Miranda Kerr grew up in the tiny NSW town of Gunnedah when she was discovered at the age of 13. Fast forward almost 27 years and she’s now one of the world’s most recognisable models and a successful businesswoman. Here she speaks to the Forbes Australia Women’s Summit about what continues to drive her and her plans for the future.
Supermodel and entrepreneur Miranda Kerr was 15 when she first walked into a Victoria’s Secret store while an exchange student in the United States. “I remember thinking ‘wow, this is a woman’s wonderland. It was very elegant, approachable and fun, but also aspirational. I was in awe of this store,” she said at the Forbes Women’s Summit.
Three years later, Kerr was psyching herself up the night before she turned up to a casting to become a Victoria’s Secret model alongside the likes of Gisele Bündchen.
“I was a little Gunedah girl listening to Eminem and hearing my mum’s voice telling me, ‘Girl let your light shine through’, but I was so scared.”
Kerr was cast as a Victoria’s Secret model and by 2008 she was ranked by Forbes as one of the highest paid models in the world – a title she held every year for over a decade.
“I remember meeting Adrianna Lima, and Giselle, all these women… I remember thinking ‘ what am I doing here?’,” she explained. “Walking out in your underwear, I mean it’s wild. I wouldn’t want to do that now. I’m approaching 40.”
She recalls how young and naïve she was – when she turned up to her first shoot, she assumed that she would be allowed to choose the clothes that she would be photographed in.
“They put me in a brown shirt and brown pants and I thought, ‘Gosh I’d never choose that,” she said with a laugh.
After finishing school, Kerr moved to the United States for a modelling career that has since taken her all around the world, including Los Angeles where she currently lives in with her husband, Snapchat founder, Evan Spiegel and their three children (the eldest of whom is from her first marriage to Orlando Bloom).
It was a relationship that almost never happened though. Seated next to Spiegel at a Louis Vuitton event in LA some nine years ago, Kerr said she assumed he was not interested when he announced he was leaving to head to bed before 9pm. What started as a friendship eventually turned into romance and the pair went on to tie the knot in 2017.
“I often come to him with questions about business. He really is the most intelligent man I’ve ever met… I often say he’s the brains of the family and I’m the heart,” she said. “He’s so passionate about his work and so amazing and such an inspiration to me.”
Building a skincare empire
In 2009, she founded her own brand of organic skincare products, Kora Organics with a focus on creating products that are all certified organic.
“When I was a teenager, my mum was diagnosed with cancer and we had to look at all the products we were using that could be detrimental to her health,” she says. “We were horrified to realise the amount of products readily available that could potentially be contributing to her illness.”
Over the last 13 years she has built Kora Organics into a skincare empire with a current value that is estimated at between $25 million and $50 million.
There have been days when I’ve woken up feeling exhausted and I ask myself ‘Why I am doing this? I could be lady of leisure. But that isn’t the way that I was raised.
Miranda Kerr
She says the goal is to turn the company into a global household name that one day she can pass onto her three sons. Her eldest son Flynn, who was present in the audience, was named after Kerr’s first boyfriend, who was tragically killed in a car accident when he was 18 and she was 16.
Now on the cusp of turning 40, Kerr says that she looks back on her career so far with a great deal of satisfaction – and a sense of wonder.
“I often pinch myself because it’s surreal. It’s been a wonderful ride,” she says.
“It’s been a lot of hard work and dedication too. There have been days when I’ve woken up feeling exhausted and I ask myself ‘Why I am doing this? I could be lady of leisure. But that isn’t the way that I was raised. My parents had their own businesses and they taught me the importance of hard work.”
