Model maven Eileen Ford had an eye for winners, but it’s safe to say she probably never imagined that one of her swans would achieve fame outside of the industry as a psychologist/(screen)writer/agony aunt. That’s the happy, if stranger than fiction, turn that Renée Toft Simonsen’s life has taken.
Discovered at 15 in her native Denmark, Simonsen was the 1982 “Face of the ’80s” modeling contest winner. Blonde with almond-shaped blue eyes and a megawatt smile, she was a “very fit voluptuous” model—as UPI put it in 1986—who achieved immediate success. In one eight-month time span, Simonsen is said to have racked up 27 cover credits. The face on Roxy Music’s The Atlantic Years album is Simonsen’s, too. Richard Avedon lensed her five Vogue covers, in all of which the model is heavily accessorized with big jewelry and, in one case, a silver tinsel wig. “He knew exactly what he wanted,” says Simonsen on the phone from Scandinavia. So did Duran Duran bass player John Taylor, who ached to meet the model after seeing her face plastered across newsstands. The two would have a five-year relationship that ended about the same time that Simonsen left the industry in 1989. (Over the years, she’d had many long-term beauty contracts.)
After re-entering “civilian” life, Simonsen completed her baccalaureate and studied child psychology at university. Now married to Danish singer-songwriter Thomas Helmig, she is the mother of four. The eldest, Ida-Marie, who is 25, will soon make Simonsen a grandmother; Ulrikke, 24, combines modeling with school; 22-year-old Jens is studying mathematics; and the youngest, Hugo, is 19 and a pop star whose single, “Please Don’t Lie,” recently charted in Germany (and has more than 1.8 million views on YouTube). For 10 years, the ex-model has been Femina magazine’s “agony aunt,” proffering advice to Danish women. She’s also penned two series of children’s books: the Tiberius series for boys and the Karla series, about a girl growing up in an extended “modern” family for girls, that has become, admits its author, a “classic.” It was even made into a Danish-language movie. Last week, Simonsen published her 24th book, and reports that the first print run is already selling out. “I guess I’m not the only one feeling f*cking hot!,” she jokes, referencing the volume’s title Jeg er F*cking Hot. “It’s about turning 50 and being vulnerable,” Simonsen summarizes. “The one thing we have not been able to stop so far is the aging process. We have a very huge industry that [insures that] we can’t see that people get old. Let’s look at that process, let’s talk about it, and let’s embrace it, because that’s life and we’re all going that way whether we like it or not.”
Time, modeling, marriage, and motherhood have all precipitated changes in Simonsen’s rich life. Here, she recounts some of the most significant turning points she’s faced and dishes on fashion’s current fascination with the ’80s.
Discovery
Simonsen entered a local competition at age 15. “Eileen Ford was a judge in the contest. She was crazy about me, but she thought I was too young so she said, ‘I’ll be back for you.’ I was like, ‘Okay,’ [not thinking much of it], but she did come back and two years later, at 17, reentered. I won the contest in Denmark and they said, ‘Please come to America and enter the “Face of the ’80s” [later known as the Supermodel of the World] contest,’ and I did. It was in 1982 at the Beacon Theater, and it was a big experience. Lee Majors, the [Six] Million Dollar Man, was the host of the show, and I remember Irene Cara sang, and someone from the Bee Gees was there. It was really wild. I was 17 and I was really very, very innocent. I won. My mother didn’t want me to go to New York. I was only 17 and she opposed very much me going. Eileen [offered me] a contract for $100,000, and after my mother said I couldn’t go, she doubled the contract and said, ‘She can live with us.’ In the end my mother gave in and let me go and I moved in with Eileen and Jerry.”
That ’80s Look
I think I was kind of like the Christie Brinkley type. I had broad shoulders, I was healthy and sporty-looking, and a little bit sexy. Today they are more special-looking, maybe you can say it like that, and they don’t work so many years. They just have a very different look now. We didn’t have to be so skinny—I was skinny but not like anorexic-skinny. We were healthy-looking, super smiley, super happy, super approachable, super sexy—the Sports Illustrated, girl-next-door girl kind of thing. They just wanted very beautiful girls, not more niche-looking.
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Stylin’
Now that I hear all the stories about New York in the ’80s I [realize I] should have been scared. There was a lot of energy and everything went very fast and the fashion industry had a lot of money and I think a lot of people did a lot of drugs. I never did, I never really got into that part. I was like a country girl, from a small city here in Denmark. But you know how they can transform you—I mean you go in front of Avedon’s camera and you have Ariella or Kevyn [Aucoin] do your makeup and some fabulous hairstylist—and they could transform any country girl into a big-city girl in two minutes. One of the first things I ever bought that was designer and a little bit expensive was a Kamali jumpsuit in a sweatshirt cloth. I remember wearing it with Polly Mellen when I went with her to [shoot in] Sardinia with Talisa Soto and I remember Polly commenting on it. I had typical young-girl style, and that was the first time that anybody commented on any clothes that I wore. That feeling of wearing something that somebody noticed was really kind of new. I have to be honest, I was there to make money. I didn’t really spend my money on designer clothes, I was very busy accumulating like a little squirrel, thinking the winter is going to be long and cold and I better stock up.
