âIâm a very fearful, worse-case-scenario person; I spend a great deal of time just calming myself down. Now Iâm thinking, âWhat if a bus jumps onto the pavement?â But Iâve let you sit [with the view of the traffic] because Iâve realised I canât control everything. Itâs been a lifetime of working through these issues and I think today Iâm relaxed enough to have achieved it!â
Is Simon, 65, more chilled? âNot really. On an aeroplane he always turns to me and says, âSo you know which door to use in an emergency?â We have to have an escape plan.â
Le Bon grew up in Oxford, the younger of two daughters, where her British mother, Patricia, was a window-dresser for a department store and her Iranian father, Iradj, taught photography at a polytechnic. She attended the local comprehensive, before being spotted at 17 by a model scout in Oxford. By 19 she was one of the highest paid models in the world.
In 1985, aged 21, she married Simon â whoâd seen her on a magazine cover and called her agent demanding a date â in the grotty Oxford register office. The band were at the height of their fame, with their single, The Reflex, number one in both the UK and the US, but the fact it was he â not she â who was punching above his weight was echoed in the very first episode of beloved sitcom Absolutely Fabulous in 1992. Where the ditsy assistant Bubble exclaims: âVery modern of [Simon] to have taken his wifeâs name.â âSimon still wets himself at that!â Le Bon shrieks. Did she feel threatened by Simonâs groupies? âOh no!â she exclaims. âThey were just fans.â
Simon and Yasmin Le Bon in 1990
Simon and Yamsin Le Born have been married since 1985 (pictured here in 1990) Credit: Ron Galella
It was their marriage, she says, that prevented her ending up a casualty of her brutal industry. âSimon saved me. Without being in a love bubble with him, God knows what ditch I would have ended up in. I would have had a cracking time and that would have been the end of me. Iâd have fallen off a cliff.â
Similarly, having Amber at age 24 gave her new grit and she returned to the catwalk within weeks of giving birth. âMy kids were the making of me, without them I would have remained an utterly useless human being with no drive and ambition. I used to be really intimidated by commonplace things â going to the post office or paying bills or finding a plumber you trusted; regular grown-up stuff that you have to deal with. But when you have kids, you just have to drop all that and get on with it. Being a mother propelled me and gave me motivation to be a professional and really take on the challenges head on that I had shied away from my whole life, because there was nobody else doing it for me: no personal assistant, no secretary, no manager â just me and if I didnât open the mail and pay the bills the bailiffs would be at the door.â
Hang on! Simon had hits such as Rio, Planet Earth and Hungry Like the Wolf in his back catalogue. Surely she could have been a stay-at-home mother? âNo, I had to work for money like everybody else. Simon worked exceptionally hard, was exceptionally successful, never stopped â
but he signed incredibly bad deals. I donât know why itâs OK for artists and musicians to be exploited. People say, âwell, thatâs commonplaceâ, but that doesnât make it OK â you donât get what you deserve.â
Le Bon talks animatedly, laughing a lot and with a complete lack of airs. Iâm sure she has plenty of starry friends but she doesnât talk about them, while any questions about Duran Duran are deflected as Simonâs territory. Naturally, she looks fabulous in a black Ro & Zo dress (she has me check the label so I can confirm sheâs a size 12) accessorised by a medley of jewellery, a jaunty multicoloured scarf tied round her neck and high lace-up brown suede Marc Jacobs boots â âincredibly oldâ.
Her black hair (which she admits happily to dying) falls poker straight to her shoulders, her face is as striking as ever, helped â again confessed freely â by âone or twoâ Botox sessions a year. She eats and drinks sensibly, has a couple of sessions a week with a personal trainer focusing mainly on muscle tone, and after years of dodging supplements now swears by a liquid collagen Gold Collagen Forte Ageless (ÂŁ59.50 for 10 doses) to plump her skin and boost her energy levels (âitâs really strong stuff â only do one shot, never two or youâll be off to the Americas,â she cautions me).
Whatâs it like being an active grandmother? âItâs a great club to be in, but I have to keep up with these little scuffles; I want to play football with them and fling them over my shoulders.â
Like all middle-aged women, Le Bon has bugbears about the younger generation. She âgets stressedâ about how schools arenât teaching them âreal life lessons â how to sort your rubbish out, how to pay the bills, how to do a tax return, how to use your fridge leftovers, how to be a responsible, civilised pedestrian. And cyclists should have to take a test,â she adds firmly.
