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Victoria Lee: From country girl to catwalk queen

dailytelegraph.com

LIKE any model who has reached the top of their game, Victoria Lee has cultivated resilience over the course of her career in fashion. For the 27-year-old, it’s a necessary quality that has seen her through the inevitable vicissitudes of a notoriously fickle industry.

“I’ve always been aware that whatever job you’re going for, there’s an image in the person’s mind of what they’re looking for,” Lee tells Stellar. “And you may be that — and you may not. And that’s OK.”

While she has maintained that professional perspective since she first started modelling in Australia at 19 (“you have to have that for self-preservation”), Lee admits she let her guard down when she found out she was in the running to become a David Jones ambassador. The model had just landed back in Australia after walking in the historic Victoria’s Secret show in Shanghai — the world-famous US lingerie brand’s first in Asia — late last year. Scoring a coveted role on that catwalk, which has played host to the likes of supermodels Tyra Banks, Gisele Bündchen, Naomi Campbell, Heidi Klum, Miranda Kerr and Gigi Hadid, was already a career-defining achievement.

 

Lee grew up in the small NSW town of Narrandera, but has based herself in New York since the age of 20, building up an impressive portfolio by working with high-profile fashion houses including DKNY, Vivienne Westwood, Ralph Lauren and Balmain. Nevertheless, as she sat down at a cafe near the retail giant’s flagship store in Sydney’s Elizabeth Street for a meeting with David Jones CEO David Thomas, she was unable to maintain a dispassionate front once she faced the prospect of notching up another career high point, especially one on home turf.

Lee knew it was a risk to allow herself to become vulnerable when discussing the role.

“You become so exposed — it’s that separation between who you are and the job. You have to have that protection, otherwise you become so much more vulnerable to the knockbacks, which are inevitable. But this was really close to my heart and very important for me, so I couldn’t really help myself,” she says.

“I was emotional, because I’ve grown up shopping at David Jones — there are moments that stick out in my mind like no other and they involved DJs. On a personal level, there’s that. But on a career level, I’m fully aware of the past ambassadors, and the lineage of Lauren Hutton, Megan Gale, Miranda Kerr and the current ambassadors Jessica Gomes and Adam Goodes — that’s not wasted on me.

 

“I wasn’t sure what was happening and then eventually I found out that it was all going ahead, and you could have knocked me over with a feather. I was quite beside myself.”

In fact, Lee’s openness was one of the qualities that convinced Thomas she was right for the job. “It was such a lovely chat,” he tells Stellar. “We spoke about her being from Narrandera; all of her family still lives out there, and she loves it. She was able to talk of the moments when she came to the store as a kid with her family and looked at the Christmas windows; she’d grown up with David Jones. She spoke very openly about how special it was for her and she started crying. It was touching to see how much it meant.”

As the department store approaches celebrations for its 180th birthday, Thomas is acutely aware of maintaining the retail icon’s status and reflecting its heritage while still maintaining the founders’ entrepreneurial spirit, all while catering to the constantly evolving demands of customers. Much of that culminates in choosing someone like Lee to carry the store’s reputation as an ambassador.

 

“She’s lovely and friendly and a real country girl,” Thomas says. “Like country people in general, there’s a real honesty and openness — they’re quite gregarious. That carries through with them all through their lives. You see that in Victoria. She’s a person that cares about the community and demonstrates it, and that is very important.” He mentions Lee’s philanthropic interests, which include supporting endangered animals and environmental conservation, and observes, “We want people who can engage with fashion and look great, but we want people that really care about society as well.”

Since signing on as an ambassador, Lee has also become something of an expert on the store’s history. The department store was opened by its Welsh-born migrant namesake on May 24, 1838 in Sydney. “They’re the oldest department store in the world that operate under the original name,” Lee says; this means the Australian retailer outflanks other well-known operators, including London’s Harrods, which opened in 1849, and New York’s Bloomingdale’s, which was founded in 1872.

The first store, which originally stood on the corner of George and Barrack Streets, stocked exclusive, high-quality textiles. It was in 1927 that a move was made to its flagship premises on Elizabeth Street, where it still stands today and is currently undergoing a $200 million revamp.

 

While the future of bricks-and-mortar stores in the age of internet shopping might not seem assured, Lee says that for the department store, facing challenges is simply part of the process. “They changed the whole way Australians shop,” she says. “They were the first with mail-order shopping — old-school online shopping, before you could go online. [The company’s first catalogue was distributed in 1890.] And they were the first to bring international designers to Australians — they basically shaped the way we shopped, as well as Australian fashion.”

Lee also notes the Sydney store was the site of the first Dior show outside of Paris, in 1948 — historic for its location but also because it showed the now-classic New Look silhouettes, which heralded the end of post-World War II austerity and a departure from the more pared-back, functional clothing that marked the looks of wartime, during rationing.

 

As befits a model, it’s fashion that gets Lee excited. After spending years working overseas, she looks forward to flying the flag for Australian designers as part of her role. “Bec and Bridge, Camilla and Marc, Zimmermann and Rebecca Vallance are probably my go-tos. That’s as much as I can narrow it down; I don’t want to play favourites,” she says with a laugh.

Still, Lee grew up far from the international catwalks she has since graced. Narrandera is a five-hour drive from Melbourne and a six-hour drive from Sydney. At the last census in 2016, the town counted just 5853 residents.

When Lee starts to speak about her hometown, her voice fills with pride. Her father Chris, 58, is the local undertaker, while her mum Jacki, 57, ran a baby and childrenswear store when Lee and her brother Alex, 25, were growing up. Lee says her father’s profession, especially in a rural area, held a unique place in the community, although she grew up thinking it was unremarkable.

“I went on trips with my dad, because the funeral directors in Narrandera look after the smaller communities and towns around the area, so I would go on drives with him. I actually still do if he ever has to do any pick-ups. Growing up, he’d be cleaning the hearse or I’d see the coffins. I was always around it. He’s so good at his job — he’s amazing. To deal with people when they’re in their most vulnerable state, it’s incredible that he can [do that]. My mother was at the other end of the spectrum — she’s in fashion, and that was always so much fun.”

 

Lee says it was always a big occasion for the family to bundle into the car for the long drive to Sydney, where they would head to David Jones and look at the store’s special displays. “I remember the first time I saw the spring Flower Show. We drove specifically to see the flowers and it was just incredible. Also the Christmas windows... the themes change every year. I’m always excited to see what they’ve created.

“There are so many pictures on my phone and I had pictures printed — because it was when you just had a camera — and it would just be reflections of people and buses, not actually the windows, so I wasted many a film taking a photo of the Christmas windows! I still go, but the way that I’m shopping there is different.

“When I was a kid I beelined for the toys, and then I started to get older I went for the shoes and the dresses and the CDs. I still go to the shoes and the dresses, but I’m back to the baby section buying gifts for my friends. You evolve and David Jones is the constant. I’m really proud to be part of people’s milestones in life.”

 

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