Anneliese Seubert was a 15-year-old schoolgirl living in Cooma when she gave in to her friend’s nagging and entered a magazine modelling contest in 1989.
Just two years later she was strutting the catwalks of Paris, New York and Milan for some of the world’s top designers including Christian Dior, Karl Lagerfeld, Givenchy and Calvin Klein.
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The German-born beauty quickly became one of Australia’s first international supermodels, appearing in Vogue editorials in the UK, Italy, Germany and Australia and working with the renowned fashion photographers including Mario Testino and Patrick Demarchelier.
Anneliese can now be seen in Sydney’s Queen Victoria Building’s Autumn/Winter campaign and here, she discusses dressing for your age, working in castles and meeting Linda Evangelista.
On being ‘discovered’:
“I was a finalist in a DOLLY cover girl contest in 1989. A girl at my school had won it the year before and my friends encouraged me to enter it. I didn’t win, though! It was one of the very first of those competitions and the public voted for a girl from New Zealand. The agency had rights to represent all the finalists and so they asked me if I wanted to join them, so I did.”
On balancing her studies and modelling:
“I was still at school so I was a bit limited in what I could do because I wanted to stay at school. So I would take a few days off here and there, or I would work in the school holidays. Whenever a job came up I either could do it or I couldn’t. If I had exams I had to say no!”
On meeting ’90s supermodel Linda Evangelista:
“When I first met Linda Evangelista, she told me she thought I was really pretty and I was like ‘Oh my God, Linda just told me I was pretty!’ That did freak me out a little bit.”
On working with embattled designer John Galliano:
“My favourite jobs were always working with John Galliano, but we’re not really allowed to talk about him at the moment [John was dismissed from Christian Dior in March after an alleged anti-Semitic tirade at a Paris bar]. The best jobs are usually great trips where you travel to some amazing place. Quite often with a job you get access to beautiful houses, or sometimes even a castle, that you wouldn’t normally get to see. That’s always fun.”
On why modelling isn’t always as glamorous as people might think:
“Once you’re all made up and ready to go it’s glamorous, but there’s a lot of work to get to that stage. Usually we start at four or five in the morning, and at that hour, it’s definitely not glamorous.”
On being constantly scrutinised:
“People get quite obsessed with what you look like and you think, ‘But you don’t even know me!’ Or if you’re shooting on the street and there’s a whole lot of people around, watching you, that is very bizarre.
On looking stylish past your 30th birthday:
“I think you should always wear things that suit you and that make you feel good. I certainly don’t follow the latest trend just because it’s a trend. If it doesn’t suit me I certainly won’t go with it. I think that accessories are a good way to update your look without having to be a slave to the looks that the teenagers are going for.”
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On her own sense of style:
“Being a model, I have access to great designers and obviously I’ve owned some beautiful clothes but I don’t really wear them in everyday life. My style has always been quite classic and understated and that doesn’t change unless I’m in front of the camera.”
Anneliese is the face of the Queen Victoria Building’s Autumn/Winter campaign The Art of Life.
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