I am taking time out to travel. I’m hitting the reset button
Daniella Moyles is a star on the rise but she wants time to herself for now
never existed before and there is probably a lot more energy put into the idea that each one of us is a brand in our own right so we are probably spending more time preening and perfecting ourselves - or at least trying to do that to whatever ideals are out there. Then on the other hand there are lots of apps and stuff that can help add filters which can change that appearance.
NO I don’t feel under pressure to be always ready. I didn’t grow up in the bubble of just modelling, wasn’t always in the public eye.
‘I went to college in Galway and lived in Naas and still have my school friends – they really keep me in check so it never really got to my head and I never had to start thinking like that. It has served me well and also I am 28 so I got to live my teens just before that social media craze took over. So I had really found a sense of myself before that bombardment of perfectionism had begun. I’m lucky in that regard.’
Daniella also opened up about her mum Pauline’s battle with breast cancer. She said she keeps watch on her own health because she’s at high risk of the disease after her mother was diagnosed aged 39.
She added: ‘I forced my mam into the genetics system in St James’s Hospital. It’s genetic testing so they can check if you’ve got the cancer-causing gene. It was inconclusive for my mam so now I’m in the system early and I will keep on top of it. I’ll be in earlier than usual for my mammograms and I’m always on top of my smears. Those lessons now, some of the worst things that ever happened to me, like my mam getting cancer, have been the best things later. The perspective, the maturity it gives you – just the gratefulness it gives you for all that’s important is unreal.’
Daniella is no stranger to health scares in her own life, having contracted Dengue Fever during a trip to Thailand when she was 21. After weeks of treatment she discovered that the drugs had caused her to lose all her hair, forcing her to shave her head and wear a wig.
‘They treat it a bit like viral meningitis but there is no specific cure and they just give you different batches of antibiotics and just see which ones your body reacts to.
The illness in itself was quite taxing on my liver and my health in general and the big doses of medicine gave me temporary alopecia. It was temporary and it is never going to come back but that didn’t stop me worrying about it. It makes for a good story but at the time it was an interesting experience to go through.’
DANIELLA admits she has always been a positive person and even managed to turn this hair loss into a positive, allowing her a PR move into the world of catwalk modelling and ultimately elongating her career in the fashion business.
‘I realised it was happening one day and then I shaved it off and got a wig’, she says.
‘It was that matter-of-fact way but I hated the wig because it was hot and itchy. And I hated when my hair was growing back again and I had this impatient period of my life where I just couldn’t wait for it to grow.
‘Then I got braces on my teeth as well so I was 21 with braces and hair like a mushroom which was a really great look.
‘But to be honest the modelling world was actually really good to me at that time.
‘I went from being a long blonde photo call model to having a unique look. And it was a really good tool for longevity of my modelling career.
‘When my hair got short I moved away from PR jobs to working on the biggest catwalk shows that we have in this country and with the likes of Brown Thomas and Arnotts doing fashion shows.
‘When my hair got long again those relationships I had built up with both ends of the industry still stood and I got to do both which probably allowed me to model for ten years. In hindsight if I had just done the photo call thing I would have had to move on from it much sooner and that was a direct result of the alopecia so it was a weird silver lining.’
Daniella Moyles is brand ambassador for Vichy Idéalia range, a range of radiance-revealing products clinically proven to transform dull and exhausted skin.
I was 21 with braces and hair like a mushroom which was a really great look