WITH a stunning corset dress clinging to her goddess-like curves, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley sent shockwaves through the fashion world this month when she returned to the catwalk at Paris Fashion Week for Jean Paul Gaultier.
It was the perfect revenge on all those who said her career would be over by the age of 25.
Rosie and husband Jason Statham[/caption]
Here she was, more stunning than ever, aged 37, with two children and several years of insecurity and setbacks under her belt.
No longer just a model, but a genuine multi-hyphenate businesswoman, beauty guru, actress and branding expert who – unlike so many of her contemporaries (we’re looking at you, Naomi Campbell) – has only ever grabbed the headlines for the right reasons.
“She has spoken before about the challenges of motherhood, the loss of identity and career shift, but it seems to me she is now in a new era and she wanted to show that,” says fashion expert Jennifer Countess Von Walderdorff, author of Look @ The Labels, of Rosie returning to the catwalk almost 10 years after retiring.
“I think she may have seen the catwalk as a little bit of unfinished business, but also, she wanted to show who the Rosie of today is.
“She is no longer a Victoria’s Secret model, but someone who is empowered and her own boss.”
The move back on to the catwalk also came as she made her latest move with her eponymous brand.
After the success of her lingerie line at Marks & Spencer – which is credited with helping bring the brand into the 21st century and sees one of her items being sold every 30 seconds (her plunge bra alone has sold 3 million units) – she is now designing a clothing range with Wardrobe NYC based on her trend-setting, luxury-cool aesthetic.
Rosie is a serious success story, with an estimated net worth of £20million.
She’s gone from struggling to fit into the fashion world to having the whole industry falling at her feet.
No wonder she said: “If you’d asked me what my dream was when I set out, it was to do this mix of roles.
“I feel like I’m living it. And I know that sounds cheesy.”
Maybe a little, but it’s inspirational, too. Rosie owes her success to, yes, her stunning looks, but also an enormous work ethic and drive, the support of an equally successful partner, actor Jason Statham and – for when it all becomes a little too much – a secret £7million bolt-hole in London, just for her.
Rosie has always been a go-getter, with her eyes on what she wants.
Growing up on a Devon farm, she fell in love with her mother’s fashion magazines and plastered her walls with them.
Her parents, Fiona, a fitness coach, and Charles, a company director, were strict and she would often be sent to her room, where she would pore over fashion shoots and dream of moving to London.
At 15, she wrote to a London modelling agency, finding their details in the Yellow Pages, asking for work experience.
By the time she’d finished her GCSEs and got rid of her braces, she had an agent.
It wasn’t easy. For the first five years of trying to break into the industry, she supposedly had the wrong aesthetic for the fashion world.
Super-skinny was in, and she was told she was too “wholesome looking” or “too full-figured” and that she would be out of work by 25.
“There were good months and bad months, lots of ups and downs,“ she told The Telegraph last year.
“I’ve done everything from teen catalogues to bridalwear and luxury campaigns with top photographers.
“But that experience, the rejection for many years and pounding the pavements, going on castings or travelling in economy class for years and then getting to a location in the middle of nowhere where no one spoke English.
“Those things really built a lot of resilience in me.”
In 2006, she made her debut for Victoria’s Secret, but it was becoming the face of British brand Burberry two years later that led to her first British Vogue cover – and her acceptance into the world of high fashion.
There may have been the odd celebrity boyfriend, including French actor Olivier Martinez and fellow model Ty Wood (son of Rolling Stones star Ronnie), but she has admitted that during her 20s her career was her focus.
Success on the catwalk led to acting roles in Transformers: Dark Of The Moon and Mad Max: Fury Road – both attacked by critics, but that didn’t stop her from becoming an even-bigger name.
She always had an eye on what was next, citing Elle Macpherson – who used her modelling platform to become a successful businesswoman – as her inspiration.
After her plan to design a line of lingerie with Victoria’s Secret was rejected by the brand, in 2012 she took her idea to Marks & Spencer, where she’d been measured for her first-ever bra.
It felt like an unusual move, going back to a brand that was seen as becoming old-fashioned, but Rosie was thinking about her future in the industry.
“I recognised that, at any point, [the modelling world] could say: ‘Rosie is out.’” she told Porter.
