1986 Renée Toft Simonsen

"ZITZ, GLITZ & A GOOD FEW WIGS" Renée Simonsen, top model, talks to Carol Price
- U.K. The Sunday Times Magazine FASHION SPECIAL - 28. September 1987

"ZITZ, GLITZ,..."- U.K. The Sunday Times Fashion Special 28.09.86 by Stevie Hughes

Too long an experience of the world´s dingier studios and crepuscular locations can take its toll on fashion editors. One recently insisted to me that many a top model, devoid of cosmetic aid, could barely rival a shopgirl. Try as I might, with the aid of this suggestion, to picture Renée Simonsen stacking Sainsbury´s gondolas as she arrived for the shoot in this issue (pages 30 - 33), all I could see were Vogue covers.
Renée clearly has that superior supermodel form which can generate wild popularity and earn big money worldwide - and always look good. If she ever has rare off-moments, the day I saw her wasn´t one of them. First thing in the morning, under harsh dressing-room lightbulbs, having spend scant sleep recovering from a Sigue Sigue Sputnik concert and sustained by only a can of 7-Up for breakfast, she looked stunning. How, I do not know. But Renée just beamed out from under a little aluminium diadem of hairclips and continued to improve when the cosmetic task force stormed in with their bumper blusher brushes and a battery of turbo-charged hairdryers.
There was Tevie on make-up - a Sebastian Flye-type figure in a brocade Nehru jacket - and another engaging young man with a comb, who had once taken charge of Joan Collins´s coiffure: "Have a go if you must", Joan had said, "But I´ll tell you now, however great you think you can make my hair, it will always look better in a wig." He tousled Renée´s dark blonde hair into jungly fronds. If models have confidantes, it is hair and make-up folk; they greet them like old pals. "God, how are you?" You can´t believe they´ve only just met.
Renée, from the start, said she didn´t want to discuss her relationship with boyfriend John Taylor of Duran Duran (as in "pop Romeo John", Daily Mail, or even "impossibly handsome John; ´why do all the girls call me Mr Beautiful?´", Daily Mirror). No wonder, really. All there is to say, she thinks, is that they share a home in New York with a year-old yellow Amazonian parrot named after Mozart.
Four years ago Renée, who comes from the Danish town of Aarhus - "population 300,00, very big for Danish standards" - was discovered by Eileen Ford, the American mega-agent, on tour. "It was the old story - I went along to a modelling contest with a girlfriend and won a trip to New York by accident." Then 17, her parents, who had always drummed into her the importance of an education, were far from pleased: "Modelling in Denmark is looked upon as a stupid business that girls only do because they´re not smart enough to do anything else. And father, well he´s like a perpetual student. After being a sailor he became a professor of French Literature, then studien Greek and Greek mythology, then Danish istory, then a couple of years ago he was into astrology..."
"So," mutters a merkedly impressed hairdresser, "he´s a real thicko, right?" It was surprising he could hear over teh hurricane roar of his hot air nozzles.
While Mr Simonsen next diversified into Tarot cards, the meaning of dreams, Freud, Amnesty International, - and got a degree in massage, became a member of the green party and bought a farm. Renée remained adamantly bound for New York. "So finally he simply put a picture of me on one wall and one of Marilyn Monroe on another and said ´all you have to do is remember how she ended up´".
To her credit, Renée has few illusions about the nature of the modelling business, "even though four years ago I said I´d only be in it two years. But it´s the money, isn´t it? You can´t take the business too seriously. If you start thinking God, I´ve got a wrinkle or, God, I´m too skinny or fat, you´d crack up. Although I´ve noticed..." she adds, face right up to the mirror, "that I appear to be getting odd pimples. ..."
"London, isn´t it?" says Stevie, the make-up man, piping up with conviction from behind his palettes. "I know, because I´m from Liverpool and I didn´t have a single zit on my face until I got here at 19. Then bang! Models get so worried and try to make excuses, but I just go, "Oh, a zit, so what. If it´s not squeezable we´ll just carry on, for goodness sake."
But Renée is back from the mirror with a clean chin. "I must admit," she says, "that at 21 you don´t have to take that much care of yourself - not like when you´re 25, when I might start worrying. I do try to get enough sleep - because I´m terrible in the mornings, but I eat pretty much what I like; meatballs, steak and potatoes, pasta - Danish food which I don´t have a lot in New York because I never cook. Well, I can do boiled eggs, tea and coffee and a cauli-flower. But that´s about it." "´Renée´s such a great cook´ says John Taylor" - Daily Star. Make of this what you will.
But she is definitely anti drug-taking; a vice formerly rife, I am told, in the modelling world. "Who´s going to stand for it when there are new girls with perfect skin coming up all the time, who don´t take them? I have heard many make-up artists going on about the noses they used to have to clean up."
"Don´t I know," sights Stevie, who obvioiusly does. "First it was coke," he says, "then smack. Then a few needles dropped in the wrong places and suddenyl it all stopped." I think someone should give Stevie his own series. He was clearly quite mortified when Renée revealed that she has recently turned down a part in Dynasty: "Get it while you got it - that´s what I say." But Renée thought that this could well "make Mom go absolutely into the grave. Mom´s very down to earth." And so is Renée. Denmark, she says, is a palce where "nobody knows who Giorgio Armani is," and she likes it that way. It´s a good, sane base to go home to. Particulary when all you seem to see of the world is its airports and photographic studios. Sometimes, she adds, the biggest threat to a top model´s mind and body is the temptation to take every bit of lucrative work going "and wear yourself out. And if you look real tired people pick up on it real quick and won´t want you." "But Dynasty!" Why not? Come on!" The paletted one keeps the pressure up but Renée is resolved. In five years´ time, she says, she reckons she´ll have made enough out of the business "to afford my own wig".

danish Alt om Foto June 1988 Leif Nygaard	danish BILLED BLADET - 1986 - Leif Nygaard			danish ALT om Foto February 1988 Leif Nygaard	see the x-factor at work click here!

Robert Maass
span. HOLA 1987	danish KICK unknown	ital. AMICA 28. May 1987

Robert Maass
danish SE OG HOR 1986	swedish DET NYE January 1987 #3	dutch HITKRANT 29. August 1987 #35	ital. AMICA 28. May 1987

Robert Maass
danish B.T. December 1993	german Bild der Frau	swedish DET NYE January 1987 #3

Robert Maass
ital. AMICA 28. May 1987	german unknown	swedish DET NYE January 1987 #3	dutch HITKRANT 29. August 1987 #35

italian Epoca 3. October 1986 #1878		german Esquire February 1992	danish BILLED BLADET May 1987

german BRAVO 15. May 1986 Zill, Idols	unknown ital. newspaper	ital. ragazza in 7. October 1986 #40

ital. IL MONELLO 27. Feburary 1987 #9	dutch Hitkrant #43 29. October 1988	ital. ragazza in 12. August 1986 #32	ital. DOLLY 18. August 1986	ital. MODA November 1986	dutch TOP 10	U.K. Sunday 19. October 1986

ital. AMICA 25. December 1986 #52	ital. unknown	ital. intrepido SPORT 22. September 1987 #38	ital. unknown

E. Lari/G. Neri
ital. GIOIA	"La stella del Nord" - ital. PLAYMEN November 1987	ital.	ital.

danish UNG 86 - Bo Nymann

Renée Toft Simonsen - 1986 - Renée Toft Simonsen