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The model Jourdan Dunn is slumped in a chair opposite me, a tangle of her own long limbs, in a room the size of a cupboard in the City of London. The 26-year-old west Londoner is in gym kit and...
The model Jourdan Dunn is slumped in a chair opposite me, a tangle of her own long limbs, in a room the size of a cupboard in the City of London. The 26-year-old west Londoner is in gym kit and baseball cap today, but she is still instantly recognisable from her Burberry, Balmain and H&M campaigns. Even at the age of 24 she had a spot on the Forbes list of top-earning models ($4 million in 2014). Today, however, she is working out with her younger brother, Antoine, a lead boxing trainer at the new Kobox gym in the City of London (the first one was on the Kings Road in Chelsea).
Antoine, 24, learnt to box in Manhattan, where the siblings shared a flat, and Jourdan wants to use her considerable marketing muscle to promote him (not least, she has two million Instagram followers). “Strong not skinny” is Jourdan’s message, although confounding when you look at her. Yet today is all about exercise and a healthy approach to eating and self- appraisal.
It doesn’t take long for Jourdan to veer off course, though, admitting to having had two hours’ sleep after a night partying with Bella Hadid and Kendall Jenner. “I got in mad late. Like 3am? But I went to bed about four because I watched two episodes of Hollyoaks and had grilled chicken with rice that was in the fridge.”
“Wha–?” Her brother/trainer looks at her.
“It was in the fridge.”
“And you finished it?”
“And then I had two hours’ sleep and I’m doing a full intense workout.” She gives him a triumphant grin.
Undoubtedly the gym will be a hit — excuse the pun. It’s concrete blocks, galvanised zinc pipes and slow thudding music. The tagline is “Fight club meets nightclub”.
Karlie Kloss, Jourdan’s great friend and fellow catwalker, is next door “doing PT with Shane”, even though “she flew in this morning, just landed”.
Jourdan explains: “I feel like boxing is great for women because it does give you that confidence boost. It’s a great way to de-stress when you’re going through a lot, a break-up or stuff at home.”
On the break-up, she adds: “I say, ‘Antoine, you know what I’m going through right now, I just need to hit something really hard. Do your thing.’ ”
Antoine acknowledges that it’s clear in her boxing when Jourdan is angry. Her most recent split was with the model-turned-boxer Younes Bendjima, a chisel-faced, compulsive selfie-taker who is now dating a Kardashian.
We return to talking about society’s dangerous obsession with looks and the importance of embracing yourself whatever your appearance.
“Just be the best version that you can be, and don’t try to be anyone else,” Jourdan counsels. “I will never ever have Nicki Minaj’s arse, or Beyoncé’s arse. But I have a Jourdan arse, and it’s strong.”
“People are too obsessed with who they aren’t,” Antoine says. “Be who you are and leave it at that.”
“Everyone has their flaws; accept your flaws,” Jourdan says. “I’ve learnt to accept mine.” I imagine this was a quicker process than most. She is extraordinary to look at: cat eyes, Nefertiti bone structure. “I have chicken legs,” she says, stretching one out like a swan’s wing.
Antoine looks at his own legs. “No one is ten out of ten. You are who you are. Own it, man.”
“Yeah, own it,” Jourdan echoes.
Their exchanges on most subjects take this form, talking at a mighty clip, getting louder, disagreeing — a lot — with amused outrage. They are a close family, describing their mother, Dee, as “our best friend”, who keeps them “intact” and “grounded”.
“Yeah, things you shouldn’t tell your mum,” Antoine says.
As well as trainer, Antoine plays the role of bodyguard, “swatting them away” in Oxford Circus and accompanying his sister to festivals such as Wireless and, depending on whether she’s “cool” or “not feeling it”, letting fans do selfies with her. When she’s not, “anyone comes up, I’m like, [he puts on a menacing swagger] ‘Yeah, leave it.’ And I do enjoy it.”
They both cackle.
Of the two, Jourdan is more immersed in the world of green juices and healthy eating — although she admits to lapses. She says “carbs are my friends” and apologises for being skinny regardless: “I am just fortunate. People hate to hear that, but yup, sorry.”
“I feel the fashion industry is encouraging more healthy images — but at the end of the day, when you see these models, half of them are young girls and they are naturally skinny. It really bothers me when people say, ‘Real women over models’ because I am a real person. I’m just a different body type to somebody else.”
She doesn’t change her diet or routine before shows. “Even when I used to do the Victoria’s Secret shows. You’d see all the girls, like, doing all this intense training. Me and Cara [Delevingne] were like, ‘Wow, these girls are beasts. We are just out here eating pizza and doing nothing.’ ”
I’m not convinced Antoine is fully on board when it comes to healthy eating, though he says he has got better. He seems equally uneasy with meditation and “wellness”, calling it “crazy hippy shit”.
Jourdan berates him. “Antoine, you can’t say that! We’re all into it in this room.”
Of course, there’s a lot more to Jourdan than her fashion career, exercise routine and diet. She’s a punchy kid from Greenford, west London. Dee was a single mother with three children (they have a younger brother who is in college) and Jourdan was sometimes picked on at school, leading to a stint being home-schooled. Evenings and weekends were soaked up with drama and dance — “ballet, tap, disco, jazz”.
“From a young age, she always said she was going to be somebody no matter what,” Antoine says. “Modelling or acting, she was destined to do something.”
In some respects it was easy; she was spotted by a scout at Primark in Hammersmith aged 15 and was almost immediately signed up. Famously, she was the first black model in a Prada show for a decade in 2008 and the first solo black model on the cover of the British edition of Vogue since Naomi Campbell.
And then, aged 18, she feared it might all end when she discovered — in the toilets at Heathrow airport — that she was pregnant. “I didn’t cry or anything, I just sat on that plane and thought,” she says.
Jourdan is a carrier of sickle-cell anaemia, as was the father of the child. Her baby would therefore have a one-in-four chance of being born with the illness. Halfway through the pregnancy, the baby was tested and the diagnosis confirmed.
Riley is now seven and is looked after by Dee when Jourdan is away. She says that she’s looking forward to getting off the fashion-week rollercoaster and spending more time with him. “It’s been non-stop. In New York I did two campaign shoots, some editorial and Maybelline, then I walked a show and attended a show. Same with London. I had my launch party for my LonDunn collection with Missguided and then watched a few shows, went to a few parties, then press days. It’s a lot. Tomorrow I can go back to reality and take my son to school, pick him up, make dinner and have a normal routine.”
