The Rosie Effect

“I’m not usually this dressed-up,” Rosie Huntington-Whiteley promises with distinctly British self-depreciatory charm, as the door to her Chelsea pied-à-terre swings open. Gold pendants dangle above a Hermès tank top and a Wardrobe.NYC drill skirt. Heels, of course (and upstairs, a miniature taupe-colored ‘Kelly’ bag is resting on a white bouclé sofa). Not a hair is out of place. She could easily be about to do an Architectural Digest home tour of the wedding-cake house, which is as beautifully dressed as she is, designed by Rose Uniacke and filled with esoteric pieces.

She’s quick to point out that she has been on duty at a press day, talking editors through her latest high-street underwear line. Her kids, meanwhile, are almost back at school. She’s spent a couple of weeks on vacation, but has upcoming work trips to the Middle East, fashion-week shows to attend, a new career pivot as an angel investor, and the launch of a collection she’s designed for Wardrobe.NYC, a brand she says she wears most days – and that we’re here to discuss. So, a standardly whirlwind time for the supermodel-turned-entrepreneur.

Getting to know Huntington-Whiteley is interesting because there’s far more to her than meets the eye. As a supermodel, that’s probably the story of her life. But the lacquered image of perfection belies a far more fascinating story of a woman who has worked hard to gain autonomy in a world that is keen to pigeonhole her as the ultimate pin-up. Underestimate her at your own peril seems to be the underlying narrative.

Surface-level, she seems like the woman who’s got it all: the fabulous houses, the booming career, the action-hero partner (Jason Statham), two beautiful children, and a wardrobe brimming with The Row, Saint Laurent and Alaïa. And 20 million followers to share it all with. But she’s refreshingly candid about the fact there have been challenges. There was a brief acting career, a beauty brand that she stepped away from this year, uprooting her family to London during the pandemic, postpartum struggles, and a few years where work took a backseat after having her babies.

“Success is so easy when something works out quickly,” she points out. “It’s great, fantastic! But when you’ve gone through sort of adversity, or you’ve had these challenging moments, and you’ve had the rug pulled from under your feet – professionally and personally – that’s when you go to the real depths of yourself. In the moment, it feels horrendous. But as time goes by, you get to have more perspective, you get to have understood a side of yourself that is resilient.”

Her wisdom comes with more than two decades of professional experience. The story of how she got her start is somewhat legendary. Having grown up helping out on the family farm in Devon, at 15 she wrote to a modeling agency to do a work-experience placement, which she spent making cups of tea and filing model books until someone realized that there was a potential supermodel right under their noses. Back to Devon she went, returning to London the following year with a handful of GCSEs and the indeterminable drive that saw her pound the pavements to castings and travel to do catalogue work and teen magazines – often on her own.

Contrary to popular belief, Huntington-Whiteley’s success wasn’t overnight. “I feel fortunate that I’ve seen the full breadth of the industry because, when I started, I was on the tube [London’s subway], portfolio and heels in my bag, doing castings with 200 girls, getting out in the middle of nowhere and middle of the night, getting into cars with strange drivers, being sent home from shoots because I was too ‘wholesome looking’ or ‘too full-figured’,” she says. She remembers being told she wouldn’t be working by the age of 25.

Finally, five years later, she landed her breakthrough gig as the face of Burberry. Magazine covers, luxury brands and a lucrative Victoria’s Secret contract followed. And yet, at the height of her modeling career, she took a risk and stepped back from the lingerie brand in favor of high-street retailer Marks & Spencer. “I recognized that at any point they could say, ‘Rosie is out.’ I’d seen that with so many girls – they literally worked with them for 15 years and then one day it was, ‘She’s too old and she’s getting some weight.’ That’s the way this industry works. I was like, that’s not going to happen to me.”

Initially, she wanted to design a line of lingerie for Victoria’s Secret, which the brand turned down. And so she offered it to the British high-street giant, going from campaign face to creative collaborator, which she’s done several times since. “There was a lot of eyebrow-raising because it was the high street, and nobody had the intention of it going beyond a season or two,” she remembers, before smiling: “Now here we are, 13 years later.” What she is too elegant to mention is that her line is responsible for transforming the British retailer’s fortunes: one in three bras sold in the UK is from Marks & Spencer – and it’s claimed that one in 50 British women now owns a bra from the store’s Rosie range. The ‘Rosie Effect’ is undeniable.