Yasmin Le Bon: ‘I feel slightly sad that there is so much being demanded of models now’
To watch the Le Bons bickering is an entertaining sport. Yasmin, the matriarch and supermodel, 59, suggests that she isn’t a hoarder. Amber, the eldest daughter and Insta-model, 34, insists that she is.
“I could have been a hoarder,” Yasmin clarifies, noting that her husband of 38 years, the Duran Duran frontman Simon Le Bon, has almost as much in his wardrobe. “But I actually have let go of some stuff over the years. Some of it I regret parting with, to be honest.”
While she may have ditched a couple of old Azzedine Ala?a dresses and Pucci blouses along the way, Yasmin’s closet is still heavy with treasures from an almost four-decade-long fashion career. It is a testament to her taste that the clothes she acquired in her early 20s (a rising star and landing on the cover of the debut British Elle in 1985) are all things she might still want to wear now in her late 50s.
“When you get older you get a bit more adventurous, you care a bit less,” she tells Amber, who admits that she can’t break the habit of wearing monochrome. Yasmin has always known inherently how to style up “A Look” with creativity, making it look easy to clash prints and colours.
As quickly as Yasmin will go into mothering mode, she self-deprecates. “But Amber, you do comfortable-wear much better than I do. I keep getting told off by [youngest daughter] Tallulah for the way I look day to day, she says I could make more effort. It’s true I’m either in head-to-toe glamour, or I look like I’ve just walked in off a field.”
We’re here today for a mother-daughter trip down memory lane – and with these two it’s always going to be fun. Yasmin and Amber star together as the faces of a new collection; a collaboration between Barbour and John Lewis called “Tomorrow’s Archive”. They were chosen because they operate these days as a gorgeous double act, but also because they both genuinely do value timeless style over trends, and shop with wardrobe longevity in mind.
“I don’t buy a lot of new things,” says Amber. Admittedly, she doesn’t need to – she says that one of her “best cultivated talents is taking the rings off [mother’s] fingers without her realising”.
“When I do shop though, I want to know I’m going to keep it for 20 years. A Barbour jacket is one of those timeless pieces, I would always see mama wearing and I couldn’t wait until I was old enough to steal it from her,” she adds.
Even though Amber has been modelling since her childhood, the chance to shoot together is clearly still a novelty for both. Amber has followed her own path, working as a DJ and modelling for Pantene and Dolce & Gabbana – a “nepo baby” career route as it might be known today, but one which she had never intended on pursuing until she “ended up falling into the role”.
“I was in Paris and I had Amber and my mother-in-law with me there,” Yasmin explains of the time Amber first walked on the Chanel catwalk as a toddler, in 1991. “It was quite a long season and I didn’t want to be apart from her. I had to go to a Chanel fitting and in those days they were mad, but cosy affairs.
“Karl [Lagerfeld, designer] just fell in love with this cute little kid, she was adorable, and he insisted she had to be in the show,” she continues. “So we did it – her little bunchies were flapping, she was grinning from ear to ear.”
Amber still has the quilted pink babygro in a box, wrapped carefully in tissue paper, she says. Travelling alongside her mother in the heyday of her supermodeldom certainly offered a unique childhood experience.
“Mama took us everywhere, I would sit under the make-up table and watch it all,” she says. “I remember the lights and smells; in those days, studios smelt of wet paint and cigarettes. That’s a nostalgic smell for me.” Between accompanying Yasmin on shoots, and seeing Simon on stage, Amber absorbed it all as a sort of unconventional work experience programme.
“It was the most incredible career for me,” Yasmin says of how she managed the juggle, having three babies while staying at the top of her profession. “I didn’t imagine it was going to be a career, I didn’t think it was going to last so long. But to have children was fantastic. I could just say yes or no to jobs, and apart from being fit and strong, I didn’t have to worry about anything once I finished work.”
