Elle MacPherson

[Swimsuitologist]

@Juju62--Thanks so much for the great scans!

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Elle Macpherson - twitpic

[tito]

Vanidades Chile October 2014: Elle McPherson

 

vanidades.taconeras.net

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 Ocean Drive Magazine November 2014

 

Fashion mogul, model icon, entrepreneur, mother, and wife. Now, Elle MacPherson is taking Miami.

 

After a decade hunkered down in the compact, foggy city streets of London, Elle Macpherson is basking in the bright expansiveness and open roads of her new hometown. “I leave for school early in the morning, and there is nothing more beautiful than watching Miami wake up over the causeways, and seeing the pink and purple skies and the blue sea,” says the Sydney-born beach girl at heart. “The other day, we were driving across one of the causeways and we saw a dolphin, and I just thought to myself, This is really such a pretty town!”

And just what does a supermodel use to tool around in? “Do you want the pretentious answer, but it is the truth?” asks the woman with a net worth estimated at $45 million, with a self-deprecating laugh. “A selection.” A stick-shift Porsche, however, is her go-to for morning school drop-offs for her boys, Flynn, 16, and Cy, 11. But it’s not exactly a family favorite. “My 11-year-old says it makes him throw up—he can’t read his studies on the way because it’s a very, very sporty car.”

Macpherson has been on the move since she left her native Australia at 18, skipping out on law school and settling in New York during her formative modeling years that would earn her a spot in the supermodel pantheon, before embarking on a successful career in Hollywood. (She made her big-screen debut in Woody Allen’s Alice in 1990 and titillated Joey Tribbiani in a recurring role as Janine Lecroix on Friends, while appearing alongside stars like George Clooney, Barbra Streisand, and more in everything from Batman to The Mirror Has Two Faces.) She eventually relocated to London to start a family.

This move to Miami, however, she says, is a whole different ballgame. “For starters, I have no apartment in New York—I’ve sold it—and I don’t have real estate in London either, so this is a very different experience, settling here with a family, consciously.” Husband Jeffrey Soffer, the billionaire realtor whom she married last July in Fiji after dating since 2009, is practically Miami royalty; he owns the Fontainebleau Miami Beach, and his family business, Turnberry, developed Aventura. “My greatest gift is my husband who I adore and our family; we have five children between us in different parts of the country, and life is rich and fulfilling and sometimes really hectic.”

Ensconced in her new home office, looking out at the gray, choppy waters of the bay as a Miami summer thunderstorm roils overhead in the distance, Macpherson is dwarfed by moving boxes. And this is just the first installment. “My artwork and valuables come next week, so I’m still in that moving-in period to some extent, and I’m realizing that my wardrobe isn’t going to work in Miami,” she says, thinking of all the chic, heavy coats that will need to be stored or donated. “We’ve only been here for three or four weeks, so at the moment I’m juggling school and getting to know the teachers and the boys’ workload. The boys have been my number-one priority in terms of getting settled, so I don’t have my acupuncturist, go-to yoga spot or facialist, or anything like that. I’m still knee-deep in sixth-grade homework.” At the moment, she’s casually outfitted in blue jeans and a navy T-shirt, accented by brown suede Isabel Marant boots with a Cuban heel and a brown Hermès belt (“I’ve had this for 30 years”), and her lustrous champagne-hued hair is down, still wet from a morning swim. “I do like to swim in the ocean, but I swim my laps at home,” she says. A daily ritual of 40 minutes of movement, whether that’s getting in the water or sweating in hot yoga, has kept the woman dubbed “The Body” in a 1989 Time cover story in top form for three decades of public scrutiny.

“The Body” had the brains to capitalize on that moniker early on, launching several successful brands over the years, from The Body workout videos to Elle Macpherson, The Body beauty line. “My baby,” she says, “is The Body Elle Macpherson Intimates,” founded in 1990, back when very few celebrities where capitalizing on their own brand. She also had the considerable foresight to leave Ford Models to form her own company in 1994, Elle Macpherson, Inc., knocking out the middleman, and creating her own calendar after years of promoting the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue (she graced the cover a record five times).

Aside from making sure the kids are settled in their new schools, the other business at hand these days is launching her wellness company, WelleCo, stateside (yes, notice the “elle” in Welle). Its first product is a green powder supplement called The Super Elixir.

SUPER GREENS...AFTER SUPER SWIM read the caption on Macpherson’s Twitter picture that went viral this summer. The unstaged photo, taken by her stepdaughter “within two minutes,” showed off the 50-year-old’s formidable six-foot body, clad in a two-piece swimsuit, as she sipped the green, alkalizing mixture. (Macpherson reports that she takes her daily two-teaspoon dose in freezing cold coconut water every morning at 8 am after a few shots of espresso at 6 am.) Of the fab-and-50 bikini shot, she recalls, “I got an email from my business partner asking, ‘Can you take a selfie while you’re on holiday, so I can post it?’ And I said, ‘Ugh, I don’t really do selfies.’ So I asked my stepdaughter to snap it. I had just gone for a swim when we did it. I just tweeted it and didn’t really even think anything of it. It had a phenomenal response.”

You couldn’t ask for a better spokesmodel than a supermodel—and a super grounded one, at that. “‘Beauty at every age’ is such a boring cliché, but beauty is not just reserved for youth,” says Macpherson, speaking from experience. “There’s a big movement that supports that. I didn’t feel any kind of milestone pressure turning 50 at all, perhaps because I’ve been preparing for this stage of my life for a long time. In my 40s, I started to focus on health and wellness; I stopped drinking and taking any drugs—even aspirin—and I began really cleaning out my system. By the time I hit 50, I didn’t feel any sort of plateau physically, and it didn’t feel like a shock emotionally either. It wasn’t like, Oh my gosh, I’d better get myself together before I turn 50; it was more like I was reborn.”

