Hello.
Nothing like an egg and bacon sandwich.
Hiya, I'm Karen Elson.
What are we doing in Oldham?
I guess we're going back to my roots, right?
Retracing a lot of my footsteps when I was young.
Essentially, see where it is I'm from.
No, I've only worn it once.
I'm a bit nervous as to where it's gone.
It's a couture dress.
OK, alright, bye.
I knew he would. Perseverance pays off.
This beautiful dress,
it was made by the late, great Alexander McQueen
who was somebody I absolutely adored.
Oh, wow, Zac Posen made me this for his first fashion show.
These, first pair of shoes I ever nicked.
So, this is my house in Nashville, Tennessee.
Definitely feels like we're in England
even though we're in Nashville.
I've definitely stayed true to where I'm from.
I always ask photographers to give me prints
but they always give me prints of me.
Welcome to my home filled with me.
Ta-da.
I designed this fireplace all by myself.
God, there are more pictures of me.
Hide them, quick.
It's this print over here, the Steven Meisel one,
it was my first Italian Vogue cover.
Taken on my 18th birthday
and that was the shoot that essentially made my career.
This gorgeous Grace Coddington that she gave me for my birthday.
And gingers all love other gingers
so, therefore, this is a prized possession in my house.
Hold on. How did I forget this?
Wait.
I love this so much.
Tim Burton.
I've never been so starstruck in my life.
Oh my God, this is so wild.
This is one of my first-ever test contact sheets.
It's so crazy.
Literally, that's the first time
I'd ever been in front of a professional camera.
This one, too.
I'm 15.
God, my daughter's 13, it's
just so mad.
I did a lot of hair-care modelling before.
I totally forgot about all of this.
You know, some pictures I did when I was a teenager,
some that, you know, it's like 'artful nudes',
that I realise now I was just 15 years old.
You know?
And nobody was ever asking me if I was comfortable.
No one would ask.
This is a letter from my dad.
Hi, Kaz.
I stopped smoking.
Or should I say, I haven't had a cigarette since last Tuesday.
We are at my friend Mark's Strange Attraction Studios.
- Hi. - Hello. How are you?
[Sings] Oh, a lonesome sound. Wait.
Can I just have a listen to it?
Then it goes back into the...
- Yeah. - Yeah.
- I like this song. - I love this song.
This is a great song.
Yeah, I already need to be a lot louder. [Sings] Fade away.
Can you turn me up and add verb, please?
[Sings] Oh, let me wander in the aftermath of love.
Every song I write, at least,
comes from something that has either been sort of bothering me,
haunting me or just in my mind for far too long.
I can kind of move forward from that thing afterwards.
[Sings] Surely fade away.
So, I'm making a lobster spaghetti.
- Hi. - Thank you for coming.
Hi.
Cheers, ladies.
Oh, yeah.
To friendship.
Right?
And to Nashville.
Tonight, I've got all of my lovely Nashville ladies.
Nashville's become my home in a really wonderful way
and in a real way that I feel like
my friends are absolutely 100 per cent my family.
As you know,
I'm going home to where I was born in Oldham tomorrow
and thank you so much for coming.
- Cheers. - Cheers.
When I left home, I remember it so clearly.
I remember leaving school.
And I was 16.
And I remember walking out of the door saying to myself,
"I'm never coming back here."
I jumped on the train the next day and went to London.
That is so good.
Hey up. (Hello.)
It’s cracking the flags today. (What a lovely sunny day.) Flippin’ ‘eck. (Oh bother.)
T’ park. (To the park) T’ hospital. (To the hospital.) Chucking it down (It's raining a lot), of course.
I rarely reflect.
I'm always a keep-moving-forward kind of person
so whenever I come back here,
I'm sort of confronted with what I left.
Everything that I have run away from, essentially.
I think because when I lived here, it was definitely not easy.
I was bullied a lot
and I don't think anyone really expected anything of me.
You know, when I first became a model, I never told anybody.
You have to remember it was, the era of
Cindy Crawford as well,
where all the boys had posters of Cindy Crawford on their wall.
And I was just weird.
I admit it. I'm still weird and thank God I am.
But then I told one girl who then told the entire school.
I'll never forget, they all laughed at me.
You know, everybody coming up to me and saying,
"You're not fit to model socks."
But I wanted more.
You know, I was in the Kylie Minogue fan club
when I was eight years old.
I really was. I loved her.
Until I moved into different, more goth territory.
Then I started getting into PJ Harvey and Nick Cave
and Robert Smith.
I had such a crush on Robert Smith.
I think it was the video for Close to Me,
that Cure song,
and I was like, "Who is this amazing person?"
But yeah, my dad's apartment buildings are over there.
It was a bit of a rough neighbourhood.
My dad didn't often let me and my sister,
when we visited him, walk outside
just because you never knew what was going on.
There really wasn't much to do when I was growing up.
It was, sort of, wandering around the streets.
That's all you really did.
Maybe you'd find an alleyway
and you'd nick your dad's lighter and you'd set a fire or two.
I mean, that was...
But it was fun. I don't know, it was childhood.
You just get into mischief.
We're off to meet my dad at a pub
that apparently was the first pub I ever went to
when I was two weeks old, according to my dad.
He's probably already made friends with everybody in here.
Hiya, Dad.
Hello, love.
- You alright? - So, what have you been up to sweetheart?
What have I been up to, Dad?
I hope you've not been bad.
Oh, never.
So, this is my dad.
This is the man, the myth, the legend, Skinny Jim.
Not so skinny now.
Affectionately known as the ‘King of the North’.
My poor dad.
He'd get my sister and then I would run off in the opposite direction.
