Her Coast is Clear
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COVER STORY
After more than three decades at the top, Danish supermodel Helena Christensen graces the cover of Vogue for the 18th time. Captured at her beach house escape, she talks about her philanthropic work with refugees, her ever-present awareness of mortality, and why we should all believe in mermaids. Words by T O M P A T T I N S O N Photographs by H E N R I K B Ü L O W
It was the end of the summer 1999 when Helena Christensen’s sister took her to look at a beach house on the northwest coast of her native Denmark. “It was a very stormy day – almost hurricane level – and I remember we ran through the garden and in the front door. I must have been seven or eight months pregnant but as soon as I stepped in, the feeling inside of it was magical,” she says. Christensen graces the cover of Vogue Scandinavia a full 31 years after she first appeared on the cover of a Vogue magazine. That first cover was shot by the iconic fashion photographer Peter Lindberg, with a fresh-faced Christensen standing on the sand beside a white stallion in the Californian desert. Eighteen covers later, she stands on the sand once more, as captivating as in that first shoot, but this time much closer to home. The beach she’s on today is outside her beloved summer house, where she and her family have spent every summer since those Vogue Scandinavia
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stormy days of more than 20 years ago. Christensen tells me that her summer routines create a little story, where the memories all blur into one as years no longer matter. “It’s the same little story that unfolds every summer and that's what's so precious about it,” she says. “It's like time stops when you're here – back to exactly how it was 21 years ago.” The day I speak to Chr istensen, she tells me about her morning in the cool Baltic Sea. “I was swimming in the empty ocean when a dolphin came and swam with me. It was so incredibly magical that I almost fainted with joy. I was making sounds on the water to communicate with it and it stayed with me for half an hour,” she says. “Then later when I looked out at the ocean, it came back with its baby.” Christensen’s house has 180degree views of the ocean – ideal for dolphin spotting – and retains a very boho Danish beach style. “It absolutely has the beach vibe to it. I just bring things in from nature
– branches, rocks and seashells, anything I can push through the door. It used to drive my mom crazy when I was little, but it's very apparent in any home I've ever been in that nature is as much inside as outside.” The house was built in 1929 and Christensen has kept many of the original features, including the round windows that look out across the water. An early renovation was carried out to add further light and allow a sea view from every room. “I wanted the house to feel like it was almost a place that a mermaid could live in,” she says. Christensen sounds quite genuine when she talks about a visit from a mermaid and we talk more about the fact that fairytale writer and author of Little Mermaid Hans Christian Anderson was from Denmark. “If you think about it, who first thought of writing stories about all those magical creatures that live in the sort of realm of imagination or reality? We don't
know. It could be imagination, but it could also be that someone actually saw something at one point. I mean, we never really for sure know anything but that's what's so cool about life: you can imagine anything and it might as well be real.” I’m discovering a lovely Scandinavian trait in which fantasy versus reality really doesn’t seem to matter. Whether it's fairies in Iceland, trolls in Norway or mermaids in Denmark – they are not merely part of the folklore but part of the culture. Christensen is wonderfully relaxed, talking to me from her car – casually carrying out an interview for a Vogue cover story as if it’s no more than arranging a Tuesday morning coffee date with a friend. Her American accent oozes cool but that Danish hippy vibe seeps through – both in the way she speaks and the subjects she focuses on. I like to imagine she’s driving barefoot. “During very hectic, intense periods, I go into the ocean and
Bustier dress, €2,550. Cecilie Bahnsen. Embroidered vest, €1,200. La Bagatelle Vogue Scandinavia
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