'I was massively Saffy from Ab Fab — although probably less so now': Daisy Lowe on hard graft, rock-star parenting and girl power

She was brought up in the chaos of the Primrose Hill set but Daisy Lowe is fully in control. The model talks hard graft, rock-star parenting and girl power with Charlotte Edwardes
All grown up: “I think I’ve always been 25, well at least since I was 13. Now I finally feel the age I’m supposed to be,” says Daisy Lowe (Picture: Dave Benett/Getty)
Charlotte Edwardes5 November 2014

When Daisy Lowe was growing up amid the sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll chaos that was her mother Pearl’s life in Camden, she would lay out her school uniform “perfectly” on her chair every night. Gold shirt, navy-blue pleated skirt, navy-blue socks, polished shoes — “in the order that I would put them on” — and then slide her neatly completed homework into her rucksack, and put herself to bed.

From downstairs came the throb of music and partying — “Fleetwood Mac, Tricky, Portishead, David Bowie”. Her mother was in the grip of fierce cocaine and heroin addiction, as well as being at the heart of the swinging “Primrose Hill set” along with Sadie Frost, Kate Moss and Jude Law and other “mad creative friends and artists [who] would stroll on through”.

Aged two, little Daisy was enlisted for a music video, and at six for an album cover, “[that] was Photoshopped so that I had really long nails and big lips and blue eye-shadow. I remember sitting saying, ‘Muuuuuum, why are you still doing my make-up?’” And there was the annual “pilgrimage to Glastonbury,” which she still does. “I always know where to find my mum — knocking around the Park Stage.”

We meet in Peckham, a long way south for this solidly north London girl (she now has a junior “Primrose Hill set” with people like Harry Styles, Florence Welch and Radio 1 DJ Nick Grimshaw). She’s filming for the American Express-backed Small Business Saturday project with Sir Peter Blake, the 82-year-old artist, about whom she squeals: “I can’t believe he recognised me!”

She’s dressed in swathes of black with a white fluffy dog in her lap and she’s all smile, teeth and brown eyes, under a flop of thick fringe. She’s just come off the phone from her grandfather, she says. “Gramps. He was just checking in. He’s really cute.”

Stunning: the British model striking a pose (Picture: Dave Benett/WireImage)

Gramps — “or Fast Eddie as he’s known at home” — and her grandmother, Lee, looked after Lowe when she was 15 and her mother decamped to Hampshire with her stepfather Danny Goffey (of Supergrass fame), and her two small brothers, Alfie and Frankie (her sister Betty was born later).

Why didn’t she go with them? “Because I wanted to finish my GCSEs,” she says. She was, “massively Saffy” — the sensible swotty daughter in Absolutely Fabulous, “although probably less so now”.

“Homework would always be done as soon as I got in. I kind of created the order that I wanted around me. I was so OCD. My friends called me O-C-Daisy.”

Before they left and her mother got clean, she’d always helped out with her siblings too. “Everyone always used to say how grown up I was for my age. I think I’ve always been 25, well at least since I was 13. Now I finally feel the age I’m supposed to be.”

Lowe is delightful — charming, funny, engaging — but there’s no denying she has an edge: I’ve never met anyone so determined to be famous. And she’s certainly doing well. She’s modelled for Burberry, Chanel, Harper’s Bazaar and Italian Vogue — as well as campaigns for Whistles and Agent Provocateur underwear.

She finished a film in the summer, Tulip Fever, with model Cara

Delevingne and Prince Harry’s ex, Cressida Bonas (which her agent gamely calls “an all-star cast”). She’s also written a cookery book, Sweetness and Light, and been an outspoken campaigner for larger models, having been criticised for her weight. (As a size eight she’s unable to fit the standard model sample size six.)

“And then there’s all those horrible magazines that zoom in on cellulite and say, ‘Look! That’s not OK!’ When actually it is OK, it’s being a human. We create that stuff. We can’t help it.”

