Model of the Year Edie Campbell Thanks Her Pony
When this supermodel won the British Fashion Awards 2013 Model of the Year on Monday, it wasn’t her agent she thanked. Or her mom.
“There are so many people to thank but I will make one special thank you to someone who has been by my side for the past four years,” said Edie Campbell at the podium, “… my pony Dolly.”
Dolly was not in attendance.
Watch a clip of her speech:
The British fashion press called her speech “eccentric,” but anyone with an equine surely understands.
In between modeling for companies like Burberry, Karl Lagerfeld, Louis Vuitton and Vogue, Campbell, 23, flees London for the countryside, where her horses live. She rides mostly dressage, but goes for the occasional gallop down the homestretch, like she did a couple years ago when she raced in the Celebrities Ladies Race at Goodwood to raise money for charity. She worked for weeks with a race trainer, waking at 5 a.m. to train with him for three hours.
“I think they were all expecting some flaky, ethereal model to pitch up in a skimpy dress and refuse to ride in the rain, so they were a bit surprised when I turned up in jodhpurs and just got on with it,” she told the Telegraph.
“It couldn’t be more different from modelling–it’s incredibly physical and demanding and there are none of the egos or c*** from the fashion world which is why I’m enjoying it so much. It’s keeping me sane,” she said.
Campbell’s training paid off. She won the race, beating Olympic dressage medalist Laura Bechtolsheimer. Watch the Face of Burberry win the race here.
After the excitement, it was back to dressage, magazine covers and working on her art history degree. The daughter of a former British Vogue editor, Campbell talks here about combining modeling in the city and training her horses in the countryside, in front of a wall of ribbons in her bedroom that looks like it could belong to any horse-crazed young woman.
If you have a horse habit, being a supermodel’s a pretty good gig. It will definitely pay for lessons. (Best not to land on your face if you fall, however.) Campbell seems to know it might not last forever, however. In a story for Interview, she was asked what she’d dream of doing in the future.
“I’d like to work with horses,” she said, “but it doesn’t pay very well. Maybe I’d like to go somewhere in the Middle East because they keep buying really nice horses for their Olympic teams—like, the Qataris.”
Has riding taught her anything that applies to her life outside the arena?
“It’s very good for you, riding,” she said. “You know how ever model is like, ‘I do yoga.’ Well, I find horses have the same effect, in that you have to put your ego aside and concentrate on making the horse do the things you want it to do and move in the way you want it to move–particularly if you’re doing dressage. So you have to use your body to help this horse do incredibly difficult movements that don’t come naturally to it. And if something goes wrong, it’s not the horse’s fault; it’s always your fault. So you have to be quite levelheaded. And then the whole nature aspect of it is very calming. It’s great. No one in the horse world gives a flying f**** what they look like.”
You kind of have to like the girl, even if she is a supermodel.
From Burberry…
…to breeches.
Go Edie.
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