I think most of my career has been built on conviction and the personality to carry that image or stride confidently on the catwalk. That was my beginning and, hopefully, my legacy.

How awful to be a perfect beauty! How confusing! God. Can you imagine?

I would say I live half in New York and half in Claridge's. How decadent! How hysterical!

When you're physically growing up, you develop emotionally with that.

My job is to sell clothes to very rich women.

I've enjoyed many camping holidays with my sister and her children, but we're pretty posh campers.

The great outdoors is a theme with me; a walking holiday in Scotland is perfect - Culloden and the forests of Aviemore are both favourites.

I love the sun, but we don't get on at all; it doesn't agree with my Celtic tones. I also like nothing better than putting on a big ski jacket and feeling the wind in my face.

I am rubbish at the gym. I prefer to exercise by moving around - it doesn't matter whether I am dancing on a Friday night or on my bike getting from A to B.

I want to show that we all have the right to be ourselves, and I certainly don't want to freeze time.

My hair is an untidy bob. I am very dark, but I embellish the roots because I am white in one clump.

In my job, I am portrayed as a misfit, a grandiose high fashion lady or an unearthly creature. At home, it's important I can look in the mirror, strip away the disguise and be comfortable with who stares back.

For my last meal, I'd want an Irish breakfast with soda bread and one of my dad's omelettes with three or four eggs.

As a small child, me and my pals fantasised about one day owning an ice-cream van. To have ice creams on demand would have been a dream come true.

When I was 13 or 14, my parents had a bit of a windfall so bought a lovely new kitchen, but I burnt it down. I was making cheese on toast when flames escaped from the grill. My father stopped the fire with blind panic and excessive water. I was forgiven, but it put me off cooking for years.

When I was at primary school, we had this theory that if you ate an egg, it meant you'd get pregnant and give birth to a chicken or another egg. It was something we dared together. I avoided eggs for years, but now they're my favourite food.

Cycling is a great way to learn about your city. I love being outdoors, especially in good weather, but I'm not a fair weather cyclist. I'm happy to get a red nose in the cold.

We won't get economic growth if we don't look after our mothers and the potential of the next generation. They need to be prioritised.

The 'Best of British' is a positive thing that's bandied around, but also it's applied pressure to our country in terms of economic growth. I think we've always felt the rest of the world is so much more powerful in terms of being commercially viable, but we can take great pride in our level of creativity.

New York is on a grid system, so it's slightly less challenging logistically, but Londoners are more relaxed in their selling approach. With that intense shopping service in New York, it's easy to get carried away and make a wrong purchase. Here, there's a different flow. You are left to explore, and individuality is key.

With high fashion, it's a performance. You're trying to interpret a fantasy in a very physical way, and you really are playing a character. I've played men, dead people, famous people, historical icons, and it's no mean feat. It's quite an insular experience even though the crowd is in front of you and there's an expectation.

Fashion is intoxicating, and it plays a part in all of our everyday lives. A lot of people use it as a form of escape, of realising a fantasy, and in some ways that becomes an unobtainable norm.

As a model, part of my job is to be critiqued physically.

The Model Sanctuary is not about self-indulgence - it's about reminding and allowing them to become self-sufficient human beings. I wanted to alert people to the fact that we're not the victims, but nor are we the villains. We want fair practice and positive, sustainable change, working with the fashion industry, not against it.