Back in 2015, Charli Howard decided to set fire to her modelling career.
After six years working as a professional model – and a decade suffering with eating disorders – she was told by her agency that she was ‘too big’ to meet fashion industry standards.
She was a size six at the time, spending five hours a day in the gym to lose weight and eating cotton wool for lunch. ‘I just didn’t want to do any of it any more,’ she says.
So she poured her feelings into a Facebook post: ‘The more you force us to lose weight and be small, the more designers have to make clothes to fit our sizes, and the more young girls are being made ill,’ she wrote. ‘It’s no longer an image I choose to represent.’ She ended with: ‘I’m off to Nando’s.’
Her friends told her she would never work again. But Howard was immediately snapped up by an American agency, spent five years in New York, and has posed for everyone from Agent Provocateur to Spanx.
‘I actually enjoy modelling now, because I can do it at the size I’m at and be the person I am,’ she says. At 33, she has also written two highly acclaimed books including a memoir about growing up with obsessive-compulsive disorder, anxiety, bulimia and anorexia; hosted a BBC podcast, and launched sustainable beauty brand Squish.
She is also the fashion world’s pre-eminent truth-teller. Her Instagram posts include close-up images of her cellulite and unfiltered takes on all aspects of the fashion industry, from sustainability to the body positivity movement. She prefers the term ‘body neutrality’, arguing that it is ‘unnatural’ to feel positive about your body all the time.
‘It’s more about the idea that your body isn’t at the forefront of everything – you’re more than just the way that you look.
I enjoy modelling now because I can do it at the size I am and be the person I am
That’s what I tend to focus on now.’
We’re talking in the upstairs bar of Langan’s in Mayfair following the YOU photoshoot. She’s dressed down in a simple sweatshirt but still has on the vampish eye make-up from the shoot (she loves a lash lift) and so resembles a creature caught between two worlds: ‘I either look like an absolute hobo in my hoodies or I’m dolled up to the nines,’ she laughs.
It’s immediately clear why Howard has won the trust of so many women, with 357k followers on Instagram. She’s warm, funny and gets straight to the point on any given subject – such as the unwelcome return of ‘size zero’ models to catwalks.
Bodysuit, skirt and belt, all michaelkors.co.uk. Earrings, theysso.com. Tights, heist-studios.com. Sandals, terrydehavilland.com
‘A lot of people view fashion as this dream world but it’s not. It’s an influential trillion-dollar industry. And we’re regressing when it comes to the size thing.’
I’ll admit I picked up her 2019 memoir, Misfit, purely for research purposes – but then I couldn’t put it down. It’s a terrific insight into both the cruelties of noughties culture (this was the era of extreme makeover shows and magazines highlighting the cellulite on female celebrities) and how mental-health complexes take hold.
Howard’s childhood was unusual: her father was in the Royal Navy and the family moved from country to country every couple of years, making it hard for her to form secure friendships.
After spells in Germany and Belgium, the family eventually found the money to send her to a boarding school in Wales (she can’t say which one for legal reasons). Deeply lonely, she internalised the messages of the wider culture: if she could be thin, she reasoned, she would be accepted. ‘The idea of my book was to show how eating disorders develop, because they don’t just come out of nowhere,’ she says. ‘It’s not a vanity thing.
It’s usually because you’ve got a lot of unhealed trauma, or feelings that you don’t want to feel, or emotions you don’t want to deal with.’
When she looked in the mirror during her teenage years, she didn’t just see fat; she saw failure. Modelling sounds like the absolute last career for someone with those feelings. Yet, somewhere in her mind, she was convinced that if she became a model, she would be accepted.
It is, she has since realised, an incredibly common experience. ‘I was speaking to a girl yesterday, actually, whose agency had sent her to weight-loss camp. I was, like, what? I mean this girl is a size 6-8, which is below the national average size. It’s messed up. I do think there needs to be some sort of investigation as [this industry has] messed up so many people. Not just models but girls and women in general who tried to emulate that.’
If anything, the landscape for teenage girls has worsened since she was that age. She was recently invited to Parliament to discuss deepfake porn. ‘We heard from all these women who are having their faces taken without their consent and put on naked bodies in porn. So it’s like digital rape. It’s terrifying that this is even a thing.’
Jacket and stockings, atsukokudo.com. Sunglasses, lindafarrow.com. Bangle, dinosaurdesigns.co.uk. Shoes, zimmermann.com
Howard reckons that it was social media that ‘saved’ her and allowed her to take control of her own story. Still, there are many moments in Misfit in which she says how thankful she is that smartphones weren’t around when she was a teenager.
‘God, it must be so hard now to be a girl,’ she says. ‘We hear so many stories of girls sending nudes to boys that are then put up on the internet.
There’s this need to constantly look good and to put filters on yourself, to have a very Kardashian-like body shape.’
For all that she has taken command of her own career, Howard stresses that complex mental-health issues don’t simply disappear. In February, she posted about the return of her eating disorders during an ‘incredibly stressful’ period of her life two years ago.
