MARIE HELVIN on intercourse at 71 and boosting her libido after breast most cancers

It’s not typically that I get invited to cop a really feel of one other lady’s breasts. And but right here I’m doing simply that. Marie Helvin, the supermodel of the Seventies, has simply unsnapped her bra to point out me her new left breast, reconstructed after a mastectomy in 2022. 

She encourages me to have a prod. It is certainly a murals. 

Perfectly matched in texture, form and uprightness to the proper one, with no seen scarring. ‘Well, you should have seen the amount of pictures of myself I sent to my surgeon beforehand,’ she says. ‘He had his whole team on tiptoes making sure they got it exactly as it had been before.’

The pair of us meet in South London close to the high-rise riverside flat the place Helvin now lives. She is wearing head-to-toe black, her ebony hair scraped again right into a extreme ponytail. She has simply fronted a lingerie marketing campaign through which the items are minimize so low ‘I had to shave everything off’, she says matter-of-factly. 

But then Helvin, who just about lived in a bikini rising up in Hawaii, has by no means been a prude. Famously married to David Bailey again within the 70s and early 80s, and a muse of the controversial German photographer Helmut Newton, she was always being photographed bare. She sees no motive why, simply because she is now of a sure age, she out of the blue must act prefer it.

Nevertheless, it’s only since final summer time that she has been really snug sufficient to renew having intercourse, and even then it’s with reservation. 

‘First of all, it still aches,’ she says, her hand reflexively patting her chest, ‘and second, it’s laborious to must say to somebody, “You can’t touch me like that”, and to have to elucidate why.’ It’s due to this, she says, she prefers lovers to be ‘anonymous’.

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‘But when I use the term “anonymous sex” I don’t imply intercourse with a complete stranger, comparable to somebody you would possibly decide up in a restaurant or at a celebration, however somebody who you would possibly meet by means of a pal or acquaintance and also you each agree that it’s going to be “relationship-free” however informal and more than likely only for that when.

‘I always vet them carefully,’ she provides, ‘and it would always be very safe. I don’t keep in mind what intercourse is like with out a condom! It hasn’t occurred in fairly some time, however final summer time I did have a really transient hook-up with a Frenchman I met by means of a pal of a pal of a pal. 

I used to be in a position to say, “I don’t want my breasts touched”, as a result of I doubt very a lot I’ll ever meet him once more.’

If, like me, you had been born within the early 60s and beloved magazines, you’ll recall what a phenomenon Helvin was again within the day. And the way it was unimaginable to purchase a replica of Vogue with out both her or her bestie Jerry Hall on the duvet. 

‘The terrible twins’, they had been nicknamed, as they stalked down the runway for designers comparable to Valentino and Kenzo. ‘Yeah, we were getting £5,000 per show, which was a huge amount in those days,’ says Helvin. ‘Of course, that’s peanuts now.’

She says they drifted aside, primarily as a result of Hall grew to become tied up with motherhood. ‘I felt useless with her,’ says Helvin. She remembers a visit to the theatre in 1984 when Hall, who had simply had her daughter Elizabeth, turned to her and mentioned, ‘I’m leaking’. Helvin was utterly baffled. ‘What am I supposed to do with that? How can I help you?’

The daughter of an American GI and a Japanese translator, Helvin was born in Tokyo and raised in Hawaii and has some cracking tales to inform. Like the time when, as a precocious ten-year-old, she received to sit down on Marlon Brando’s knee. T

he actor had been a pal of her putative godfather’s, and had stopped over on his method again from Tahiti to LA. ‘Who are you, cutie?’ he apparently growled, as he swept her on to his lap. As kids, she and her sister Suzon (who later died in a biking accident) would get stoned with the surfers and make garlands out of plumeria blossom, charging vacationers 25 cents for {a photograph}.

An idyllic childhood, then, however Helvin was at all times determined to get out on the earth. It was on a visit to Japan along with her mom that she was found by a mannequin agent and on the age of 15 discovered herself plastered throughout billboards within the Far East because the face of the cosmetics big Kanebo.

I don’t know which is my favorite story. Maybe the one about her being in a elevate with Jackie Onassis and out of the blue feeling so sick she vomited into the previous first woman’s Yves St Laurent purse. Or the time she was in a nightclub in Rome with Bailey and realised she was anticipated to have a threesome along with her husband and vogue doyenne Loulou de la Falaise. (She didn’t.) But everybody was in pursuit of her again then.

She remembers in her autobiography the incessant telephone calls from Warren Beatty, Eric Clapton’s rage when she initially turned him down, the bizarre vibe she received from Aristotle Onassis, whom she met in St Tropez: ‘He made a beeline for me and I just sensed, no, this man is way too dangerous.’

Her subsequent huge love, after being divorced from Bailey in 1985, was Mark Shand, the dashing late brother of Queen Camilla. It was an amusing conflict of cultures. She remembers the time she went to stick with his household within the nation, turning up for breakfast in full make-up and a silk peignoir, horrified to study that the British higher courses eat breakfast of their tattiest dressing robes. 

They by no means married, partially as a result of Helvin has by no means wished kids. She continued to this point over time, her exes together with Peter Gabriel, Marco Pierre White and the actor Neil Pearson.

