WHEN ORIGINAL NINETIES BRITISH COOL GIRL ROSEMARY FERGUSON RETURNED TO THE CATWALK DURING PARIS FASHION WEEK, IT SPARKED MILD HYSTERIA. A FEW WEEKS ON, NAOMI PIKEMEETS THE MODEL TO DISCUSS FASHION’S REVIVAL OF THAT MUCH-LOVED DECADE
FASHION LOVES NOTHING MORE THAN A THROWBACK, which is ironic considering it thrives on newness. And, at the spring/summer 2024 shows, there was no better jolt of nostalgia than Rosemary Ferguson walking the Miu Miu show on the final day of Paris Fashion Week. Yet this was more than just the return of a beloved Nineties face. Instead, it was a perfectly timed placement with a deeper context.
When Miuccia Prada established Miu Miu in 1993, it was the English model, scouted at a McDonald’s aged 15, who became not only the face of the label but also entirely representative of what it stood for. Ferguson’s boyish features, all angular and strong-browed, proved to be the ultimate counterbalance when set against Ms Prada’s new aesthetic, which riffed on a fresh sense of femininity, and were perfectly primed to front the campaigns, shot by Corinne Day. These were cool clothes for cool girls that spoke to their lives and point of view – the same energy that has once again put Miu Miu back at the top of the world’s hottest-brands lists in 2023.
To be back on that catwalk was an absolute no-brainer for Ferguson, who has since traded in the world of fashion for nutrition and the giddy heights of modelling for the Cotswolds, where she lives with her three daughters – Elfie Reigate, and Bliss and Blythe Chapman – and husband, the artist Jake Chapman.
‘It felt like it meant something. It wasn’t as if I was just doing a runway cameo, because there was history there. It’s a good story to have the very first girl to have done a Miu Miu campaign walk the show 30 years later,’ she tells me afterwards. ‘It was really nice to be back in the Miu Miu family.’
Returning to what was once her daily reality, Ferguson says she found herself feeling ‘not nearly as terrified as I used to. I thought, being there and walking, I’d feel much older, and I did, but I still felt really good about myself. There’s really something to be said about being established in your life. I’ve been around the block, so it’s going to take a lot to knock me.’
Ferguson’s catwalk comeback occurred in the same week that the world went wild for another Nineties icon, Pamela Anderson, going without make-up during Paris Fashion Week. ‘I saw her at Victoria [Beckham]’s show and she looked f*cking incredible. Breathtaking,’ she says. ‘It’s so amazing that she has let herself age. She’s so
