Down to earth in high fashion

By GEOFF CUMMING

This may shock followers of my trend-bucking fashion sense, but I have long harboured an ambition to design women's clothes. However, when wearable art designers plundered my ideas with wire mesh and rainbow-striped muslin, I decided to stick to my day job.

Meeting Angela Dunn makes me fantasise afresh. The London photographic model and former catwalk queen who left New Zealand 20 years ago would, it seems, obey the whims of the most deranged designer or photographer.

Brought home by Air New Zealand for Fashion Week, she certainly knows her place. "I'm just a flaky model," she says. A very well-off flaky model.

She once spent four hours a day for five days perched on a rock in freezing water off the coast of Wales wearing only a chiffon gown, holding a huge bottle of perfume above her head, while the photographer waited for the perfect sunset.

"I was just in tears. I never worked with the photographer again."

These days, at 41, she is comfortably settled in London, mixing modelling with motherhood. She picks and chooses jobs ranging from mother-and-child to high fashion catalogues and editorial spreads for Vogue and the Spanish Elle.

"I know I'm not the right look for the groovy up-and-comers, but some designers use me all the time. I guess they think a show's not a show unless I'm there."

But it is a while since she rubbed shoulders with Naomi Campbell and Linda Evangelista on the catwalks of Milan, Paris, London and New York, draped in Yves St Laurent, Giorgio Armani, Versace or Chanel and living on adrenalin.

Staying at the Remuera home of parents Murray and Jane, she wonders what on Earth we'll find to talk about.

So do I, but I needn't have worried. She may have a London lilt, but she is unaffected by supermodel syndrome.

"It irritates me when models moan about their careers - I've just always loved it."

We meet outside Cafe Melba in Auckland's High St fashion district, where every second passer-by fondly remembers the tall, willowy redhead with the missing waist.

She is casually and eclectically clad - Helmut Lang boots, Workshop jeans, Dolce and Gabbana leopard print vest under a sheer Chloe top, wrapped in a mink coat bought second-hand for £50.

Accessories: a well-loved red Balenciaga handbag, jewellery by Solange Azagury Partridge.

I can tell you this because I asked her. She was not the least put out - you can take the girl out of Remuera, and you can take the Remuera out of the girl.

Her English rose face, faintly freckled, is fresh and flawless. She is wearing hardly any make-up.

She turns out to be a prolific and fast talker, which she attributes to whiling away hours of boredom with model friends between moments of pandemonium at shows.

"Modelling is not a brain-taxing career but it gets really tiring - New York one week, Paris for two, then down to Milan. Travel, travel, travel," she says, screwing up her nose Bewitched-like.

Her duties in Auckland include passing on tips to Fashion Week models and up-and-comers.

Her advice is not to take modelling personally.

"In the early days, you only get the job if your face fits. It's not based on your talent or your training or your personality. That can be hard for young girls to take."

At St Cuthbert's school, Dunn had few career notions, did not like the way she looked.

"I had light skin and freckles when boys liked girls with tanned skin. Then I started being successful based on the way I look. Now I'm quite comfortable with light skin and red hair, and I love the bump on my nose."



The High St cafe and fashion precinct is a world removed from 20 years ago when Dunn left for Tokyo.

She likes the international city she says Auckland has become and the leaps the fashion industry has made.

While technology and globalism have brought everything closer she's unsure exactly why the local industry is making such strides overseas.

"I'm really fascinated to see what the show's going to look like next week. There are so many designers here that are showing abroad and doing really successfully in America and England."

But 20 years ago, opportunities at home for a strong-boned redhead were limited. New York and Europe beckoned.

"When I look back on it, I can't believe I did it. My parents must have been terrified.

"You grow up very quickly. There are photographers backstage and interviews to do. You are really thrown in the deep end. I wasn't as young as some girls but I was innocent enough in my early 20s."

It was the heyday of hedonism, when models became celebrities and designers gods, and cocaine and sex their accessories.

"It's quite sad. A lot of girls who were really successful at the time ended up in AA [Alcoholics Anonymous] or NA [Narcotics Anonymous] or had breakdowns.

"I was from New Zealand - I was too scared. I was just trying to be a professional.

"Most of those girls fell by the wayside really quickly. Me and other girls who didn't get into it have gone on and had a normal life."

Normal for Dunn means living with interior designer husband Colin Radcliffe and 20-month-old son Maximus in hip Notting Hill Gate, in a renovated 1860s town house.

The striking interior, featured in this month's NZ House & Garden, reflects the couple's taste for "clean lines, hard edges and a restrained palette".

Normal also means a permanent place in London's hectic fashion and social scene.

Dunn is one of only 24 models and celebrities in the management division of top agency Models 1, with Twiggy, Jerry Hall and Nigella Lawson.

"It means they look after you individually - they tailor things for the fact that I've got a child."

She has started a sideline as a personal shopper and stylist for "aristocratic women who want to look chic but don't like to go shopping ... you can imagine how much fun I have with their cards, going off buying for them."


She dotes on Maximus, but looks forward to assignments which take her away for a night.

"I know I'm one of the lucky ones that still model on a regular basis at my age.


"I've had the most amazing life."

I wonder if she'd try on a little layered number I'm working on, macrame on building paper studded with champagne corks ...


Herald Feature: Fashion Week

NZ Fashion Week