You Only Get One Life (6 page)

My mum kissed me goodbye and I boarded the night train to Germany on a bitterly cold winter evening in 1980. The agency had paid my fare and apart from the address of a shared apartment in Hamburg, I had very little in my purse. But that didn’t matter – I was going to be a fantastic success and I firmly believed it would happen just as it had been described. My dreams were fuelled by the romantic evening I’d spent the night before when Christian and I said goodbye. In my mind I was certain that the two of us would spend the rest of our lives together. I felt an all-consuming love and I could see it was the same for him. I wasn’t going to be away that long and it wouldn’t mean anything. We were sure that what we had could certainly survive all that.

Put to the test, it wouldn’t be long before I discovered that I wasn’t actually that good at making long-distance relationships work. My love needed so much fuel that it would quickly flicker out without constant attention, but on the train that night all I knew was the world was waiting for me and so was the perfect boy.

The train pulled into Hamburg in the early hours and
things immediately began to look different. It was snowing and I had to make my own way to the apartment. Nobody answered the door, so the first few hours of my promising new life were spent slumped on the stairs outside with my suitcase. My confidence and excitement were frozen out of me and I felt lost, stupid and too young to be away from everyone I knew. I cried through sheer cold and exhaustion. It wasn’t until after 8 o’clock that someone finally woke up and let me in.

There were another five girls who lived in the agency-owned apartment and all of us aspiring models had to bust our asses from first thing to get assignments. My Danish success meant little here. We would be called up for endless ‘go-sees’, the model equivalent of an audition. When my limited portfolio of Denmark pictures was picked for a job I would be called in so they could check me out. They barely looked up before saying, ‘No.’ Again and again it happened: Hamburg was my first taste of rejection. I’d never struggled as a model before. It was cold, that curt, bored, ‘No – next’, ‘No good – next!’, ‘Wrong smile… too thin… too fat…’ You could be in and out in less than 60 seconds. Dogs at Crufts are treated with more dignity. The humiliation was rolled into days trying to find my way around the city by bus, sweating to make sure I wasn’t a second late for an agency who would immediately throw me out and on to the next disappointment.

When I began to get work it was mostly in catalogues. Hardly glamorous, 14-hour assignments, but the money was very good and it began to restore my self-esteem. I’d been thinking that I was back at school again, the giraffe
starting to raise her long neck uncertainly inside me and I had been losing the battle with every successive ‘No’ to push her back down into her place.

The reality of modelling is that it’s tough and degrading. There is nothing emotional in it, no heart. I couldn’t feel sorry for myself for being looked at as if I was no more than the clothes I was wearing. The choice was between giving up or developing an attitude which told the world I didn’t need anyone but myself. That’s what I did in the end: stand up straight, walk tall, smile, thank them as they’re saying get lost, dash to the next gig. Inside I crumbled and when I did manage to get a job there was the constant terror that it might be the last.

Agency waiting rooms were packed with groups of girls sobbing together uncontrollably. Aspiring models of 14 to 15 shook nervously as they listened out for the call that would lead to the big breakthrough or the next slap in the ego. My years of being laughed at and bullied at school turned out to have been, in some ways, useful. It was so much more difficult for the girls who had always been thought of as the most beautiful to find out that they were just one face of many.

The agency was as happy as I was that my diary was being filled, but for them it was pragmatic: I represented an investment in terms of the expenses they covered for me in Germany. They were paying for my accommodation and were keen to see some dividends. If their patience ran out before my luck changed, I would be packed off back home to Denmark. That was another reason to feel great relief as things began to pick up, though I have to say that I did like
the hectic lifestyle and even got a sort of thrill from the uncertainty that came with the life. I didn’t mind working hard and even getting as far as Hamburg was further than I had managed before. Twice as big as Copenhagen, the town was very beautiful and as I got to know it, I felt myself to be very far away from where I’d grown up. I wasn’t much of a clubber at that point, but for me it was enough to experience living in a different country. It didn’t make things any easier, but I knew it was worth what I was having to do to be there.

