The Evolution Of Elle

Everything Elle Macpherson touches seems to turn to gold, but for the model, mum and entrepreneur, luck is a product of mental discipline. She reveals the mindset behind that happy demeanour.

- Rebecca Long

Elle Macpherson is learning to play the ukulele. It’s a strange choice for someone whose stature earned her the nickname, The Body. The small string instrument mocks her near-six foot frame and image as one of the country’s most successful models and female entrepreneurs. “Some people may find it frightening,” she says. But then Elle Macpherson – an amalgam of the name her younger sister Mimi gave her when she couldn’t pronounce Eleanor and the name of her mother’s second husband – has always forged her own path. Despite planning to follow her stepfather’s lead into law, in line with the family’s academic values, at 17 Elle went overseas to try her luck modelling and stayed for two decades. It instilled a sense of self determination that would take her to remote corners of the globe and to the edge of her own limitations.

“When I first started my career, it was a very different world… and I was a different girl. As a model, I had to wait around to be chosen. I decided early on in my career that I wanted to choose my own path and control my career,” she says. “This has led to many creative and challenging pathways, all of which I have learnt from.”

Aside from the ill-fated fashion cafe chain she started with the original crew of supermodels in the ’90s, Elle has enjoyed a remarkable business strike rate, from a wildly successful partnership with lingerie company Bendon to her own intimates brand and her latest endeavour – a premium wellness company based on organic alkalising supplements. She’s become a parent and step-parent, lent her name to various charities and hosted the who’s who of politics and Hollywood at homes in Britain and the Bahamas.