Jen Hawkins: ‘We would definitely love to have a family’
At 34 and with a partner of almost 15 years, superstar model Jen Hawkins understands people, including her mother, are curious about when she and husband Jake Wall will start a family.
Confidential
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JEN Hawkins lives by the mantra that in life you best succeed through your failures. While the famously private model and businesswoman doesn’t necessarily invite misadventure into her life, she believes it’s by passing through testing times that you emerge a better person.
While the Newcastle blonde who was crowned Miss Universe in 2004 aged just 20 has managed to stay scandal-free in the media — she says any mishaps throughout her career, both public and private, have made her the person she is today.
“You only learn and grow when you go through failures, it’s almost the bad times that make you grow,” Hawkins tells BW Magazine from her suite in The Darling at The Star.
“I had a fair few in the early days. I tripped down some stairs in Melbourne publicly with cameras around me because I was so nervous, then I dropped my skirt and it was on the front page of every paper.
“Maybe it happened to make me grow stronger.”
The now-famous skirt dropping event she refers to occurred soon after she was crowned Miss Universe in Ecuador.
She was doing a runway appearance for Westfield Miranda when her skirt snagged on her heel and dropped, revealing her red G-string.
The 34-year-old one-time Newcastle cheerleader has come a long way from her “green days” after the Miss Universe win.
She is now a businesswoman in her own right, fronting an empire that includes swimwear range Cozi, self-bronzing line JBronze, tequila brand Sesion and is an ambassador for brands such as Myer and The Star.
As we chat, Hawkins is preparing to appear at The Star’s Doncaster Mile lunch, to be held on Thursday in the lead up to the Doncaster Mile race next Saturday — day one of The Championships at Royal Randwick.
At the lunch Hawkins will wear a $3 million headpiece designed by celebrity jeweller Nic Cerrone to commemorate the Australia’s richest 1600m race.
Hawkins helped design the piece, expected to be the most expensive created in Australia and which includes an 18 carat white gold central frame adorned with 84 white diamonds equalling 122 carats.
It took 94 hours to design and craft by hand at Cerrone’s Leichhardt workshop.
“I told them what shape I liked, so it wasn’t anything crazy with diamonds all over my face,” she laughs. “It was about comfort and creating something classic because it’s worth so much money.
“I was in Newcastle yesterday to see my nan and my mum said, ‘Are you going to have security when you wear it?’ I laughed because it was such a mum thing to say.”
Hawkins often speaks about her family, throwing in titbits about her parents, Gail and Robert, and her older siblings, Brad, Kirsty and Michael, or Mike as she calls him. She beams as she describes a “normal, basic, boring upbringing” at Holmesville, in suburban Newcastle.
“I spent a lot of time with my brother Mike after school playing cricket, soccer, on our roller blades and bikes,” she says.
“I had a very active, outdoorsy lifestyle. I did ballet from about four and life was just full of after-school activities. It was a happy, carefree childhood.
“I feel I had a really normal, basic, boring upbringing which was amazing and I thank God for it now. But my parents were quite strict in a good way and that has been amazing in my life, to have that discipline.
“My dad showed me a letter I wrote when I was 16 and my hormones were raging.
“I wasn’t allowed to go to a certain party and I wrote down exactly how I felt about it and he found it. I think back and I would never do that now because I cherish them so much.
“And with things like schoolwork; if I didn’t get a certain grade I’d have to have a tutor and I’d have to sit until I ate my vegetables.
“They’re all the little things which I hope to carry through one day when I’m a mother. It’s funny how those times make you who you are now.”
At 34 and with a partner of almost 15 years, Hawkins understands people, including her mother, are curious about when she and husband Jake Wall will start a family but the famously private model isn’t giving much away.
“The questions never end and I’m aware of that and I’m OK with that,” she says politely. “We would definitely love to have a family, the timing though is something you have to keep between your husband and yourself, it’s important to keep that private.”
But she’s less guarded when speaking of Wall, with whom she recently launched tequila brand, Sesion. The pair opened a pop-up bar at The Star last year. It was meant to be temporary but keeps being extended due to its popularity.
Hawkins met Wall in 2003, just months before her Miss Universe win. The fact he knew her before she was famous is one of the things she cherishes most about their long-lasting union. They were married in June 2013.
“Jake is like gold,” she gushes. “It’s just a yin-and-yang thing and he’s my best friend. It’s never been like a business relationship, it’s just that we’ve ended up working together on certain projects, it’s more like we do life together and it is fun.
“I miss him when I don’t see him and our relationship has grown. (We’ve been together for a while) and it feels like we were completely different people. But you grow and you evolve, in a way we’ve grown up together.”
Hawkins keeps herself busy as the face of Myer and The Star. Her close association with the casino brand, like most business ventures she takes on, is a lasting one. She spent her hen’s night there and lived at The Darling when her Sydney home was being built last year.
But in both business and in her personal life, Hawkins refuses to be surrounded by the “yes” people she calls fluffers and insists her inner circle give it to her straight, even if it’s something she may not want to hear. It is this philosophy that has helped the Aussie beauty stay grounded.
“I don’t like to surround myself with yes people,” Hawkins explains.
“The people I have around me who say, ‘No, I don’t think that’s right’ and then we have a debate and it’s really healthy. If you’re around the fluffers and the yes people and the people who tell you you’re beautiful all the time, it’s like, ‘Enough!’
“That’s not what I want. I want to grow as a person, and in business there’s none of that BS. There’s no ego in business and that’s what I love about it.
“I’ve had the same make-up artist, manager and driver since I started. Once I have someone I trust, that is key and as soon as I don’t trust someone, ‘Bye!’ ”
To this end, Hawkins says she is most comfortable in the northern beaches home she built with Wall. And she tries to return to Newcastle as often as she can to see her family.
“I don’t want to say yes to everything, to be so hungry and so busy working that at the end of it you feel like you didn’t see anyone because you were so busy working, you didn’t see your family,” she says.
“I see life as being more like a marathon, and so I have breaks where I can be normal, cook dinner for Jake, drive up to Newcastle to see my nan, who’s 93. Those moments are important.
“I spend a lot of time with my family because I like them and I have maybe five close girlfriends I hang out with and Jake too. He is literally everything to me. When I’m away from it, life is typically quite normal for us.”