This year has been a good year for 1980s supermodel nostalgia – headlined by the blockbuster Apple TV+ documentary by fellow stars Cindy Crawford, Linda Evangelista, Christy Turlington and Naomi Campbell. Yasmin did watch “a little bit of it,” she says. “I’ve seen myself in a corner somewhere. Putting my eyeliner on.”
“It was a fun time, we were a posse that went around and supported each other hugely,” she remembers. “We did everything together: ate together, stayed in the same hotels. I am nostalgic about it, I feel really blessed that I was in the business at that time. We paved the way for a lot of things to happen, and a lot of things changed. There was more respect and inclusivity, but we also really had a lot of fun.”
Even a quick look at Instagram now reveals just how impactful the fashion editorials from the era have been – and still are. Yasmin is tagged weekly in scans of Vogue Italia from 1985 when she shot with then-model Uma Thurman, or in her first American Vogue shoot by Arthur Elgort, wearing an eyeful of silver shadow. Turning up to photoshoots today and spotting her “vintage” pictures on the mood board is amusing to Yasmin, but is something Amber now absolutely loves to see.
“I think it’s because we had a lot of freedom,” Yasmin says of why those editorials still resonate. “People were allowed to do their thing, be an expert – and there wasn’t a digital screen with a committee sitting around it giving opinions. You were trusted.”
She is one of the few models from her time who has maintained relevance decades on, but says that sometimes she thinks the industry was better pre-digital. “I feel slightly sad that there is so much being demanded of models now,” she says. “How many followers you have, how often are you posting on Instagram.”
Amber, having grown up in the social media age, is on hand to assist with technology, be it concocting the perfect Instagram caption, or just taking a call from her mother in the middle of the night when she can’t turn on the DVD player. “I had so many missed calls, I thought someone had died,” Amber laughs.
Amber and her two younger sisters, Saffron and Tallulah, may have grown up and moved out, but all remain within homing distance of the West London house that Yasmin and Simon have shared for 32 years. Usually, the Le Bon HQ is a hectic and happy place, where animals, children and grandchildren congregate, and house guests (I’ve met various cousins, bandmates and other ensemble cast members there over the years) tend to hang around and stay for months.
At the moment though, the house has had a hole blown through it. The builders are in, and Yasmin and Simon are out and living in a flat nearby. “It’s very, very cosy, let me put it that way,” says Yasmin. “Everyone keeps saying it will be worth it. It’s time to redo our home. We’ve trashed the place so much, it all needs to be redone.”
Even from their temporary home, their dynamic multigenerational family lifestyle continues apace. Yasmin talks of doing the school run with her grandsons, Saffron’s boys, while Amber takes them to their swimming lessons. An average week might see Yasmin on a shoot, or Simon on tour, but they are equally on hand to muck in as grandparents, often with no time to themselves.
“I’m a member of the Crochet Corner online,” says Yasmin, referring to her neglected hobbies. “A year and a half ago, somebody bought me needles and a ball of wool, so that I could learn on tour, because there’s not much to do. [Duran Duran toured the UK, Ireland and North America this year]. I haven’t got past the beginning. I’m still that member of the Crochet Corner who can’t crochet.”
I suggest that a fly-on-the-wall Le Bons reality television show could surely be a hit? “Back in the day, Simon and I may have even been approached before the Osbournes,” Yasmin reveals. “But no, no, no. Believe me, nobody wants to know any more about me; nobody needs to see any more of our madness.”
Christmas will be a suitably busy affair. With their London home out of action, the family – including children, grandchildren and numerous pets – is decamping to a rental in the Cotswolds. “We’re travelling en masse,” says Amber. “Then we all drive to Scotland to be with my best friends for New Year. We’ll start Christmas day in silk pyjamas, then my sisters and I like to get dressed up for lunch. We like as many outfit changes as possible.”
“I’ll probably just stay in pyjamas,” adds Yasmin, who is in charge of cooking on the day. “It needs to be chaotic and mad and the dog needs to get lost. We’ve got lots of people coming over so it’s fun. This is as it should be.”
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