On Meeting John Taylor
Well he wanted to meet me, he’d seen me on the covers of magazines. I accidentally bumped into him at the Limelight. I wasn’t really interested, but I had a girlfriend, Patricia Van Ryckeghem, who had a contract with Chanel back then and she was. So I went over to him and said, “Hey, can you talk to my girlfriend?” Anyway, he was very drunk and not very polite, so we left. When he realized [what he had done] he contacted my booker at Ford. I had him promise to jump out of a birthday cake for my girlfriend and be nice to her as a birthday present; if he’d do that, he could come to that party. I really did it to be nice to a friend, to be honest. Then she left for Paris and he asked if I wanted to go [out]. We went to see Witness, and then we became boy- and girlfriend. We were together for five years, from when I was 19 to 24.
On Richard Avedon
He knew exactly what he wanted, and for a Vogue cover he’d stage everything—he’d put your chin exactly where he wanted it—and then he’d maybe do five or 10 Polaroids and he’d have the cover. It could be a bit intimidating, but he was such a nice man and there was always such a good feel in the studio. It was a good ambiance, always very calm, with no music or noise or anything. For the covers he always shot with that huge Polaroid camera and you could kind of see [the results] right away, which was unusual back then. It’s not anymore, now everybody works with a computer in front of them and they can see when they have the picture, which takes some of the magic away. Avedon actually worked like that already.
On Segueing Out of the Industry
I had been working really heavily for seven years, I mean in New York I’d work nine-to-five, then from 5:30 p.m. to 11:00 p.m. go to Eric Boman’s studio and [shoot some more]. Then I was traveling everywhere—going to Japan, back to Hawaii, over to Rome, up to Paris, over to London, Los Angeles, and back to New York. At the time I didn’t realize what was happening, but now that I look back I was overworked and John was doing drugs and I wasn’t into that and we had a lot of rows about that (he’s written an autobiography so I’m not saying anything that shouldn’t get out there), so I think I became stressed and got anxiety. It was horrible and I was 24 and I had no idea what it was. Today it’s different, but in the ’80s it wasn’t something people talked about; I thought I was going crazy. I never knew when the panic attacks would come. Having a relationship that’s going bad and having so much work is just a bad combination for a young girl being far away from home. I had gotten sick with anxiety and so I went home to my mom and I went to see a psychologist.
Out of the Studio, Into the Kibbutz
My sister was saying she wanted to go to a kibbutz and I just felt this longing in my heart, to go with her to Israel and live in a place where all you had to do was get up at 5:00 o’clock and put on some really ugly blue work clothes and go pick oranges. To me it seemed like heaven, not having to please anybody. I just sort of looked at my sister and said, “I want to come. I want something else in my life, I want to be normal. I want to be picking oranges and have nobody looking at me and nobody taking pictures of me and nobody trying to style me to be something I’m not.” I dyed my hair henna-red and I grew hair under my arms. I didn’t want to look nice anymore. I see that it was really a very strong reaction now, but I think that I needed to do that at the time. I needed to stop. I needed to get out of the relationship, I needed to get out of that business, because I also had a feeling of being looked at, really a lot, but never really being seen, and I think that can be painful and maybe you lose some of your soul somewhere.
And Then . . .
I never took the baccalaureate so I had to go back and do that. It took a couple of years and then I went to university and studied child psychology. I had some kids on the way so it took eight years. I was accepted into a PhD program but right before I had to start, I had to say no because the kids were too small, so . . . Then I started writing instead and I’m really happy for that decision because for the last 15 years that’s what I’ve done, and I love it.
On the Current 1980s Revival
I understand why it’s back; there’s a whole generation now that’s been minimal and [has grown] up with skinny girls. I think maybe everyone is longing for some color explosion and some smiley girls and some big bums. Maybe it’s just time. But I don’t know if everything’s going to come back, I mean, cobalt blue? Maybe not! The fashion industry’s like that, it has to change and renew itself because if it doesn’t, it just becomes boring and repetitious. And what are you going to invent? [Nothing,] so you go back to certain styles. My daughter, who is 24, she loves the stonewashed things, and there’s some of it I really love, too. Recently I was looking for a pair of the complete classic 501s, which are great. The young girls are wearing those now.
