ABSOLUTELY | FASHION PROF ILE
BLONDE AMBITION Caprice Bourret talks to Pendle Harte about money, work and babies
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here aren’t many people big enough to dispense with their surnames. There’s Madonna, famously, and Prince – then Beyonce and Oprah, plus probably a handful of others. And then there’s Caprice. Full name Caprice Bourret, which actually is her real name, and which she uses, even if nobody else does. Caprice has been ridiculed in the press over the years – ever since she launched herself onto the scene in that transparent Versace dress – but these days she’s certainly no joke. Bourret is a shrewd businesswoman with a lot of charisma and honesty, spending her days grafting at the lingerie business that she has built up to be one of the country’s biggest selling lines. This from a woman who ‘once wanted to be governor of California’, and never thought she was ‘hot enough’ to be a model.
Past interviews have given many a wrong impression of Caprice and the Caprice sitting opposite me eating onion rings at Westbourne Studios is not who I thought she’d be. She’s no sulky princess – she’s chatty, quick and honest. And who would have thought that she’d be funny? ‘Holy smoke,’ she keeps saying. ‘I never wanted to be famous. I just wanted to make money and have my own independence.’ This is a woman who’s not afraid to talk about money or admit to wanting lots and lots of it. We are officially here to discuss her new range of bedlinen but she tells me right off that what she really wants is a baby. ‘I’m 41, so I’d better get on that bandwagon soon,’ she laughs. ‘Now that I’ve finally found the man – and boy was that a struggle. I kissed a lot of toads. He is so dropdead gorgeous you would have a heart attack if you saw him!’ Of course she hasn’t always been broody. ‘I used to just care about me, me, me and for a while I did think I
was invincible and the hottest thing in town,’ she confesses, though that’s all in the past. And it is quite a past. Originally from California, Caprice moved to New York aged 18 and quickly launched her career as a model before coming to London and generating instant column inches thanks to the Versace dress (‘I didn’t even try it on, wore it over my M&S knickers and did my own hair and make up – and the next day it was on all the covers’). So Caprice was born. ‘It was journalists who just called me Caprice, and everyone thought it was a fake name – but my mum got it from a Doris Day movie.’ Instantly she was catapulted into a world of private planes, police escorts and overpaid personal appearances. Did she enjoy it? ‘Are you joking? I loved it! My day rate went from like £2,000 to £10,000, I had 5,000 43
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26/03/2013 19:09