Denmark wasn’t that far away anyway, at least physically. It was only 160 kilometres to the border and at first I regularly took the train to see my family, though these visits did fall away as I adjusted to my adult existence. I had an instinctive feeling that I wasn’t going to go home: I had found something that was more what I had become, something bigger. There would be more than just Hamburg, I felt sure, somewhere where there was more to learn about different ways of living life. There was more space in my life now, space in which the precious, intimate love I had felt for Christian was hopelessly diluted. That meant there was even less reason for me to want to head back north again. Now I was ready for the world – Paris.

I knew what it was like to work with major photographers: I was used to speaking in English and I knew John Casablanca still had plans for me. The agency told me I had that 10 per cent extra – whatever it was that marked out the superstar from every other hard-working model.

New York and Paris were the centres of the fashion
business and I knew that if I could break there, I could make a name for myself anywhere, but I had never been to France. Paris represented the ultimate in romance, beauty, sophistication and culture. French was the language of seduction and sounded like it too. The worst insult sounds sexy delivered in French and I had always wanted to master it.

Today I speak fluent Italian, English and German but I never did well in French, even at school. Me and France, it would turn out, were just never meant to be and maybe that’s why I always struggled with the language. Despite my best hopes and the best plans of the agency, Paris was going to be a complete disaster: I never liked the French and the feeling was mutual. If I thought that Hamburg was hard, I was about to find out that the Paris I’d always hoped to see was only in my dreams.

M
y new life in the capital of France filled me with huge expectation. Ever since I was a little girl the very name ‘Paris’ had come loaded with magic. I was jittery with anticipation when I arrived. The Danish agency were certain that Paris would fall before me and I felt sure that something wonderful was about to happen.

I wanted to see all the famous sights and looked forward to the buzz of seeing the town as a local. I’d be working and living there when I went up the Eiffel Tower rather than just being a tourist. I was filled with the romance of it all and couldn’t wait to join the thousands who have scribbled their messages on Montmartre’s love wall in languages from all over the world. In my mind I was already tripping through the sunny streets and watching life go by through an art-deco window in a bohemian cafe like I’d seen them do in a thousand films – the food, the shopping, visiting Versailles outside the city.

The spring was warm and it was great to be out on the streets when I got to see my first Sony Walkman. At 17, I felt young, beautiful and ready to conquer the city and I was incredibly impressed by the American model rollerblading through Parc Monceau with a big pair of headphones connected to this clunky, battery-powered tape player. I did a double-take and grinned, not quite believing he could listen to music while he was out. He looked so cool and this was exactly the sort of sophisticated display I had been expecting to see in fashion-conscious Paris. When I later found out the enormous price of those Walkman players I almost passed out. The future had arrived, I decided, though even that wasn’t as expensive as the car phone I got to try around the same time. To this day my mother has never quite accepted that the excited call she got from me in Paris was really made on the move: the phones weren’t even on the market.

I lived in an apartment with two other models in Montmartre. We were at the foot of the hill that leads up to the Moulin Rouge. Elite’s headquarters were in the heart of the city in an old building. Inside you could expect to find top models such as Janice Dickinson, Jerry Hall and Gia – Gia Marie Carangi. Later portrayed in a movie about her life by Angelina Jolie, Gia’s tragic life ended at the age of just 26. I remember her as a friend and someone who made a unique impression with her completely exclusive way of living. Constantly on the covers of
Vogue, Cosmopolitan
and many other fashion magazines, she was like a goddess in her photoshoots, but I was shocked when I saw her early one morning before the make-up artist had got to her. There
was a young, lost soul screaming in pain which could only be anaesthetised through a shot of heroin. Her eyes were sunken and black and she was shaking. I’d seen nothing in my limited experience like it, no film depiction of addiction had ever looked as bad as that; it was very scary.

