The Great Dane

Model and photographer Helena Christensen has always been one of the most intriguing of the original ‘Magnificent Seven’.

- Sarah Charlston

A long with Christy Turlington, Cindy Crawford, Linda Evangelista, Naomi Campbell, Elle Macpherson and Claudia Schiffer, Helena was one of the seven supermodels who reigned supreme back in the day when The Supers ruled the world. But there was something slightly removed about her even then – she seemed more private and less upfront than the others.

Perhaps it’s her Scandinavian upbringing that made her shy away from ‘becoming a brand’. Instead, the Danish beauty has worked slowly and steadily since the ’90s, rarely lending her name to anything – choosing, instead, to take on a wide variety of small projects. ‘Whether it’s modelling, photography, designing, whatever I’m doing, I like little intimate projects,’ she says. ‘Most of what I’m doing now as a photographer is for little underground magazines – not something that everyone is going to see. When someone approaches me, and says, “We have this great project; it will have millions of viewers,” I think, “Oh god, no! That sounds horrible!”’