Vogue Williams
She’s smashing her career, embracing being a new mum and even has links to royalty. Everything she touches turns to gold – literally, in the case of her tanning range. We quiz Vogue on her formula for nailing life
Chelsea residence, totally loved up, mother of a baby boy who’s highly likely to be a regular at Prince George’s birthday parties... Vogue Williams is, by many accounts, killing the game. So, what’s the secret to her goal-getting formula? WH heads for an afternoon in Battersea to find out
a! Beaten by a seven-year-old!’ Vogue Williams exclaims in her distinctive Irish husk. It’s only been 15 minutes since the 33-year-old TV presenter and I met for the first time in London’s Battersea Park, and already she’s slagging (Dublin speak for rinsing) me, hard. I earned it; trying to kick a tennis ball for her beagle/
Cavalier King Charles spaniel cross, Winston, I missed spectacularly, only for a small child to put me to shame by way of a decent right-foot delivery moments later. Given the usually tricky power dynamics of candid celebrity interviews, being straight-up laughed at is a welcome surprise. Little escapes Vogue’s notice – or commentary. ‘Look at that! What the fuck? Like a gazelle!’ she remarks as runners bound past with such buoyancy it’s as if their Asics are making contact with strategically placed rebounders as opposed to smooth tarmac. Any subtlety wrought by her hushed tones is cancelled out by wide eyes and gesticulation. You get the impression that no one can really get away with anything around her – including herself. ‘What does that say?’ she asks, leaning over the handle of the pram, in which sits her nappy-advert-perfect six-month-old, Theodore, to make out the blue lettering on the front of his dummy. Then, grimacing: ‘“I love Mummy”?
Wow. That wasn’t even planned.’
That Vogue is funny won’t come as a surprise to fans of her most recent TV offering, E4’s Spencer, Vogue And Baby Too, a fly-on-the-wall look at her and husband Spencer Matthews, first as expectant and now as new parents. It’s Vogue’s lovingly eviscerating zingers directed at Spencer, former scripted reality bad boy, that make the show not just funny by reality telly standards, but legitimately entertaining. When I settled down to binge-watch the series days before this interview, low expectations were quickly transformed into snorty guffaws and, on the moment she shades his comparatively ‘shite’ TV creds, a full-on, triumphant LOL. ‘I did get some tweets from people being like, “You’re being mean to him!”’ she says of the Made In Chelsea alumnus, aspiring chef and brotherin-law of Pippa Middleton. (Questions about her other in-laws are strictly off-limits, soz.) ‘I was like, that’s not being mean,’ she continues. ‘Spencer and I have such a laugh and most of it is based around taking the piss out of each other. I’m massively proud of him,’ she says – before adding, playfully, ‘But he needs to be put back in his place a lot of the time.’
GREAT EXPECTATIONS
While Vogue may be great craic, her breezy tone and self-deprecating jokes don’t mask the fact that she means business. From landing her first modelling job at 16 to starring in Fade Street – Dublin’s short-lived answer to Made In Chelsea – she’s grabbed any career-furthering opportunity with both hands. Such opportunistic, bloom-where-you’re-planted ambition makes for a varied CV: former Maxim cover star; reality TV lead; Bare by Vogue tanning range founder; presenter of lauded documentary series. The latter, Wild Girls, broadcast on Ireland’s public service broadcaster RTÉ, garnered acclaim and elicited comparisons with Stacey Dooley. One Irish critic described Vogue’s conversation with Emelia Carr, at the time the youngest woman on America’s death row, as ‘one of the most sensitively handled interviews I’ve ever seen with a condemned person’. She looks bashful, takes a moment to acknowledge the favourable comparison, then expertly reroutes chat towards Emelia. ‘[She] was a woman my own age who’s living in a cell 23 hours a day and it was just so depressing,’ she recalls. ‘She was someone who grew up listening to the same music as me…’ The enthusiasm with which Vogue recalls her time reporting on the US prison system suggests that making documentaries isn’t something she wants to leave in the past. Indeed, she’s in talks to do more, unless she gets sidetracked by more straight-down-the-line presenting (she cites Holly Willoughby as a career inspiration), or an are-you-tough-enough celebrity challenge format.
‘Like that SAS show [SAS: Who Dares Wins]! I think
Ant Middleton is just so good!’ she enthuses.
