Tyra Banks guest edits Confidential: The life lessons she holds on to from Mama Carolyn

US supermodel Tyra Banks has revealed the “always incredible motherly advice” passed on to her, that “guides me to this day”. Here’s Mama Carolyn’s tips.

Mama Carolyn, who was a medical photographer, from early on instilled a number of life lessons that have stuck with me forever. Here they are:

Don’t go to another country and be an ugly American.

“I think my mum telling me … it’s important for you to understand and respect that culture. It has really inspired me as a businessperson. So even with SMiZE and DREAM , it’s like I was diving deep for a year, understanding the food and the local tastes and even Australian slang and just all of these different things and what I needed to have on my menu.

I see so many American brands come here and they have no representation of anything Australian. I studied lamingtons and fairy bread, vanilla slice and caramel slice. Now it is on my menu and it will continue to be – that started with my mum saying: ‘you better go into that country and not just expect them to lay down to you, you bow down to them.”

Tyra Banks, with her mother Carolyn, at the Sunday Telegraph office. Picture: Justin Lloyd.

Plan for the end at the beginning of anything

“Particularly with myself as a model, it’s very similar to an athlete, especially in my day. Back in the day, it was like 24 (years old), it (your career) was over. And so she would say, ‘plan for the end at the beginning. What are you going to do next?’ I remember there were three years left on my Victoria’s Secret contract and I cried myself to sleep for weeks because I didn’t know what I was gonna do in three years. She said don’t just be a passenger.”

Pictured at her ice cream store SMiZE & DREAM at Darling Harbour in Sydney is former U.S model Tyra Banks. And her mum Carolyn London. Picture: Richard Dobson

Excellence, Excellence, Excellence

“I can remember having an opportunity to go to Paris and be a model and she said, ‘You have to study it and you have to know it. It’s not called the fashion fun-time, it’s called the fashion business, and so you need to study’. I studied French designers’ names, I studied the magazines. I went to Paris and I knew who these photographers were so she really taught me to know your craft and to this day it sticks inside of me. When I started to do film and TV work … I just went deep. I’m a sponge. And then when it comes to ice cream, I live it. I breathe it. I know the science. I know the creative. I know R & D (research and development). I’ve slept in factories here in Australia on the floor on Christmas Day because there was nowhere for me to

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Originally published as Tyra Banks guest edits Confidential: The life lessons she holds on to from Mama Carolyn