FEATURE: Role Model

Mark McLaughlin
Edinburgh Evening News
September 5, 2009

PAUSING for a moment as she pouts in front of the mirror in a glittering butterfly embroidered top, blue satin skirt and six-inch heels, Lauren Tempany reflects on a life that's taken her from lanky Linlithgow Academy tomboy to sought-after fashion idol in the space of just over a decade.

Back in Scotland to model for the rebranding of swanky George Street clothes store Cruise into an exclusive ladies boutique, she's at the height of a career which began when she was spotted as 14-year-old at a Clothes Show roadshow - but she already has her deep brown eyes firmly focused on the future.

At the still tender age of 26, she's clocked up 11 years of touring the fashion capitals of the world and, with an awareness that her star will soon be eclipsed by younger models, she's making plans for her post-model career.

"Modelling really is a young person's game," she says. "I don't really have a clear idea of where I'll go after this but I'd quite like to get into film and costume, working in the wardrobe department of movie productions, but right now I can't ever see me turning down a job. I'll probably still be doing granny catalogues when I'm 60."

The last time she featured in the Evening News, she was a schoolgirl being courted by three top model agencies and still more comfortable slouching around in oversized Champion sportswear or sporting matted hair and wellies

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down at the stables with her horse, Levi, than in high couture on the catwalk.

"I have no idea what made me stand out at the Clothes Show," she adds. "I don't think I was wearing that tatty Champion jumper but I think I had something equally horrendous on. I have bad memories of a silver bomber jacket that I'd rather forget.

"I didn't have any aspirations to be a model when I was younger - I wanted to be vet because I loved animals.

"I was 15 when I got my first job for So...? perfume, which was aimed at the teenage market. I'm sure every girl of my age will have had a bottle or will at least remember it.

"The job was fantastic. I was taken to Disneyland in Paris and I got to stay in the Disney hotel, which is every young girl's dream."

However, living the dream at such a young age can provoke resentment, and despite her model looks she was still singled for mean schoolgirl taunts by the "pretty crowd".

"I was very lucky in that I had a great group of friends who used to stick up for me when girls said I must be stuck-up or anorexic because I was a model.

"I was neither, but I was definitely not one of the 'pretty crowd'. I was tall, and skinny and a bit of a tomboy, and all of my friends were tomboys too.

"My first big professional modelling trip after I left school was to Sydney, where I stayed for two months doing campaigns for Q Catalogue and Sass & Bide jeans, and photo shoots for Australian Vogue and Harpers & Queen [now Harper's Bazaar].

"I moved to London when I was 19 and when I arrived I thought it was awful. It was busy, and noisy and dirty but I made good friends and eventually moved in with a boyfriend and managed to settle in. After about a year I discovered that I was actually beginning to like it.

" I loved being a full-time model because I got travel all over the world shooting for magazines, commercials and catalogues."

The list of countries Lauren has been to are almost too numerous to list. She's been to Paris, Milan, Barcelona, Germany, shot for Italian Vogue, rode horses in Guatemala, before moving to New York for a year to swim with the "big fish" of the fashion industry.

"I blew all of my savings on this really nice apartment in Soho," says Lauren. "That's the kind of thing you do when your 23 years old and living in the middle of the fashion capital of the world though, isn't it? Modelling can be very well paid and it's not unheard of to be paid GBP 100,000 for two days' work, but I seem to keep missing these jobs. I always seem to be second on the list."

She's modelled for Giles Deacon, Nicola Farhi, Margaret Howell, Julian McDonald, sashayed on the catwalk with Kate Moss, and hung out with Agyness Deyn and model turned TV presenter Alexa Chung.

"Modelling at the top level is a very tight-knit community and you tend to see each other at all of the same events," she says.

Her most high-profile modelling job to date was spending several months as "muse" to rebellious British designer and l'enfant terrible Alexander McQueen.

"Alexander McQueen and I had a great working relationship but after a while I started to get really fed up with all of the travelling.

"The work was really demanding and I'd have to travel to Milan twice a week, which sounds really glamorous but it didn't seem that way when I was standing alone on a Eurostar platform at midnight waiting for the train."

Based in London, having recently purchased a house there, Lauren is already making plans to return to Scotland and is presently flat-hunting in Glasgow with her art curator boyfriend.

She says: "It can be exhausting travelling around all the time and I'm starting to think that I'd like something more settled.

"I'm sure one day I'll get tired of living the city life and want to settle somewhere a bit quieter.

One day I might come back to Linlithgow to settle for good."

The new Cruise ladies' boutique is now open on George Street with brands including Prada, Vivienne Westwood and Miu Miu