Kristy Hinze and Jodhi Meares share a friendship that stretches back almost two decades. Now, as both women tell Bryce Corbett, they find themselves at personal and professional crossroads.
In pictures: Billionaire boyfriends
Kristy Hinze — Style inspiration
This is a tale of two lives less ordinary. The story of a couple of Aussie girls whose natural good looks shot them to the top of the competitive world of modelling and thrust them both into the path of a billionaire. It’s an account of a friendship that has survived years and spanned continents. A friendship that is about to bear witness to dramatic changes in both women’s lives.
When Kristy Hinze and Jodhi Meares first met in Sydney, some 15 years ago, neither could have predicted where life was about to take them.
The year was 1995 and, at only 15, Kristy had just made a splash by being the youngest person to grace the cover of Vogue Australia. Jodhi, who had begun her own modelling career at 16, had already been in front of the lens for seven years. Despite the eight-year age difference, the pair hit it off immediately.
Kristy went on to spend a decade as an international model, striding the catwalks of Paris, Milan and New York, before falling in love with and marrying internet pioneer Jim Clark. Jodhi, meanwhile, stayed at home, found herself a billionaire of her own and built a successful swimwear company.
Their lives took on ever less probable proportions. For one, luxury homes in New York, Miami and Sydney, an enormous private yacht and a life spent sailing the world’s oceans in a noble quest to preserve them. For the other, a brief taste of the life of privilege which comes with being a member of Australia’s most prominent family, before eschewing the limelight and retreating to a simpler life on an island getaway.
Throughout it all, the one constant has been their friendship. According to Jodhi, now 38, the two women share a connection that is “fundamental”. Born of the shared, unusual experience of being feted for their looks at such a young age and cemented by similar senses of humour, philosophical outlooks and a subsequent getting of wisdom, the duo are a comfort in one another’s increasingly transient lives. And never more so than right now.
As the recently married wife of Texan-born Netscape founder, Jim Clark, 66, Kristy Hinze finds herself at somewhat of a professional crossroads. After 15 years spent scaling the heights of the international modelling scene, Kristy, 30, has gone back to school to take distance university courses with a view to becoming an environmental scientist.
Nature conservation is a passion she shares with her husband. Five years ago, Jim helped establish the Ocean Preservation Society and bankrolled the Academy Award-winning documentary, The Cove – a powerful film about dolphin slaughter in Japan.
Read more of this story in the October issue of The Australian Women’s Weekly.
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