Gia had the world’s photographers around her from the day she started in New York. The little bisexual boy/girl from Philadelphia never had the tough skin that modelling needed and she paid for it with her life. On 18 November 1986, she died of AIDS – and hardly anyone noticed. Her story made her famous but by the time she was acknowledged for being the world’s first supermodel it was too late. I would think of her again when I started to poison myself with my own addiction.

While I was in Paris I would get yearning letters from Gia. She poured out her love for me, which just made me really embarrassed. There was no problem for me with being gay and it was quite accepted in Denmark but it just felt strange that she was attracted to me. My letters in return were guarded, as friendly as I could make them knowing that I couldn’t give her the response her vulnerability needed. I had a sense of self-preservation that helped me to toughen up enough to survive the world in which we were both trying to find our way.

Paris and I had a far less harmonious relationship. We were speedily heading from honeymoon to irreconcilable differences after just a few months. My working life had become a living hell, far worse than anything I’d encountered in Germany. I felt every inch the giraffe again and I began to suffer panic attacks. ‘Who do you think you
are?’ the bookers said. Here it was again. ‘You’re too skinny…’ ‘What do you
look
like?’ ‘Your hair is terrible!’ ‘How
dare
you come here with three pictures in your portfolio!’ ‘Just get out!’ I was pushed around verbally and physically. It wasn’t like they were just dismissive, they seemed actively angry at the way I looked when I turned up. I kept asking myself what was wrong with me: I secured not a single job, not one.

Catalogues had been reliable standby jobs before but now even their bookers were looking at me as if I had marched in through the wrong door. Within weeks I was back to crying myself to sleep. I still dreamed that my handsome prince would ride up and save me – but these days he no longer spoke French. The exhaustion and depression manifested themselves as physical symptoms. My hair started to fall out, my lips were raw with cold-sores. In turn, this look did little to improve my chances at the few casting sessions I was still getting.

Paris made me feel as if I were a waste of everyone’s time. I was as total a flop as I had been promised I would be a superstar. Each day that passed ran up more bills for the modelling agency. What a fiasco, what a failure!

‘But you’ve just started here in Paris, Gitte. There’s no model who would get work the day they arrive. Keep your head – it’ll be okay.’ This was Monique, the director of Elite in Paris. She tried to get my spirits up. Monique had played the mother hen role for some of the most beautiful models in the world, but they were out there making piles of money and after two months of absolutely nothing I was all ready to pack up and go home. I was spent. My interest in the
work had gone with my energy. I was feeling homesick. It just wasn’t meant to be for me in the fashion world: I was what I had grown up as – a skinny creature who didn’t fit in. The agency was supportive – they also didn’t want to see their investment disappear to Denmark.

Monique called John Casablanca in New York. ‘You just wait and see – she’s going to be a superstar. I’ve seen her pictures,’ he said. ‘Perhaps we just need to set her up somewhere else.’ He was just about to fly over to Paris anyway and he promised that he would come up with a new plan.

The very next day I was called in to a meeting with John himself. He thought I would have better luck in Italy, where the designers were more progressive. ‘Why don’t you pack your bags?’ he said. ‘We can fly out this evening.’ He continued with a few casually-delivered hints as to how I might improve my chances, which coming from him sounded very much like orders.

‘Do something about your look. You have a fabulous face, but we need to do something different… Cut your hair short, buy some new clothes, change your shoes…’ He handed me $2,000. And that was that. In that moment, everything changed – about me and about my career. I got my hair cut boyishly short and had it bleached, and that became my iconic look.

We flew from Paris that day and John presented me to his Milan agency with the implied expectation that I would be respected by them and they would work hard for me. He called all his contacts in Italy and told them the new girl in town was one to watch. That night we spent together in the
hotel. I remember thinking John was so old – I mean, for me at 17, he just seemed impossibly ancient. I wasn’t even fluent in English, and I had a boyfriend back in Denmark. But it was also the point at which my career began to take off.