With the pandemic threat still present around the world, and mixed messaging when it comes to wearing face masks, Mercedes-Benz took a stand with Helena Christensen during Copenhagen Fashion Week for a socially-responsible shoot, drawing attention to the importance of the issue...
Helena Christensen is one of the handful of iconic ’90s supermodels who, along with Naomi, Linda, Christy, Claudia and – later – Kate, became known by their first names only. She rose to fame in 1989 after starring in the legendary Herb Ritts- directed video for Chris Isaak’s Wicked Game and, by the early 1990s, was a regular on catwalks and magazine covers. ‘We were a group of girls thrust into this intense business and it changed our lives,’ she tells me over Zoom, on a scorching hot day in Denmark during Copenhagen Fashion Week. ‘It’s so wonderful that we still have that bond and commitment to each other.’
Helena says that not only are the Supers still close, but that lockdown actually improved their connection. ‘We check on each other more,’ she says, revealing they regularly chat and share photos of their families, and the nostalgia of old friends proved a comfort, as well as giving Helena food for thought. ‘I was working so hard that I didn’t have time to stop and think,’ she says. The great pause enabled her to appreciate her incredible career ‘for all the experiences it brings me and all the memories I have and am still making’.
Like many fashion legends right now, the 51-year-old model has been reassessing her priorities over the past few years. She is concerned with sustainability, women’s rights (‘we need to lift everyone up,’ she says) and this damn hot weather: ‘We always wanted warmer summers in Denmark and now we have them, but at a price that is unsustainable.’
In her role as a Goodwill Ambassador for the UN’s Refugee Agency, Helena is also keen to talk about the refugee crisis, particulary in light of the recent shocking images coming out of Lesbos. ‘I’m just putting my trust in the hope that world leaders can figure this out,’ she says with a sigh. ‘They’ve been chosen to actually deal with issues like these, because they’re not going to go away.’
Her work with Oxfam on issues around climate change saw her document its impacts on her mother’s homeland, Peru. Yet Helena’s job as a model and, more recently, a photographer, involves travelling the globe. I wonder what she thinks about the uneasy relationship between an inevitably jet-set lifestyle and the climate crisis. How can we continue to travel while also looking after the world we’re so keen to explore?
‘Around 10 years ago, I told my agent we need to travel in a different way,’ explains Helena, who spent lockdown in upstate New York. ‘I used to go to a new place every other day, but now I group the work, so I can go to one place and get three or four jobs done at the same time.’ Not only does this help the planet, but it suits Helena’s lifestyle three decades on from her breakthrough. ‘I don’t want to live in the intense way I did in my twenties. I want to spend more time with my family. My schedule and priorities have changed.’
She concedes that it’s not easy for anyone to get this right, but insists that we must all try: ‘It’s a lot of work to figure out how to live your life in a different way, but there are now so many options.’ One is to go electric, and that’s what Mercedes-Benz – who Helena is working with today – are now focused on. ‘It makes me happy and excited when a big company makes such a decision because, ultimately, it’s big companies who lead the way,’ she says. ‘This is a huge triumph on a global level.’
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Helena is optimistic for a better future, and part of that she sees in the next generation. She has a 20-year-old son, Mingus, with ex Norman Reedus, and recently uploaded to her Instagram a throwback photo of her breastfeeding, captioned: ‘My most powerful moment’.
‘I don’t think there’s anything more powerful than giving birth to a human being,’ she tells me. ‘It’s the single most astonishing miracle on earth, and everything else fades in comparison. Women should be cherished and looked up to and admired for the fact alone that their bodies are so powerful and, for some crazy reason, it’s the opposite that’s happening.
It makes me so agitated thinking about how the opportunities are so different for women and men. I mean, we’ve come a long way, but there’s still so far to go.’
And, naming no names, she ends our conversation with a word for those charged with leading the change: ‘Those politicians better get their asses in line, that’s for sure.’
Helena was photographed in Denmark with the EQC, Mercedes- Benz’ first fully electric car
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