The problem with teenagers,” says the model Daisy Lowe, “is that they are so
misunderstood.” This mantra has weathered tireless repetition over the
decades since “teen age” was first identified, but, because Daisy is 19,
stunning and slap bang in the thick of it, she is allowed to reinforce the
point again.
“We aren’t any better or worse than the generations that went before us,” she
continues. “Our problems always have and always will come down to one
thing.” And that thing is? “Our bloody hormones. Give us a couple of years
and we’ll all be fine.”
Daisy is feeling particularly hormonal at the moment.
So hormonal, in fact, that she has changed her shade of eyeliner from black to
dark brown. The smudges don’t make such a mess, you see. There have been
plenty of tears lately. “I am,” she notes, “absolutely heartbroken.”
It seems she only has her latest project to blame. Daisy and a jolly bunch of
her hipster London friends were approached at the beginning of last year to
take part in a documentary series for the BBC. Titled Class of 2008, it is
perfect trinket TV: a transparent love letter to new metropolitan youth,
accompanying a select crowd through the teens’ favoured playgrounds of
Shoreditch, Camden and the occasional West End dive.
It is a valiant attempt to document the brilliant kids that you see on a daily
(actually, mostly nightly) basis: messy, wonky, celebratory, empathetic,
unapologetically ambitious. “People stare at me on the Tube,” says Kesh, 21,
a fashion designer and one of Daisy’s crew. “I’m, like, I ain’t murdered
anyone. Get over it. We look how we want to look.”
Kesh grew up in Crawley (“A cross between Hackney and Essex, without the black
people”), was incubated under the UK garage noise of Oxide &
Neutrino and So Solid Crew, and hung out with “boys in uniform Moschino and
girls with their hair scraped back”. She says: “Things change so quickly
now, it’s sick.”
Daisy’s other pals confirm the maxim. Portia Freeman, 19, a model who had a
brief fling with Pete Doherty (“I’d rather not talk about that”), first
dreamt of becoming a lawyer “just like Elle in Legally Blonde”. Daryl
Fox-Huxley, 20, grew up on an estate in Bethnal Green and, on account of
looking like a hot rock hero, was shot by Bruce Weber for an Abercrombie &
Fitch campaign. Now he wants to be an actor. His life’s ambition is “trying
not to be like anyone else”. Flash Louis, 18, is a beautiful lunatic (“I
don’t take drugs because they give me panic attacks”) who used to present
for MTV and hated it. Now he is a party promoter, DJ and “Facebook
terrorist. I’m a lecherous internet pervert”. Will Cameron, 21, is in a band
called Blondelle, has ginger hair, will mostly be wearing green this season,
is an archetypal angsty poet and, in common with his generation, has the
same relationship with the Smiths that his parents had with the Beatles.
Will is, or rather was, Daisy’s boyfriend.
Their recent split is the cause of her current heartbreak. “I love her more
than I have ever loved anyone or anything,” he says, himself on the verge of
tears.
Daisy says she fell in love with Will after staying up all night with him,
just talking. He told her that his ambition was to be a great dad. “That was
it,” she says. “He was unafraid to make a fool of himself. He did star jumps
for me. We danced. I was madly in love.” I mention that I’ve spoken to Will.
“Was he nice about me?” she says, wincing.
When asked what defines generations – attitudes to sex, love, drugs, music,
fame, fashion, ambition, religion, politics – these kids come crashing back
with a tirade of opinion. Politics mostly confuses them. “Politicians always
talk about wanting to speak to young people,” Louis says. “It’s easy. Just
f***ing do it.” Sex mostly excites them. “But wear a condom, please,” says
Kesh, who feels embarrassed about the UK’s record on sexual health. Fame
flummoxes them. “I just want to give Britney a big cuddle,” Portia says.
Fashion is a game that anyone can play. “But please, be yourself,” says Kesh.
For the central trio – Daisy, Will and Louis – the television project was a
no-brainer. “We all do different things, and this was a chance for us to
hang out together, for a reason,” Daisy qualifies. “They are my best
friends,” says Will. “I love Daisy and Will more than anyone,” says Louis.
For Daisy and Will, this could have turned into the new swinging London take
on Katie & Peter: Unleashed. “It wasn’t intended to be a cheesy
fly-on-the-wall, it’s observational documentary,” Daisy says. “They said
they wouldn’t stitch us up,” Will says with youthful naivety.
One day, before filming started, Daisy was asked to move to New York for work.
“Possibly for six months. Possibly longer,” says a love-struck Will now. “It
was the hardest thing that’s ever happened to me.” In the course of filming,
Will and Daisy broke up. Enter the brown eyeliner.
