Miranda Kerr on the switch from catwalk to boardroom
MIRANDA Kerr has pumped her life savings from 20 years of modelling — from winning the Dolly Magazine model competition in 1997 to her five years as Victoria’s Secret angel — into sending her organic skincare product to the world.
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SHE has one of the most beautiful, recognisable and marketable faces in the world but right now, over the phone from her home in Los Angeles, Miranda Kerr says it is “shrivelled up” in pure horror.
Apparently my new age man boast of moisturising with Nivea Man is too much for supermodel turned organic skincare tycoon to bear.
She has only just finished explaining how “the rose quartz infuses the vibration of self-love” into her new skincare range when I make my startling admission.
“My face is all shrivelled up! Oh, no, don’t be using that, read the ingredients and you will know why,” she tells BW Magazine.
The 34-year-old Australian-born supermodel is relaunching her KORA Organics skincare range globally — with new luxury packaging she designed herself and a host of new products.
Until this year KORA Organics was only sold in Australia, with sales overseas via an online store only. But a global push to expand the brand has led overseas sales to grow fourfold on last year alone.
It is now sold in more than 300 Sephora stores across the US and there are plans to enter some of the world’s biggest markets, including Asia, Europe, the UK, Canada and Scandinavia.
“Evan used to have really dry skin on his face and he doesn’t any more.”
Kerr has pumped her life savings from 20 years of modelling — from winning the Dolly Magazine model competition in 1997 to her five years as Victoria’s Secret angel — into sending the product to the world.
“I am not going to tell you the exact amount but its millions and millions of dollars,” she says. “This really is my baby. I have spent almost all the money I have earnt through modelling investing into this company.”
Kerr’s determination is well documented. In her latest book Empower Yourself, she writes: “The truth of the matter is I wasn’t born a strong and confident woman, I became one through my own efforts to cultivate these attributes daily.”
She does have the support of her new husband, billionaire Snapchat co-founder Evan Spiegel, who told her: “Miranda this is your passion clearly this is where your heart is so why don’t you focus your energy into doing this and expanding the business worldwide.”
“We try to make it work for him to see (Flynn).”
Kerr says: “He really encouraged me to focus on that. It’s been quite a risk to actually take that and decide to slow down on the modelling and really focus on continuing to build this brand and expand it internationally but it’s one of the best decisions I have ever made.”
Of course Spiegel would back it because it has cleared up his dry skin a treat. “Evan used to have really dry skin on his face and he doesn’t any more,” Kerr explains.
“These products are really good for men. Evan uses the Noni Glow face oil (which just won a major US beauty product award) every day. Actually so does Orlando,” she says before bursting into a hearty chuckle.
Orlando is Kerr’s swashbuckling film star first husband Orlando Bloom, father of her six-year-old son Flynn. Bloom has a house near Kerr’s in Los Angeles and shares the parenting.
“We try to make it work for him to see (Flynn). It was supposed to be four days-three days but right now he is on a movie, so Flynn is with me and I love that.”
The relationship with Bloom works better now than ever. “It’s much more harmonious this way and that’s really important,” Kerr says.
“I love being a mum, it’s like a miracle and puts everything into perspective. And I love spending time with Flynny but it’s obviously important that he does spend time with his dad and Orlando is a great dad and we are very good friends.
“Eighty per cent of what I eat is healthy and organic and 20 per cent is indulgence.”
“We will always be family. He and I get along better now than we ever have.”
Kerr’s parents and 30 of her and Spiegel’s closest friends flew to LA for their wedding in the back garden of their luxury home in July.
There was much anticipation about the big day after Kerr gave an interview that implied she and Spiegel were saving themselves for the honeymoon night.
“I read it and I was like ‘Whaaaat?’ ” she says. “It was taken out of context, I never said that we weren’t intimate.”
It was misconstrued, she insists, because she said they were not going to have children until after they married “because Evan is a traditional guy”.
She does not pay any attention to the gossip that surrounds her, saying, philosophically: “It goes with the territory.”
One aspect of the model’s life to get a public airing recently was her diet secret. Kerr’s former chef Kate McAloon told how the star’s diet involved a flexible routine of eating clean most of the time with a few indulgences thrown in, to spruik her own cooking tour.
“Evan makes a great cheeseburger.”
Kerr says she allows a few treats in her diet. “We live in a world that is so full of toxins but we can make a conscious choice of what we put in. I am not super strict about anything. Eighty per cent of what I eat is healthy and organic and 20 per cent is indulgence.”
Revelations that she works on an 80/20 diet of moderation have not troubled Kerr at all. “People are always going to say something and talk about what they are going to talk about. It’s very important to not really pay too much attention to it,” she says.
And if you really want to know her true eating weakness — it is a cheeseburger.
“Evan makes a great cheeseburger,” she says.
“He is really good on the grill. I mean, obviously, we use free range meat, but he makes it and I eat it every time it’s so good.”
At this point our phone call is interrupted by a kerfuffle in the background before Kerr breathlessly explains that one of her dogs, Teddy, has burst into the house.
“I was a bit worried my dog was about to go to the bathroom inside.
“We just got a new little puppy — it’s a Pomeranian — and the other puppy can smell the new one and I don’t want them to try and outdo each other with the scent.”
Then she picks up the interview again. “You were saying before Teddy interrupted …”
Her point, at the end of it all, is simple. “It’s really important to be grounded and keep things real and be appreciative of every day and to be grateful for the small things.
“You just never know what is going to happen in life.”