When Helvin and I final noticed one another, possibly 15 years in the past, she was very mucha fixture on the London social circuits, each vogue and literary (Helvin had learn all of Dickens by the point she was 16). 

Tom Stoppard, whom she met by means of Mick Jagger, was a mate, as was Salman Rushdie, for whom she house-sat within the 80s. At the time she had been single, and my companion and I had been attempting to matchmake her with a theatre-producer pal of ours. 

‘People always used to want to fix me up back in those days,’ she says, including, totally with out rancour, ‘but nobody does that any more.’

Marie on the duvet of Vogue, 1974; Marie modelling a bikini for Woolworth vogue shops in 1974

Today she appears very totally different. Skinnier. More chiselled. More lovely, the truth is, reminding me of how she seemed method again within the 70s. She has completely no traces. It should be a face-lift, I say, having beforehand inspected behind her ears (no scars thereat all). 

Marie in town with Jerry Hall, 1985;

But no, she swears not, only a ‘twice yearly shot’ of Botox across the eyes, numerous castor oil and slightly steel pebble with which she religiously massages her jawline. Indeed, if she appears thinner that’s most likely as a result of simply earlier than hitting the age of 60,she made the choice to hammer it on the train entrance and quit alcohol. 

‘Diana Vreeland told me early on in my career to stop because it went straight to my jaw,’ she says, ‘and eventually I took her advice.’

But occasions of the previous few years have clearly taken their toll. She’s like a bit of bone china that for those who faucet too laborious would possibly break. The general impact is that she comes throughout as fragile, under no circumstances the bouncy, apple-cheeked glamourpuss I keep in mind from the mid-noughties.

Having supported herself for 4 a long time since she cut up with Bailey, Helvin was hit laborious financially by the pandemic. Though her modelling profession was rebooted when she hit 50 (‘That’s what purchasers out of the blue wished, the entire “ageless beauty” factor’), as soon as lockdown occurred, the work dried up. 

Soon she discovered herself having to dip into her financial savings; funds she had been planning to ultimately spend on returning to Hawaii, the place she has at all times thought-about dwelling. It was simply as work began to trickle again in, the summer time earlier than her seventieth birthday in 2022, when she discovered the lump in her breast.

Marie with (from left) Terence Stamp, Hall, Michael Palin, Nigel Havers and Sean Connery, 1989

‘I was on the floor doing my stomach crunches and I suddenly felt it,’ she remembers. ‘It didn’t damage, nevertheless it was massive, and after I seemed within the mirror I may really see it.’

A yr and a bit on, she counts herself fortunate. For one, her surgeon managed to maintain her nipple intact (many mastectomy sufferers have the nipple eliminated and a brand new one tattooed on). 

Secondly, because the most cancers was stage 1, she didn’t want radiotherapy or chemotherapy, which meant no hair loss. ‘That was my first thought when they sat me down,’ she says, delicately touching the facet of her head. ‘Because my looks are my livelihood. If I lose them, I can’t pay the hire.’

At the identical time, the treatment her NHS oncologist put her on, anastrozole, so immobilised her each bodily and emotionally, she may barely transfer for six months with out howling in agony. 

‘Honestly, the pain in my joints made me feel like I was 1,000 years old,’ she says, ‘and I’m the form of one that leaps off the bed within the morning.’ She has since switched to a low dose of tamoxifen, which has helped ease the joint ache and low temper, however introduced on fixed scorching flushes, drastically interrupting her sleep. 

‘Luckily, I don’t have a nine-to-five job. It’s OK if I sleep late. And I’ve a fan by my mattress. The solely factor I’ve to do is figure out, and by chance there’s a health club within the constructing.’

Marie at dwelling with David Bailey, 1977

For now, anyway. The overarching plan is to return to Hawaii and, sure, possibly calm down with somebody – however then once more, possibly not. ‘Look, I hope I’m not going to be on my own after I die,’ she shrugs. ‘But I went through cancer by myself and although it wasn’t a bit of cake, it was effective.

‘The pandemic uncovered a lot of truths for me,’ she goes on. ‘People I had thought were friends were actually acquaintances, and they kind of fell away by the time lockdown ended. But I enjoy being on my own, especially in winter when I like to hibernate.’

She provides that she has no emotional ties to London and is just actually right here for the subsequent 4 years due to her NHS oncologist, who’s seeing her by means of till she will be able to cease taking the tamoxifen.

 ‘If I won the lottery, which I occasionally play, I’d be out of right here like a shot,’ she says. And her libido? ‘I must admit these days it comes and goes,’ she says. ‘I feel I have a lot more physical healing to do. But I believe you can still feel and think sexy even if you aren’t having intercourse.’

As I depart, I discover myself hoping that Helvin makes it again to Hawaii. I’ve a picture in my thoughts of her in her joyful place, consuming mangoes with the pores and skin on (scrumptious, she says), working round barefoot, having the ability to crack sea urchins along with her heels. That’s the place, at this stage in her life, she belongs.

Bluebella’s Valentine’s marketing campaign with Marie Helvin is offered at bluebella.com.

Picture director: Ester Malloy.

Fashion director: Sophie Dearden.

Styling Assistant: Jessica Carroll. 

Hair: Alex Szabo AT Carol Hayes utilizing Hair Rituel by Sisley. 

Make-up: Sarah Reygate At Carol Hayes utilizing Lisa EldriDge.