Whichever way you slice it, Class of 2008 is Daisy’s show. She is a thoroughly
absorbing screen presence. Even when the show is less than perfect, she is.
The couple are beautifully abandoned about the public interpretation of
their relationship. They have none of the hard acquisition of the
celebrities who sell their loves to OK! magazine, though they implicitly
understand the game. Daisy and Will have graced the cover of iD magazine for
nothing other than the chance to have their love captured, for a mercurial
moment, by the ace photographer Terry Richardson.
For Daisy, the show is her step to the next level. She has a delightful
manner, more grounded than you might expect from someone whose mother,
Pearl, was in the low-level indie outfit Powder, and whose fondest childhood
memory is, aged seven, being bought a necklace from Thorpe Park on a day out
with Damon Albarn, “with the letter D on it. He told me it was the best
letter, and that we shared it. I loved that”.
Perhaps because she was born into the grubby decadence of Primrose Hill,
perhaps because she has been privy to more than most 19-year-olds, Daisy
appears and sounds older than she is. She is a neat, cool, clever and
accidental antidote to the idea that Britain is plagued by a rash of teen
hoodies intent on global destruction from the top deck of a bus. “Drugs are
so not just a young person’s thing,” she says. “They’re everybody’s thing.
There are 40-and 50-year-olds who take shitloads of drugs. I’m not going to
sit and preach, and I’m certainly not going to say that I don’t go out and
get pissed. People can experiment as they like, but if they weren’t
depressed before they started getting drunk all the time and taking loads of
drugs, then they will be afterwards. I’ve seen it with my mum. She is so
much happier without them.”
In New York, Daisy has been astonished at some American kids’ attitude to
alcohol. “I’ve met young people who don’t drink. What do you do? Oh, you’re
productive? Interesting.”
Daisy and her mother are inseparable. “We talk every day on the phone,” she
says. “Without fail.” After she leaves LA, Daisy will be going to Brazil
with her mum. “We’re going with Christian Aid to the favelas, to work with
broken women who are drug addicts and prostitutes, and help them to learn to
become seamstresses,” she says.
She explains that the charity needs “faces” to up the profile. Does it
surprise her that, at 19, she is a “face” who can do this sort of thing? “To
be fair, I’ve worked my arse off since I was 15,” she says. “My mum told me
I had to get a Saturday job back then.” Back then! “I left school at 17 on
the basis that I would work as hard as I would have if I was at school. And
this is what it turned into.”
Daisy has weathered tabloid infamy once before, when Gavin Rossdale, Mr Gwen
Stefani, was uncovered as her biological father. Daisy’s split with Will has
caused similar ructions, particularly given recent sightings of Daisy with
Amy Winehouse’s producer and persistent social presence Mark Ronson. She is
sanguine about it: “I’ve been seeing Mark while I’ve been in America. He’s a
lovely, down-to-earth guy. I like hanging out with him.”
She is still, however, in recovery from her first big love. “I’m a sucker for
romance,” she says. “I still hold on to the fact that, one day, once I’ve
got my career thing done, I can meet up with Will again. I’d love to have
his children. I’ve been a crying wreck since we split up. I’ve never loved
anybody as much as him.”
Daisy Lowe is the class of 2008, in every sense of the word.
Class of 2008 airs from Saturday on the BBC Switch zone on BBC2 for eight
weeks
Well written Andy from Sandbach, you gave me a laugh this morning.
Donna, Paris, France
Hats off to the columnist to create such a piece of literature out of such a vapid subject. I can hardly wait for the History channel to start a series of programmes investigating the ancient civilisation of Milton Keynes. I'm just a bitter 30 something that has yet to have such worldly experience.
Andy, Sandbach, England
More celeb-kids living off their parents' dubious fame to get on TV. It is very boring that almost everyone from this generation seems to be somebody's kid. Peaches Geldof and now Daisy Lowe - would we even know who they are if it weren't for their parents' or parents' friends? I doubt it.
MB, Edinburgh,
Oh, they just sound like kids - they're profoundly in love with themselves and their moody, angsty, no-one-gets-how-deep-I-am ways. They'll grow out of it.
Terrils, California, USA
they all sound like a bunch of pretentious wannabees
amber, london, uk
I don't think Daisy Lowe and class can appear in the same sentence without irony. She's just another daughter of someone in the in-crowd who becomes a "model". Not particularly good looking, just knows the right clothes to wear and how to apply makeup. And she sounds terribly boring.
James, London, UK