
But when she saw the role involved nudity, she checked out the part of Nancy's sister, Nina. The spinsters flat together in London, and Nina is outgoing, bossy, loud and slim, and works as an art guide at the National Gallery. She thought she was a perfect Nina, until she read "slim".
L'Estrange-Corbet had just turned down being a contestant on the upcoming series of Dancing With The Stars, despite the pleading of friends. "They told me 'Please do, it will be such a laugh', but I didn't want to be their source of entertainment," she says.
Yet she felt propelled towards the play, even though she was seized by apprehension sitting in her car outside the theatre on audition day. Being a debutant, she'd hoped to watch others try out, but her name was called first.
It's no surprise when L'Estrange-Corbet lets spill she was an "oppressed actress". She rues the fact her previous thespian experience stretches only to a maid and an angel in school plays in South London.
"Both parts were non-speaking, for obvious reasons. I was always outside the headmaster's office for talking too much. They worried I'd chatter all the way through the play - 'Don't say anything, Denise, just stand there in your starched white sheet'. But I always loved the stage."
Forty-odd years later, she used her public speaking voice to good effect, unruffled reading from a script. And the concept of nudity didn't terrify her either, although when offered the part of Nancy, she warned the director, Penelope Keegan, she wouldn't be appearing front-on in the life drawing scene.
"No one deserves to see me full frontal, no matter what you've done in your life. The artists in the life drawing class will see some of my bits - and they will never be the same again," she says, straight-faced. "I've seen some amazing 55-year-olds ... but they work at it, I don't. Pebbles and I have started going to yoga classes, but it's hilarious."
Drama, she says, is yet another extension of her creative, arty side - from fashion designer, to published author, Canvas agony aunt, and now thespian. But she promises she won't be releasing a single any time soon.
Outside the Howick Little Theatre on a Tuesday night, hundreds of girls are leaping lithely around netball courts under bright lights. Inside, under the spotlight, L'Estrange-Corbet is almost swallowed up in an old couch; no makeup, an 80s hairclip holding back her bob, shot with natural silver. In the opening scene she barely utters a word.
Keegan calls directions from the front row: "Not too pouty ... little sobbing noises now."
It turns out L'Estrange-Corbet is a maven in moping, and pretty good at sham crying too.
Always open about her bouts of depression, L'Estrange-Corbet says she can easily relate to Nancy's melancholy, but admits she's found crying in real life more challenging. "When I have depressed episodes, I just go into myself. I've always found crying very difficult when I'm depressed - I want to cry and scream, but I become very introverted.
"I'm sure others who suffer with depression can cry all the time, but I get sad, and the crying almost has to build to a crescendo."
"Looking tense," Keegan instructs as Nancy arranges herself - fully covered in this rehearsal - on the chaise longue. "Oh, don't worry, I will be," L'Estrange-Corbet ripostes, and the cast laughs.
"Don't worry, we'll give you a couple of gins beforehand," says Tracey Holdsworth, the actress playing artist Sylvia.
Keegan is impressed with L'Estrange-Corbet's ability to take direction, as the only one of the 10-strong cast who hasn't acted before. The others are experienced but also have day jobs - Nina is played by company director Cristine Della Barca, and Dr Tim Skinner, an anaesthetist off-stage, plays Philip the philandering art teacher.
"Denise has done really well; she listens," Keegan says. "She's definitely in touch with the character - she feels the angst and then she really brightens up as Nancy's confidence grows."
L'Estrange-Corbet also impressed by sourcing her own wardrobe, from The Warehouse and Kmart - even though Hooper, with whom she still shares a house, is a vocal opponent of chainstore fast-fashion.
She's savoured every moment of the experience leading up to tonight. "So much of what we do isn't fun, it's work, and this is the most fun I've had for so long." She says she'll consider extending her repertory repertoire - if she manages to remember her lines.
"It's incredibly challenging for me - there are just too many lines to write on my arm - but I love challenges. If I do it again, it's got to be something that pushes me," she says. "And if Peter Jackson comes along to the play, I know he'll snap me up."
Sitting Pretty is at the Howick Little Theatre, May 9-30.
- Canvas
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