It would be a natural fit for Vogue’s decidedly alpha, all-in nature. In person, she gives off an irrepressible energy that makes me grateful we chose a leisurely lap of a muggy park for our meet, rather than a few rounds in the ring at one of her favourite fitness studios, Kobox. Vogue seems happy with plodding over punches, too. ‘My legs are in bits!’ she grimaces, before explaining that she was up at 5.30am for two hours of jockey training at Epsom racecourse for a charity race in August, before a session at the gym. ‘[I’m training] the way I train for anything,’ she explains. ‘I just put everything into it because I want to win. Though I am up against some horsey people, so we’ll just see how we go. Someone was like to me, “Do you want to win or do you just want to place?” And I was like, er, no, it’s a competition,’ she says. ‘So, I want to win.’
GO HARD AND GO AGAIN
Vogue has never had to psych herself up to train. Exercise was always a fun hobby for the girl who grew up thwacking tennis balls across the net at one of her three siblings, and it remains so. Currently, Vogue trains four times a week with celebrity PT Dalton Wong; sessions typically involve body weight work with gliders and resistance bands and wince-inducing stints on the Versaclimber. ‘I’m never letting him go!’ she enthuses. Pre-dalton, she typically notched up five gym sessions per week, and was initially sceptical when he said she could drop a session and still see the gains she wanted for her first Women’s Health cover. ‘He kills me in 45 minutes to an hour,’ she says. ‘I make them really worth it – I leave exhausted.’ She also fits in a daily walk, or occasional gentle run, with dog and baby in tow. ‘I’m not a natural runner,’ she admits – but seasoned pro Spencer is helping with that. ‘The last time I felt really proud
‘Spencer and I have such a laugh and most of it is based around taking the piss out of each other’
was when Spenny and I went for a run and I did my first ever 10K,’ she shares, smiling. ‘I didn’t think I’d be able to do it… but he’s a real encourager.’ On particularly schedulelight weeks, there might be time for a Boom Cycle spin or Kobox class, too. It’s a fitness routine markedly different from her preTheodore days, when weights were heavy and cardio only featured in short, sharp bursts. ‘Before I was pregnant, I felt strong but not fit,’ she explains. ‘Since having him, I’ve become more fit, definitely.’
It’s refreshing to hear a woman talk about motherhood having an actively positive impact on athleticism. But not everyone sees it like that. After Vogue had navigated her perma-nauseous first trimester – ‘for the first 15 [weeks], I wasn’t able to [work out as] I was so ill’ – she felt a renewed interest in training differently as her body progressed through pregnancy. ‘My body was sore, your hips are killing you,’ she recalls. ‘The only thing that gave me relief was going for a walk or going to the gym.’ After posting Instagram updates from spin and barre classes and tennis lessons, Vogue was inundated with messages accusing her of putting undue pressure on other mums. ‘I used to get comments off people saying, “I think it’s a disgrace, you need to be relaxing, you’re pregnant, you need to take the next 10 months off!” But that doesn’t suit me or my lifestyle or the way I feel about myself,’ she says defiantly. ‘I train a lot for anxiety; it makes me feel good and I like it. It’s a hobby, so giving that up when I was pregnant? I was never going to do it.’
Vogue insists there was no need for a dramatic nutritional overhaul during or after pregnancy, either. ‘People are always like, “What diet are you on? I’ve been on this juice diet for two weeks,” and it’s like, dude, that’s so bad for you. You’re going to lose six kilos and then you’re going to put them back on. You have to just do it the harder way, which is actually the easier way in the end,’ she says. With the exception of an array of breakfast porridge appendages that would make Ella Mills say ‘enough, already’ (frozen desiccated coconut: you heard it here first), Vogue’s daily fare is nothing to write home about. But we will anyway. Oatcakes and hummus mid-morning followed by an on-the-go sandwich or sushi for lunch, then a protein-heavy dinner like chilli con carne with corn on the cob or steak with a side of vegetables. Would she ever consider going vegan? ‘No, I mean, sometimes I eat three animals in a day,’ she laughs.
WORDS HURT
Vogue’s no stranger to public criticism, but the comments on her pregnancy training particularly stung. ‘People were assuming that I was doing something harmful,’ she continues. ‘[But] I spoke to my doctor, I spoke to my trainer [prenatal and postnatal specialist Rosie Stockley] and I absolutely should be doing [these types of exercise] if I’m able to.’ Vogue felt the pressure of the post-baby body police, too. ‘There was one [article] like, “I pity her for having to get back into shape so quickly after a baby,” and it’s like, I didn’t have to get back into shape. Who am I getting back into shape for?’ she says, exasperated. ‘Don’t waste your pity. I don’t model any more. There’s, like, zero pressure for me to get back into shape. I just got back training.’ Under the guidance, again, of her doctor and Stockley.