“I wrote my [cook] book to promote self-loving,” she adds. “Food should be enjoyed. It’s healthy food because when we eat bad stuff the guilt is worse. Life is here. We may as well have a good time otherwise, [it’ll be] dull as hell.”

Lowe started modelling aged 11 — “I did a hair colour thing”. At 15 she was “scouted” and was “full-time by 17”. It was a hard decision because she loved her school — South Hampstead High — and worked hard for a place. “They’re sassy, really academic and creative. Helena Bonham Carter went there and she’s my idol, I love her.” She excelled in sciences (“all A*s”) and art, and her teachers tried to persuade her to stay.

“I had a meeting with the head of year. She said, ‘I care about you as a human. I don’t know about the fashion industry, you’re kind of a commodity for them’.”

In the end she claims the decision boiled down to whether she’d be allowed to lie in the next day — “I love my sleep” — and when her mother said she could, “that was it”. But I think she’s being flippant because she quickly says she’ll go back to education — “when I have kids” — and study something science-based.

Almost from day one, her modelling career took off. Her budding fame was boosted by a string of celebrity boyfriends including DJ Mark Ronson and actor Matt Smith, who played Doctor Who. She also dated Will Cameron, a singer, and they appeared naked together on the front of i-D magazine when she was 18, with him suckling her breast.

Did people try to advantage of her? “No,” she says. “Because girls are stronger now in modelling. Social media has given everyone a voice. You don’t feel suppressed because you have the opportunity to say publicly if you’ve been wronged.”

Fabulous lady: Daisy Lowe at the Elle Style Awards (Picture: Gareth Cattermole/Getty)

In addition to modelling she endorses products — although she once got into trouble for blogging about driving a Range Rover before she’d passed her test. She’s the “ambassador” for a make-up brand, and I mention I saw her on the cover of Aga magazine.

“Yes! I have a lilac Aga. They are so good — baked potatoes in an Aga are the best.” I hope she uses a £10k oven for more than baked potatoes? She does.

It’s installed in her flat in Primrose Hill, which she bought recently, but she is excited for “the day that I buy my ‘proper’ home”. It won’t have “as much pastel wallpaper and floral things.” She has a pink fridge and “the kitchen is pastel blue with white crystal handles — sort of Barbie Does Shabby Chic”.

She inherited her “wheeler-dealer grafter” work ethic from Gramps, who grew up in the East End, ran a chippy in Bethnal Green Road and knew the Krays. “They used to go in and eat fish and chips there. He worked the market stalls selling penny sweets. Then they had a fashion business.”

Her grandmother’s mother was “in one of the first girl bands in the Twenties. Her name was Pearl too, and she played viola.” Lowe has a photograph of her on her wall, dressed in ruched velvet trousers and lace, “with all her band, about 15 of them, and a German shepherd dog lying on the floor. Really eccentric but pride of place at home.”

Her life has been tough at times. At 14 she “accidentally” discovered her real father was not Bronner Handwerger, a fertility specialist, as she’d been told, but Gavin Rossdale of rock band Bush and husband of Gwen Stefani, the singer.

“[It was] a very interesting time,” she has said. “That age is when you’re at your most malleable; you’re developing frontal lobes. But I’m very proud of those times ’cos at those moments when the shit hits the fan I could either go out and get really f***ed up or I could go home, cry myself to sleep and wake up in the morning and give my mum a big cuddle, and feel better. And face it head-on.”

Today, she is one of a number of personalities — including Jennifer Lawrence — engaged in a legal battle over the hacking of her computer. Naked photos of her and Matt Smith from 2011 were published online.

She says daily meditation helps — “I started a year and a half ago” — and she has sane and supportive friends. “We all love to go out, have a good dance and play. But none of them is destructive. Some have been or could’ve been but not now. It seems like there’s been a generational shift; that people are learning to look after their bodies earlier,” she shrugs. “Or something.”

American Express has commissioned Daisy Lowe to lend her support to Small Business Saturday, an initiative encouraging people to shop in small independent businesses on Saturday December 6. Visit amexshopsmall.co.uk.

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