Lifestyle | Fashion Edie Campbell has one of those faces that screams London . The 33-year-old model , famous for a grippingly stern, androgynous look, was born and raised here — she’s a Westbourne Grove girl — attended its educational institutions (alum of St Paul’s Girls’ School and the Courtauld Institute) and got her first big break aged 16 with a Burberry billboard campaign. ‘I still had my braces on — it was blown up on the roof of a building on Piccadilly Circus and I had train tracks on my teeth.
The pictures were so big you could see the blue elastics,’ she says over the phone from Stansted Airport. In the career that followed, she frequented the cover of British Vogue, became a fashion week staple, won model of the year at the 2013 British Fashion Awards — the whole vive London fandango. Today, though, Campbell is a staunch London leaver .
‘I’m such a country mouse. I feel very affronted by the city,’ she says. Four years ago, she made the move to Northamptonshire where she lives, alongside her seven horses, in a corrugated house made with her mother, architect Sophie Hicks .
‘It wasn’t my intention, I thought I would split my time. That wasn’t the case: I’m now almost entirely in the country and just commute when I need to.’ Why? ‘I lived in London for 30 years — now I find it too busy and scary.
I guess you acclimatise to the level of interactions that you want with the world. I can go all day in Northamptonshire without havin.