We’re talking about the broader concept of influence now: ‘I’m very, very careful about who I work for and what I would be promoting,’ she says, earnestly. ‘At least I’m of an age where I can see through the bullshit of an appetite-suppressing lollipop, but younger people and my younger self probably would have been like, “Oh my God! That’s the best way to lose weight...don’t eat breakfast, just have this meal replacement shake!’ With a more mature take on such easy sells comes judgement on those who peddle them. ‘I just don’t understand it with [the Kardashians], because you’ve got so much money and you know that’s absolute bullshit,’ she continues. ‘Do you want your daughter taking something like that? Absolutely not!’ That’s not to say that Vogue doesn’t have her own regrets and missteps. There have been paid endorsements for ‘pre-workout’ formulas that claim to increase fatburn and public words written in anger without due consideration. ‘Now, if I’m having an argument with someone, I’m like, I’m not going to talk to you now for 24 hours, and then the difference you feel – even in the space of an hour...’ she reflects. ‘I catch myself.’
When I ask Vogue about her decision to feature Theodore not only on the couple’s TV show, but across her social feeds, too, she frowns in a nonplussed, why-is-this-evena-thing manner. ‘We didn’t even really go back and forth about [the decision],’ she replies, going on to talk about a documentary she filmed shortly before the birth, in which she met a family who share everything online, and she discussed the matter with them. ‘Then I thought, like, do you know what, I’m going to want to share pictures of him. You’re just so proud of them, you just want to put [them] up.’ Without prompt, she continues: ‘To be honest with you, I don’t really think it’s damaging, you’ve just got to be careful about what you post. Like, I would be very careful about what goes up [on my Instagram] of him and, with regards to the TV show, I mean, he’s in it so minimally. I’d still do it again with him, do you know what I mean? It’s our life, it’s part of our life, it’s not really a massive deal.’
MIND MANAGEMENT
Vogue’s set-up now is markedly happier than a few years ago, when, following her 2015 split from Westlife’s Brian Mcfadden, she sought prescription beta blockers to dull the physical manifestations of anxiety. ‘I kind of like knowing that I do have a few of them left,’ she admits, now sitting opposite me in a pub off Battersea Park drinking a cup of builder’s. ‘If I ever have a really bad day, I can take one of them.’ When do bad days strike? ‘When my schedule gets super busy. I almost bring it on myself by stressing myself out, by
‘I train a lot for anxiety; it makes me feel good – so why would I give that up when I was pregnant?’
‘You just have to write some days off, and I know that’s a terrible thing to say, but it’s the truth’
filling things up too much, by looking at my diary way too far in advance…’ she continues. Exercise helps, but not always. ‘Sometimes, you just have to write some days off, and I know that’s a terrible thing to say, but it’s the truth. I had a day where I was at work and was like, I’ll go for a walk, I’ll do my training and then I’m going to feel much better afterwards. And I didn’t. [Those feelings] just followed me through the whole day,’ she continues. ‘[So] I had a bath and put lavender on my pillow and all that kind of crap, [knowing that] it just might not go away…’
It’s a candid acceptance of the daily struggle of life with an anxious mind. ‘[Sometimes], you have to just be with it… You should still try to go about your day, but, like, [accepting that] you’ll have that niggling feeling in your stomach and your heart beating a bit faster.’ Cutting down alcohol consumption helps, something made easier since Spencer gave up drinking last year. Vogue’s not teetotal; she’s an occasion drinker (ie, she’ll get boozy at parties), currently so scarred by a hangover from her friend’s stag do last weekend in Hamburg – ‘I had a little hungover tear and was looking up flights to leave early’ – that she’s happy to forgo the sauce for the foreseeable. ‘It’s kind of nice that he doesn’t drink, because I prefer to spend my money on tennis lessons,’ she says, before catching herself and bursting into laughter. ‘That’s so sad! I’m a loser!’ It’s time to go; she drains her tea, passes the cherubic Theodore over for a farewell cuddle and picks up her dog’s lead. I leave with the sense that, far from being a loser, this is a woman determined to win, no matter how big or small the prize.