Helena Christensen says life as a 1990s supermodel was genuinely crazy, but the one saving grace was that social media did not yet exist. The Danish model, now 57, made the remarks in an interview with the Sunday Times, looking back on a decade she shared with Naomi Campbell, Cindy Crawford, Claudia Schiffer, and Christy Turlington at the peak of the fashion world.
Christensen said their lives together during that era were really crazy, marked by relentless intensity, constant travel, and punishing schedules. She added that the absence of social media was a significant advantage that those years had going for them.
Ice Baths and Snowy Trails
Today Christensen divides her time between New York City and a wooden cabin in the Catskill Mountains, where her mornings often begin with a ritual most people would find extreme. She plunges into a frozen river, even in the depths of winter, and sometimes has to break through the ice before she can get in.
Her only company on many of these outings is her dog, Kuma. She described those moments as delivering complete silence to her mind, something she considers rare in an era of constant overstimulation. She acknowledged that such excursions are safer with company, but admitted she often walks the snowy trails entirely alone.
From a Shared Apartment to the Runways of Paris
Christensen was born in Copenhagen on Christmas Day 1968. She grew up in a small apartment with shared bathrooms, alongside her parents, her sister, and an aunt from Peru. Despite the financial constraints, she remembers her childhood as rich in experience. Her mother worked for an airline, which meant the family traveled frequently around the world, waiting until the last moment for available standby seats on flights.
Her ambitions at the time had nothing to do with fashion. She wanted to pursue photography or archaeology. When modeling agents encouraged her to go to Paris, however, her career took off far faster than she had anticipated.
The Music Video That Changed Everything
Her breakthrough moment came in 1991, when photographer Herb Ritts chose her to appear in the music video for Chris Isaak’s song Wicked Game, filmed in Hawaii. The video is widely regarded as one of the most iconic in music history.
Christensen said she felt lucky to have been in front of the lens of a photographer she deeply admired. She went on to build a parallel career as a photographer herself, saying she considers the human body one of the most fascinating subjects to shoot. She described the experience of being photographed as one of total focus, where she thinks only of the lens and constructs a small story inside her mind.
Her photography work has spanned portraits, documentary reportage, and commercial campaigns.
Life After the Runway
In her personal life, Christensen had a son, Mingus, with actor Norman Reedus. The couple separated when Mingus was two years old, but Christensen said the relationship between the three of them remains excellent. She, Reedus, and Mingus all share a small matching tattoo of three crosses, which they got together at one of her birthday parties in Copenhagen. Mingus currently works as a bartender to support the music he is creating.
No Comeback, Because They Never Left
Christensen pushed back firmly on the idea that the supermodels of the 1990s are enjoying some kind of comeback. She said they never truly left the public eye. Instead, she said, they followed parallel paths, built families, developed new professional pursuits, and kept working, just without the extreme level of exposure that defines celebrity culture today.
On the subject of aging, she said it does not particularly concern her. Her stated goal is to live to 110, she said, and to keep the perspective of a 15-year-old who is still surprised every day by nature, the changing of the seasons, and the company of her dog.
