'I don't think teenagers should be in it they're far too young and their figures aren't developed.' She weighed 64 kilograms, was happy and healthy. She says there wasn't such a focus on having 'vital statistics' when she started out. While he was ill, it was impossibly hard.' That was perhaps not a good idea, on reflection, as I did everything and I was a bit cut off. 'We'd moved to a village two years before he passed away. Jim died in 1997, after 43 years of marriage. Daphne continued doing commercials, some artistic modelling and worked as an extra in theatre and television. By the time she considered fashion again it was the 1960s, she had three young children, and ideals were changing ('I was not appropriate to the '60s, it was Twiggy's turn,' she says). When Daphne married Jim Smith in 1954, her career slowed down. You did anything and you always did your own hair and make-up.' I've advertised sausages, wine and couture. 'As a model you were there to advertise a product. The egos, she says simply, were a lot smaller back then.

It is all the more remarkable, then, that she has adapted to the industry now. People wouldn't ever have heard of anybody who was a model.'Ĭonsidering that many models today are household names with personal brands worth millions and agents to negotiate what types of work they will or won't do, it's fair to say that Selfe comes from another world. Only one or two girls ever went to Paris. Our main catwalks were in the big stores in London, Northampton, Bournemouth. We didn't have a London Fashion Week that's only been in the last 25 years.

'Modelling then was nothing like it is now,' she says.

Young video model daphne