(L-R) Claudia Schiffer, Karl Lagerfeld, Yasmin Le Bon and her daughter Amber in 1993
(L-R) Claudia Schiffer, Karl Lagerfeld, Yasmin Le Bon and her daughter Amber in 1993 Credit: Gamma-Rapho
What does she think about the Conservativeâs manifesto plans for national service for 18-year-olds? âPeople used to talk about bringing back national service in my day; itâs just a 1970s trend thatâs come back. I was actually somebody who would have wholeheartedly stood up and done it â I loved all things physical. I would have enjoyed the training, learning things Iâd never learnt at school, the camaraderie. And we do have an issue with the smallest standing army weâve ever had. But at the moment itâs nothing but a device â telling people what they want to hear.â
Everyone comments on the Le Bonsâ 38 years of marriage, a longevity thatâs rarer than four-leaved clovers in their respective industries. Many relationships are scuppered when both are constantly travelling but sheâs adamant it was their punishing work schedules that kept the couple together.
âWeâd never have lasted if weâd spent the first 15 years in each otherâs pockets; I found it challenging living with someone whoâs a very strong personality, finding that middle ground. But now we want to be together all the time. I go on tour with Simon, which I never used to.â
When he returns from a long stint away thereâs a period of readjustment for both. âHeâs used to having everything done for him, then itâs âSimon, take the dog out, here are the poo bags,ââ she chuckles.
Despite her neuroses, in her early career, Le Bon (who never witnessed any #MeToo misbehaviour) was unscarred by her professionâs brutal ethos. âModelling is not a clever place for many people to be. But I quickly developed a thick skin and a really professional code where it was just about the job, it wasnât about me. Very rarely did rejection affect me. And I was exceptionally lucky because I was successful.â
Yet as she entered her forties, both she and Simon had to come to terms with no longer being the hottest creatures on the block. âWe did everything the wrong way round â we were extremely successful very, very young and then it was a question of how do you maintain it?â
Duran Duran can still pack arenas with the nostalgia crowd, but her bookings became less frequent. âPeople werenât beating the door down and by carrying on infinitely longer than Iâd ever imagined a model to carry on, I put myself in quite a dangerous place psychologically. Weâre harsh enough on ourselves without feeling like weâre judged on our age, our weight, how we look in general and whether we can do our job properly â thatâs a pretty poor place to be emotionally. It made me realise how vulnerable a lot of people are who do this job. Iâd said it previously but I didnât really understand it. It doesnât matter how gorgeous you are, if you canât take the knocks it will chew you up. I have a lot more compassion now as to what insecurity is.â
She was especially floored by the menopause around her 50th birthday. âI was a sweaty, bloated, depressed woman who couldnât understand why she couldnât remember anything.â Now Le Bonâs learning to set less store by her professional identity. âItâs a dangerous thing. The other day somebody asked me very, very innocently: âOh, so what are you working on right now?â I went into a complete tailspin and was in a dark place for weeks afterwards. It was ridiculous â she was just making chit-chat â but it really unbalanced me. That made me sit up and think about whatâs important to me, what identity is, and am I judging myself by other peopleâs standards, or am I judging myself by my standards?â
Generally sheâs âangryâ at the way todayâs models are obliged to constantly promote themselves on social media. âSo much is asked of them. I want to turn around to companies and say, âAre you going to pay me double because Iâm doing a marketing job now as well?â And how do you ever switch off now when every two minutes youâre thinking, âOh, that would make a good picture.â
Yasmin Le Bon in Melbourne in 2000
'It sounds clichĂŠ but money really isn't where the good stuff comes from in life' (pictured here in 2000) Credit: Fairfax Media
What I loved about my job was I wanted a simple life and I really got away with absolute murder. There were exceptionally long, tiring days and I sacrificed a lot, but when the working day ended I didnât have to think about work until the next day. The idea now that we all have to be entrepreneurs, working all the time, drives me potty. Weâre sending out entirely wrong messages to young people about what success in life really is. I know it sounds like a tired clichĂŠ and we all have to pay the bills, and that itâs ripe coming from somebody who can pay the bills, but money really isnât where the good stuff comes from in life.â
Le Bon discusses all these issues with her offspring. âThey feel quite lucky to have left school when social media was in its infancy.â She was relaxed when Amber started modelling, appearing in the likes of the Victoriaâs Secret show and in campaigns for Moschino and Dolce and Gabbana â âsheâs tough enough. But [my daughters] have also learned the hard way not to read the comments [beneath social media posts] because they can destroy you. Simon never reads any of it. In the past, horrendous things have been written about him and had he not been a strong person, in a loving relationship, that could have been the end of him. Thereâs so much fear, hostility and pain going on in the world, we donât have to add to it.â
Gold Collagen Forte Ageless is available at gold-collagen.com and retailers nationwide.
webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/06/16/yasmin-le-bon-interview-kids-not-inheriting-anything/
