Carolyn Murphy Tells About Her Life As A Model, Her Secrets To Success

Carolyn Murphy tells Windy Aulia about her life as a model, her secrets to success and her passions beyond fashion.

- Windy Aulia

ON THE MAKING OF A MODEL

It was the summer of 1990 and my mother had put me in a finishing school because I was a tomboy. During the graduation ceremony, they made me look pretty and I was very grumpy about it. A lot of people from the modeling agencies were there and the next thing I knew, I was going to Paris.

I was only 16 and my parents let me go only if I could live in the house of the agent. I had never been away from my family before this. I was miserable. Long story short, I cried so much as I couldn’t understand the industry. They wanted me to wear short skirts and tights, and that wasn’t my thing. I hung out a lot at Les Halles, which was one of the roughest areas in Paris.

I wouldn’t say that fashion really set in for me until the early ’90s in New York. I was still trying to go to college then. I was intrigued by the grunge look of that era. It was how I dressed normally, and the music was what I was listening to, so the whole thing was really relatable.

I saw Kate Moss in New York and I thought, “Oh, she’s shorter than I am.” And this was after I had been told that I wasn’t tall enough. So I thought if I plucked off my eyebrows, I would look weird and could work more! That was my first memory of trying to get into fashion: plucking my eyebrows and dressing grungy.

ON BEING A CREATIVE FORCE

Mario Testino once said at a shoot that I looked like actress Romy Schneider, whom I had never heard of. I started to learn about fashion through him and other photographers that I started to work with from 1993 onwards.