She’s married to the Kings of Leon front man, but couldn’t be less of a rock chick. She’s a mum of one and a Victoria’s Secret Angel who works out two hours a day
There must be more fun ways of spending your 31st birthday. The supermodel Lily Aldridge spent hers flying from Nashville, where she lives, to Sicily, to model for a job with the pH๏τographer Peter Lindbergh. She endured three flights, plus various cancelled connections in between, and then, inevitably, one of her two suitcases got lost in transit. In among all that, she encouraged her 4.5m Instagram followers to celebrate her birthday by donating to the charity World of Children — raising $15,825. She then had to cram in our phone interview in the ride from the airport, while awaiting her at the H๏τel was a gruelling FaceTime workout with Mary Helen Bowers, ballet’s answer to Tracy Anderson, in preparation for walking in next month’s annual Victoria’s Secret extravaganza. And guess what? “I laughed my way through the whole thing,” she says of her “crazy” day. “No point getting all worked up and angry and upset about stuff.”
Aldridge may be the wife of a rock star, married to the Kings of Leon front man, Caleb Followill (they met at Coachella in 2007 and now have a four-year-old daughter, Dixie Pearl), and even a rock’n’roll daughter — her father is the British artist Alan Aldridge who created artwork for the Beatles and the Who — but “angel” seems infinitely more fitting than rock chick. She’s here to discuss her latest role as the face, and body, of Bulgari, for which she has sH๏τ a campaign with her “beloved” Mario Testino as well as this shoot for Style with Guy Aroch in Midtown Manhattan. The conversation is peppered with fashionable graтιтudes. Of her Sicilian odyssey, she says: “I was, like, ‘Do you know what? I am going to get there. Everything is going to be fine. I have an amazing job and I am so blessed.’”
Aldridge exemplifies the squeaky-clean millennial class of supermodels, which includes Karlie Kloss, Gigi and Bella Hadid and Miranda Kerr. They get that they have a finite shelf life, so they are career-focused and hard-working, they have business interests and they support high-profile charities. What with their athlete-calibre bodies — Aldridge admits to working out for two hours a day in the two-month run-up to a Victoria’s Secret show — plus all the cleansing, buffing and Epsom salts-soaking, there’s not exactly much time or inclination for hardcore hedonism.
“Carolyn Murphy once told me to treat modelling like a business and not a lifestyle,” she says. “There are so many perks, but at the end of the day, you have to go do your job. I took that to heart and always try to be as professional and polite and gracious as I can be.” This she is, to a fault. The flawless, glossy perfection you see on the outside is exactly as she behaves. The most frequent adjectives on her Instagram feed are “thankful”, “grateful”, “inspired”, “honoured”, and, of course, “blessed”. “I’ve always been very positive,” she says. “It is so much easier, when you can’t do anything about it.”
Aldridge is something of a den mother to her close-knit girl gang, which, as well as various Angels, also includes fellow Nashville girl Taylor Swift. “I am such a motherly person,” she says. “I always make sure everyone has their amenities and that they are safe and protected.” Where this comes from, she doesn’t know. “It’s just in my nature.”
As one of the Aldridge fashion dynasty, she is certainly accustomed to extended family life. She has a younger, edgier sister, Ruby, also a successful model and singer; a half-brother Miles, the acclaimed fashion pH๏τographer, and half-sister Saffron, another well-known model, both of whom are quite a bit older; plus there are three less well-known half-brothers. It’s no secret that Papa Aldridge, now 73, was once a ladies’ man, nor indeed that her American mother, the former model Laura Lyons, was a Playboy Bunny, Playmate of the Month and Jet Bunny flight attendant.
Her parents stayed together for 20 years, and Aldridge grew up in LA, plus a spell in London, where she attended Parliament Hill School for Girls in Hampstead. “I feel very British, you know. I’m a PG Tips girl, well, or green tea. I’m a bath girl. I love rose. Those little things that my dad instilled in me, now I am doing with my daughter.” Aldridge visits London (a second home to her, she says) twice a year to see her father, to whom she is clearly close, as well as her siblings, nieces and nephews. But really, she’s pure Californian sunshine, perhaps with a little of the Italian matriarch from her mother’s side.
I begin to worry about how on earth she will mark her birthday, but she’s good, she insists; she celebrated it a few days ago by taking her daughter to Disney World. Her gift to herself was “seeing [my daughter’s] happy face. It gives me so much joy.” Many mothers might choose more selfish ways to revel, but it’s all on-brand for Aldridge.
I leave her to get to her workout: she’s been training with Bowers ever since she had Dixie, and famously walked for Victoria’s Secret just four months after giving birth. So critical is the exercise regime that Bowers is available to Aldridge at “all hours, all over the world”. And fortunately for Aldridge, the suitcase that did show up contained her ballet flats and workout clothes: “So I’m, like, ‘Yay!’”
It must be all those exercise endorphins.