She celebrated that new lease on life by hatching her latest business, WelleCo, a health and wellness company cofounded by Andrea Bux (creator of Australia’s popular Invisible Zinc sunscreen brand) that offers supplements and wellness products made from natural, whole foods, namely Macpherson’s Super Elixir, a highly specialized alkalizing greens supplement. “I remember my husband asked, ‘Shall we set up a big party for your birthday?’ And I thought the money I could spend on that I could put into a meaningful business with purpose. Instead of planning a party, I started to focus on getting things together so I could launch for my birthday. And that was my birthday gift to myself and also to other women.”

 

While a deeper dive into wellness came in her 40s, its roots were instilled in her early on. “Being Australian, I grew up with a holistic perspective on life. When I was a little girl, instead of going to the doctor, I went to the chiropractor or the acupuncturist. As I matured, I adopted a reasonably holistic approach to health and wellness,” she says. “When you’re young, beauty and youth go hand in hand, but as you age, wellness and beauty go hand in hand.”

 

Far away from the rigors of producing and hosting Britain and Ireland’s Next Top Model, which she did for four years, Macpherson has plenty of time now to focus her energy on the latest addition to her family of businesses, and on her children.

 

If the boys had the inevitable ‘Dude, your mom is so hot’ moment, she says, with what sounds like an embarrassed laugh, “They would certainly never tell me!” The moment they started to notice mom was a public figure occurred during one season of Top Model, when her face was plastered all over London’s quintessential red double-decker buses and bus stops. “Everyone kept saying to them, ‘I saw your mum on the back of the bus!’”

Today, she says, “My life is very different—I’m not in front of the camera every day, which is a big change for me, and I’m really working on launching this start-up business in America.”

It’s not her first stint in the Magic City, however. “Miami has been a sanctuary for me over the years,” she notes. She’s gotten to know the city well while shooting for the likes of Gotex and J.Crew over the decades. “I’ve worked a lot in Miami, particularly in the ’80s. I remember seeing the Versace mansion, and saying, ‘Oh my god, that’s Gianni Versace’s house. That place is incredible!’ Being Australian, I couldn’t stand New York, I wanted to be on the beach, I hated wearing clothes; I wanted to get out of the studio! Every job I could get to get out of New York I would take—whether they paid well or not. A lot of the work I did was for the Miami-based department store Burdines. I was down here maybe two or three weekends a month, shooting in South Beach and the Keys or Coral Gables. We’d stay at the Biltmore; it was always a welcome relief to get off that plane and feel that humidity,” she recalls. “I’d go, ‘Yeah, I’m alive now!’”

While she’s had a long courtship with the city, now that she’s putting roots down, she’s in a different kind of discovery phase. “When I first got here, I found myself on the I-95 driving forward and backward and forward, and I kept missing the exit, until the I-95 became my best friend. Now I can find my way around at least to some important destinations here.”

She has a few favorite joints already: She’s quick to admit a deep love for JugoFresh (where she replenishes with green juices, coconut pulp juices, and “a passion fruit one with chia seeds, which I really love”), and, of course, she raves about the Fontainebleau. “Scarpetta is one of my favorite restaurants, and I love Hakkasan, so we’re there quite a bit.” There are a few key discoveries to unearth yet, though: “I’m trying to find a really good salsa dancing club; this must be the town for it!”

She still can’t believe her luck in landing in Miami at this point in her life. “I wake up in the morning and I go for a paddleboard—how cool is that?”

[balenciagaaa]

Behind the Scenes with Elle Macpherson in Miami

 

[jal718]

Great cover

[megamedred77]

Runway for valentino.

 

[Shepherd]

Chrome Hearts Celebrates The Miami Project During Art Basel, Miami, Dec 3 '14

 

[brazilianaffair]

1991

1987

1988

[brazilianaffair]

for Alaia

[Juju62]

1991 SI Swimsuit Desk Calendar

 

 

Credit to the OP.

[Swimsuitologist]

Thanks as always Juju62!

[brazilianaffair]

by Gilles Bensimon, 1994

[Shepherd]

Out & about, Aspen, Dec 20 '14 (MQ)

 

[pinguoin]

 Women Before 10 A.M by Veronique Vial     

 

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[Juju62]

These are just raw scans. Most of my posts in the past have received significant touch-up work. However, I have been sitting on these images I found online for too long. It's time to just get them posted!

 

1992 SI Swimsuit Calendar



1992 SI Swimsuit Desk Calendar



Credit to the OP.

[Mahi]

Excerpt from the book:Models of Influence: 50 Women Who Reset the Course of Fashion by Nigel Barker
 

"Elle Macpherson earned her nickname, 'The Body,' for two reasons. To begin with, quite simply, she has a stunning physique. Broad-shouldered like a swimmer, she's six feet tall and lean, with strong legs and feminine curves. Second, the name stuck because Elle began her modeling career feeling self-conscious about facing the camera head-on. She was more at ease emphasizing her body, so her body became her calling card and greatest strength."

zimbio

[Juju62]

1991 SI Swimsuit Issue



1991 SI Swimsuit Calendar



1995 SI Swimsuit Desk Calendar



Credit to the OP.