Victoire Dauxerre - Size Zero - My Life as a Disappearing Model

William Collins

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This eBook first published in Great Britain by William Collins in 2017

Copyright © Éditions des Arènes, Paris, 2016

English translation © Andy Bliss 2017

Cover photograph © Dan Kennedy

Victoire Dauxerre asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

This edition published by arrangement with Éditions des Arènes in conjunction with their duly appointed agents The St Marks Agency, London.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008220525

Ebook Edition © February 2017 ISBN: 9780008220501

Version: 2018-01-22

To my darling brothers, Alexis and Léopold

To my Granddaddy, whom I miss

And to every woman out there

It is the stars,

The stars above us govern our conditions.

Shakespeare, King Lear , Act IV, Scene III

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

Flashback

Claudia Schiffer

Waiting for Sciences Po

Something Vintage, Something Classy

The Cathedral of Fashion

Playing With My Body

Learning How to Walk

33 23 34

Three Apples a Day

Yùki

The American Dream

The Little Voice

Stop Eating!

New York

Casting Hell

Russell Marsh

Three, Two, One, Go!

The Heart of Fashion Week

Home Sweet Home

Milan

At the End of My Tether

And Now for Paris

The Holy of Holies

Into the Light

The Photo Shoots

The Fat Cow

Life as a Clothes Hanger

Weightless

The Bitch

I Quit

Disappearing

Not Alone Any More

It’s a Wonderful Life

Picture Section

Acknowledgements

About the Author

About the Publisher

I didn’t want to think about it any more. I was feeling fine, or at any rate better. Normal life had resumed: I was studying again, I’d moved into a new place, I’d found a boyfriend, a job and a future of sorts, and my figure was now more or less acceptable. I was increasingly thinking about getting into acting seriously, because in the end it was the only thing that genuinely interested me.

And then Mum called. ‘Loutch, I’ve written an email to that MP who’s trying to get a law passed on anorexia.’ She wanted me to read it to see if I was OK with what she’d said and if I wanted her to include my contact details. I read it, and of course I was OK with it. And yes, I wanted her to include my contact details.

She sent it off, and then the journalists started calling with questions. So I told them my story, and everything started all over again.

The eating. Eating to fill myself up, to fill this void. Hating it, but doing it all the same. Seeing my body transform itself, even though I emptied it just as soon as I’d filled it. Not recognising it, and hating it. Not recognising myself, and hating me. Feeling so awful, so ugly and so empty. So like nothing at all.

And that’s when I decided to relive, one final time, those eight months of my life spent suspended in a vacuum. To write it all down. To write about that constant spinning sensation in my head, that savage and brutal fear that used to devour my body and, to the extent that I still had one, my soul.

About the loneliness I felt when surrounded by all those cynics, the bastards, the lost and the miserable. About the unspeakably disgusting, skeletal ugliness in the midst of all that beauty. And about death itself, adorned in bright lights, make-up, fur, silk, rhinestone, lace, satin, soft leather and 7-inch heels.

The death that was very nearly my own fate.

It was Sunday. Mum had practically dragged me out for a walk around the Marais district to take my mind off things. I didn’t feel like it; I didn’t feel like doing anything. I was revising for my Bac, the final year school exams in France, and the entrance exams for Sciences Po, France’s leading political studies college, and as they loomed, my anxiety levels were rocketing. But mainly, I was brooding over my heartbreak. It was the first time my heart had been broken – by Hugo, who had just left me for Juliette. Dumped. Cast off like a useless, worthless object. The few words he’d said were like a slap in the face, a blow to the soul. A failure. Since then, I’d been hurting a lot, and had felt a bit scared too. Of being dumped over and over again, of being alone. Of not knowing what to do with my life, let alone with whom. Scared of the unknown, of getting it wrong, of maybe losing my way.

All of a sudden everything had become really complicated. After a ‘problem-free’ time at primary school, changes in the timetable cut me off from all my friends when I started secondary school. I completely stopped working and then I decided that I’d never set foot in a school again – I would prepare for my Bac on my own, at home. I planned everything out before announcing my decision to my parents: the contact details for a school where I could study by correspondence; my timetable, planned out to the minute, so that they could see that I really had thought things through; and my promise to do what it took to be the best.

My parents were hardly over the moon, but they agreed to it because they knew what I was like. I was a good pupil, I could put my mind to studying and more than anything I would never have let myself fail at something to which I’d committed myself. Especially when I’d just forced them into a corner. And I would pass my Bac, with a top mark.

It gave some structure to my life. I like to work fast; as soon as things start to drag, I get bored. I got the whole year’s syllabus out of the way in six months so that I’d have time to do something else with the rest of the year. Like spending time with Granddaddy and Nan, my beloved grandparents. I learned how to dance the salsa and the tango and I also did a bit of acting. I hung out with my cousin Tom and his thirty-something friends, who used to take me out at night. And I spent time with my best friend Sophie, who I’d met at the dance classes. My life was very structured.

I’d get up at eight o’clock and at nine I’d settle down to work at my bedroom desk with Plume my cat for company, while Mum worked upstairs in her workshop. My mother is an artist – she paints, sculpts, makes collages and draws. She can put her hand to anything. And then it would be the lunch break, watching dumb serials on the box. Mum has never had much of an appetite and didn’t stop for lunch. But I often went up to her workshop in the afternoons to spend some time with her, or we would go off to an exhibition or go shopping until the boys got back from school.