The Heat

Click, click, boom! OGsupermodel HelenaCHRISTENSEN suits up for the mean streets.

- Sarah Cristobal

Helena Christensen is no stranger to giving it her all for fashion shoots, but doing so in front of hundreds of people in downtown New York while wearing a swimsuit? Especially a vintage Thierry Mugler metal bikini she first wore in 1991? That required some preparation and psyching up.

“We all look more or less the same, and we all have our bodies and body issues, so I thought, ‘Just get [on] with it,’ ” she says later about the internal monologue that played in her head on the day of her InStyle shoot.

It’s true: we definitely all have bodies and some of us might have our concerns, but in terms of looking the same? In the immortal words of Maya Rudolph spoofing Donatella Versace on Saturday Night Live, “Get ouuuuut!”

The leggy Peruvian-Danish stunner has been able to carry on her storied 30-plus-year career for a reason. When she strutted through the Financial District, yes, she had to bob and weave to avoid tourists with outstretched arms wielding mobile phones, but true New Yorkers “[couldn’t] give a shit about what anyone looks like”. “I was just another weirdo strolling downtown on my way to work,” she explains.

Christensen chalks up the experience to just another strange day “at the office”, doing a job she’s truly grateful for. “Even though it can be awkward and uncomfortable, it adds something to my life,” she says. “I like what [modelling] adds. I think it’s important to try all kinds of things in our relatively short lives.”