This was triggered by the ‘self-disgust’ she felt after a painful episode in which she claims an ex-partner siphoned off ‘tens of thousands of pounds’ from her bank account over the course of their relationship. He lived in an expensive flat and gave every appearance of being financially independent. It only later emerged that he couldn’t afford the lifestyle he projected.
Happiness is knowing when you've got enough. The problem with social media is you never have enough
‘He was very clever, very manipulative,’ she says. ‘I try to tell women: just be really careful about how you’re spending your money. Have a separate bank account if you can. I think it’s essential that women have their own money. It’s really important to me because it can be a form of abuse – financial abuse.’
She feels now that she learned a valuable lesson from it. ‘I struggled for a while, but I’ve turned it into something positive. I do believe things happen for a reason, whatever that reason is, and I’m now in a much better place because of it.’ It has made her all the more proud that she has earned her own way in life.
She plans to sell her beauty brand Squish (although she doesn’t know who to yet) and says she won’t start another one as ‘the world doesn’t need any more beauty brands’. She is also taking an acting course – she wants to be on British TV or a Netflix show.
Dress and ring, bimbaylola.com. Tights, wolford.com
Dress and ring bimbaylola.com
There is also a third book in the works, inspired by her experiences with relationships – which sounds like the only thing in her life that isn’t going so well. When I ask if she’s signed up to dating apps, she makes a noise of extreme pain. ‘Urrgh! I just want to meet someone in the street. Honestly, I wish people would simply come over and talk to me.’
She is single and on the apps, she confirms, and is finding the experience demoralising and ‘oversexualised. I’ve had guys literally on the first date try to guess my boob size or ask me what my kinks are. It’s like: “I haven’t had f***ing dessert yet!”’ she laughs. ‘We’ve lost that ability to flirt or build connections. It’s crazy. So that’s what I’m struggling with at the moment.’
I've had guys on the first date try to guess my boob size or ask what my kinks are
It is not that she objects to the idea of casual hook-ups. It’s the lack of romance. She hates the way dating apps reduce the complex business of human attraction to a transaction. ‘We’re fed this Sex and the City idea that women can have casual relationships and it’s fine, you can sleep with whoever you want and it doesn’t have to mean anything.
But dating nowadays is very geared towards men. Why? You’ve got all these people who aren’t communicating. Men? The minute that they get bored of someone, they can just jump to another one.
‘If you look at the studies into happiness, the key is knowing when you’ve got enough. The problem with dating apps, social media, consumerism – everything! – is that you never have enough. There’s always something better round the corner.’
This is the impossible question. When should you be content with what you have? And when should you go for more. My strong sense is that Charli Howard is a go-for-more person. ‘I always make things happen. I’m very tenacious,’ she says. ‘I don’t want to wake up one day and think: “I wish I’d worn that, I wish I’d done that, I wish I’d said that.” Life’s for living now. You’ve got to just do it!’
Get the look: Here’s how make-up artist Caroline Barnes created Charli’s sophisticated modern glamour
Monika Blunder Beauty Cover, £45, spacenk.com
Flawless skin
I used Monika Blunder Beauty Cover, which is a concealer and foundation in one. I buffed it in to give the perfect demi-matt coverage.
Bold brows
Charli’s brows are naturally strong looking, so to avoid overpowering her eyes by adding more density to them I used, very sparingly, Blink Brow Bar Eyebrow Pen (£23, bbb-london.com). It has three ultra-fine tips and each stroke mimics a hair to create a natural finish. Then I set her brows with Got2be 2 in 1 Gel for Brows & Edges (£5.50, boots.com).
Lisa Eldridge Kitten Lash Mascara, £29, libertylondon.com
Luxurious lashes
To counter Charli’s bold eyebrows and red lips I kept the lashes looking fluffy and soft with Lisa Eldridge Kitten Lash Mascara, which is lovely and light. It defines the lashes without overloading them, so they still look feminine.
Lashify The Control Kit, £110, lashify.com
For extra oomph, I added Lashify false lashes on the outer corners. They sit underneath your own lashes, rather than on top of them, so your eyes are kept wide and open.
Armani Beauty Lip Power Matte in 603, £36, boots.com
Power lips
I wanted a creamy red lipstick that wasn’t too shiny – as these can bleed – and opted for Armani Beauty Lip Power Matte in 603, which has a beautiful texture that stains the lips, but keeps them hydrated.
Hourglass Shape & Sculpt Lip Liner in Incite, £30, cultbeauty.co.uk
I then perfected her lip shape, making it slightly fuller, using the Hourglass Shape & Sculpt Lip Liner in Incite.
Palette London Nail Paint in Vermillion Poppy, £8, palettelondon.com
Glamour nails
Manicurist Georgia Hart updated the classic French look with a scarlet tip (for a bold red see right) against a neutral nail varnish for a modern take on vampy nails.
Shot at Upstairs at Langan’s, Mayfair, London. Charli Howard is the face of GHD Chronos.
Fashion director: Sophie Dearden.
Picture director: Ester Malloy.
Fashion Assistant: Jessica Carroll.
Make-up: Caroline Barnes at The Wall Group.
Hair: Abigail Constanza using GHD.
Manicurist: Georgia Hart at Stella Creative Artists
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