And then he'd get me and I would escape
and then run off in the opposite direction.
It took a good 45 minutes
- to get me and my sister. - To catch them both
and get hold of them by the scruff of the neck
and get them in.
So, when I left Oldham, I was 16.
- I'd just finished school. - She didn't look back
and wave goodbye or anything, no.
I bought her an A to Z of London,
we hadn't got that much money then,
and I wrote inside,
“I hope this helps you find your fortune.”
- And... - Look at that.
- It sure helped me. - What you see here is the fortune.
Because I remember having to borrow money off you and mum
- as well and... - Yeah, yeah.
It was a difficult time. I'll tell you why.
Because a lot of models were abused then.
- Right. - That was the difficult bit of it.
That was the only concern really, you know.
I didn't like her going but...
Actually, I did consider, if I'd have had any more money,
whether to move to Paris, to France, to look after you.
- I didn't tell you or mum anything - No.
because I didn't want anyone to say,
"That's it, you're coming home."
You know? And I think
it's a reasonable thing to be afraid of.
- Yeah. - I mean, I lived in London, Paris,
and Tokyo by the time I was 17.
I turned 17 in Tokyo.
Didn't you say this was the first pub you took me and Kate to?
Yes, this was the first pub they ever came in.
How old were we?
Two weeks.
Two weeks, six days, and 36 hours.
[Sings] Well, give me two good reasons why I ought to stay.
I can't tell you how many times we've sung Sunny Afternoon, right?
- A few times. I do remember singing it... - Just a few times.
at...
- Olympics. Yes. - Olympics. Yeah.
- The closing ceremony. - The closing ceremony
at the Olympics when they had all the models.
I remember Georgia May and all those sweet girls.
- Kate and Naomi, yes. - Kate and...
I remember Naomi loved you.
Kate loved you. Kate loved you.
- Got on like a... - She always asks for me, Naomi, now.
She's very nice. Kate and Naomi.
- I love them. - I've kissed the pair of them in my time.
[Sings] 'Cause I love to live so pleasantly,
[Sings] live this life of luxury,
[Sings] lazing on a sunny afternoon.
My first reaction when Vogue asked me to go back to Oldham was panic.
Alright, OK. This is going to be intense.
Because I haven't shared a lot of my past,
it's almost felt like this dirty secret.
Why do I not like going home?
Whenever I come out here,
there is a sense of just escaping reality.
And then I would return back into Oldham
and be confronted with what other people thought of me.
You know, I stood out as different.
Whether I wanted to or not.
Because to cut a long story short...
I don't know, sorry.
I had an eating disorder when I was seven years old.
I had a breakdown, fully, a full nervous breakdown
and I stopped eating for almost six months.
Had to be admitted to hospital.
They threatened me with feeding tubes.
It was horrid.
That's why I was teased. Because I was so skinny.
And so frail. And so introverted.
And it was a long road of recovery.
I was just always, I don't know,
a really sensitive kid and became the target
to playground bullies.
My eating disorder, I didn't look in the mirror and go,
"Oh my God, I think I'm fat."
It was just a coping mechanism.
I was really overwhelmed by life
so my way of controlling the little I could control
was by stopping eating.
Often what playground bullies don't realise is
that there's so much going on
to the person that they're bullying.
And what I didn't realise
and what I do now is a lot of those kids who were bullying me
came from really tough families.
Always in the back of my head was this, like,
"I'm bigger than this. I'm going to escape.
I'm going to get out of here."
And that was almost the dream.
That's where I'm from.
We didn't have Google Maps back in my younger years
so this was the only thing.
It's also a good umbrella.
Wait, I'm looking at the map the wrong way around.
We are off to see Deborah Burns
who is the woman who I guess essentially discovered me.
I met her when I was 15
and she signed me to a model agency.
I'm really excited to see her. It's been a really long time.
And God, do we have a history.
- Karen Elson, it's you! - God, it's been so long.
- You haven't changed a bit. - Too long.
- Don't lie. - No, I am...
There's 23 of us now.
We've got a big creative division.
So, hair and make-up.
- All your girls. - Fashion styling.
Still-life styling.
Yeah, we've got the whole lot.
And here, this is our ‘New Faces’ board.
- You'd have been on there at one point. - Oh, God. Look at that
- gorgeous girl with the head... - I know.
These are the Karen Elsons of the future whom I love so...
God.
- OK. - Come and look at this.
I've found some stuff.
Your first application when you came to see us.
So, that was the Karen Elson
- that we read. - I need this, look at that.
- The hair. - Look... Note the comment.
Strange looking, but...
- But fab. - But fab.
Strange looking, but fab.
- I would say that about me today. - Strange, but fab.
That... And that is... It definitely applies.
“Teenage talent hits the spot.”
That's my school picture, look at that.
“In four short years, you can turn from a spotty pudding…”
Mean.
“...into a sexy, willowy beauty.”
There is hope for us all.
Hilary Alexander. I still know her.
“From teenage freak…”
Freak.
Trip down memory lane.
So mad.
Debbie.
Let's have a look at you.
Beautiful. Chin down a bit, darling.
Whenever you come back home,
it always makes you reflect on the scope of your life.
Looking at me as a young woman, you know,
and seeing myself, in that environment,
like wide-eyed, naive, and so excited.
You know, there's one newspaper clipping where
I'm backstage at Chanel with my sister,
I can just see in my eyes how excited I am.
It's that moment of, “I'm finally here.”
It was a dream, you know? It was a dream to come from up north
and be not just the person flipping through the magazine,
I am in the magazine.
It was thrilling.
I mean, look, there have been hard times.
I definitely won't ever deny that.
Despite challenges in life, I wouldn't change a thing.