“I’d seen that with so many girls – they literally worked with them for 15 years and then one day it was: ‘She’s too old and she’s getting some weight.’
“That’s the way the industry works. I was like: ‘That’s not going to happen to me.’”
‘DEPTHS OF YOURSELF’
Fast-forward to now and she maintains the longest-running high-street collaboration of all-time, and she recently added a shapewear collection to her lines with Marks & Spencer.
Rosie, who works with the team to design the products to match her own taste, says nothing makes her happier than reading sales reports and seeing which items the public most loves, while it remains a thrill to visit the stores and see the collections she’s worked so hard on.
“If you don’t acknowledge those moments, it can all become very blasé and you can focus on what you don’t have, rather than what you do have in this career,” she said on the Reign With Josh Smith podcast .
“It’s important to have that recognition for the work that’s been done, and to look back and remember the little girl shut up in her room at 15 dreaming of going to London to work in fashion – who’d have thought?”
That’s not to say there haven’t been setbacks. Even as the lingerie collection was doing well, her beauty brand Rose Inc collapsed.
Before stepping down from the company, Rosie had spent two years working on it before it launched in 2018.
Then in May last year, she sold the firm after her business partner declared bankruptcy.
While she looks so charmed from the outside, Rosie admits that her career has been anything but plain sailing.
However, she’s now at a stage where she can appreciate the tough times.
“When you’ve gone through some sort of adversity or had these challenging moments and have had the rug pulled from under your feet – professionally and personally – that’s when you go to the real depths of yourself,” she said.
Rosie has always been encouraged to think positively and manifest her hopes by Jason, a former elite diver turned actor and action-movie star, who, at 57, is 20 years her senior.
The pair, who were both living in LA at the time, met at a party in London in 2009 – and it was “instant chemistry” she later recalled.
In one interview with Glamour, she told how Jason’s support meant more than anything else.
“We have a connection that has nothing to do with age,” she said.
“Work comes and goes, but if you have someone at home who thinks you’re the greatest person in the world, that keeps you going.”
The couple got engaged in 2016, and that was followed by the birth of their son Jack in 2017 and daughter Isabella in 2022.
After both pregnancies, understandably, it took Rosie some time to drop the weight she had put on.
She has alluded to a degree of insecurity as her body came under scrutiny, all while she was learning to navigate the world of motherhood.
“I was kind of taken aback by some of the comments that people had and the narrative about how women are supposed to look,” she told one podcast in 2019.
‘IDENTITY CRISIS’
She described separately how motherhood led to an “identity crisis”.
Looking good is, obviously, an integral part of her job.
While once staying skinny came naturally, now to stay fit and toned, she aims to do an hour’s workout a day and only eats between the hours of midday and 6pm.
Jason and Rosie moved their family back to the UK in 2020 during the pandemic, to a mansion just outside of London, saying they wanted a more normal life away from the LA bubble.
The mum of two aims to be at home for the school run and bath time, and takes the school holidays off so she can be a full-time mother – but is also insistent that she doesn’t have to be perfect role model.
“I like the idea of being a ‘good-enough’ mother,” she has said. “It’s not about being the best.”
Rosie also has a £7million Chelsea bolt-hole she recently talked about in Vogue Australia – which she uses as her office, meeting place and occasional escape.
Carefully designed using the mid-century style she and Jason love, it’s a place that is most definitely not for children.
“I tell you who loves this house the most, it’s Jason,” she told the magazine.
“Every time he comes here, he leaves feeling very inspired, but also a little envious that I have my own kind of ‘sneak-off’ space.”
It is also where she hosts girl friends, such as fellow models Behati Prinsloo and Lily Aldridge, childhood pals including a teacher called Maddie and agent-turned-skincare-publicist Matt Holloway, who she calls her “bestie”.
Rosie admits to being “cautious” when it comes to forming new friendships, and she’s managed her career – and 20 million Instagram followers – by only putting out a small amount of information about herself.
And it certainly works for her.
She said: “I encourage all women to have ambition for yourself – it is not a dirty word.
“I have always had a clear idea of what I want to do.
“I am doing what I want to do and what I’ve always dreamed of, and I feel like I am only just getting started.”
Rosie with her daughter[/caption]
