WHAT THE ELLE: PART 1

Is it just me, or have I caught Elle Macpherson on a really bad day? It’s 9.30am, and as the 44-year-old businesswoman shooshes two yummy-mummy girlfriends out of her front door, there is a distinct prickle in the air. “Oh. Uh, hi,” she says briskly, ushering me in and bounding upstairs, all speckled spaghetti limbs, purple and green underwear flashing under her short Alexander McQueen sundress. “Don’t talk about the house,” she says. “In fact, don’t talk about where I live at all, please.”

We settle in her living room; herbal tea is ordered from a member of staff, all of whom look like oxygen-tent-dwelling New Zealanders: blonde, young, hot, fielding phone calls downstairs, sorting out iPods upstairs, constantly grappling, one imagines, with thongs. It’s very quiet — no mobile phones or doorbells allowed. “My BlackBerry is not even on vibrate,” she says.

She crosses her legs in a way that means business. “Listen . . .” she says, pointing to my note pad, “once you’ve done your bit, I’ll need it passed by me. Just so you know when you’re writing, there are going to be things we’re looking at. It’s really important that you’re responsible in your journalism.” Huh? She continues in clippy Australian tones: “I’m just managing a business, and businesses should be managed appropriately. I’m not here to talk about my life for the sake of it. This is business. You have a job to do and I have a job to do. It’s out of respect more than anything else. Certainly not out of mistrust. It’s just really important you print what your perception of the truth is, or as near to it as possible.”

Well, the truth is that, until now, I was really looking forward to meeting Elle Macpherson.

Like plenty of women who’ve ever dreamt about setting up their own business and watching it blossom into a £60m concern, I admired her boobs-and-balls-out approach. I admired the fact that, unlike all the other supes, by 26, Elle had long worked out that there was life after 30, and that she might need something more than her looks to pay for it. I admired the way she traipsed around America with calendars she’d made of herself to get started, then struck a pioneering licensing deal with a small company in New Zealand, which to this day manufactures her lingerie line, Elle Macpherson Intimates.

I also admired the fact that, having weathered one marriage, to the photographer Gilles Bensimon, at the complicated age of 41 she stuck it to another failing relationship, with the hedge-funder Arki Busson, the father of her two boys, and braved the world alone again. I liked her wholesome, gung-ho demeanour and the way she is still incredibly lush and sexy in an “anyone for a run along the beach?” kind of way, yet remains unpretentious about her looks. I envied the way she is still top billing at all the great parties — tonight she’s off to Elton John’s White Tie & Tiara Ball — and still a one-word wonder. I admired the fact that she was a brand before people could be brands.

So I’m puzzled as I sit here, not sure whether she’s going to burst into tears or walk out. She begins to talk at a canter about her business and life philosophy. She has the lingerie line, a new range of body products, a fresh contract with Revlon. I feel mildly relieved when she opens with: “There are probably seven key words that would describe my journey . . .” She pauses. “But I’m not going into them.”

We move on to her London life, how she shares the children with Busson, one week on and one week off. In the weeks with Flynn, 10, and Cy, 5, it’s the school run and homely moments. “I treat my children holistically,” she says. “I’m 100% present. We laugh a lot, do things in unusual ways.” She talks to them in French: she is bilingual from a long stint in France during her twenties; their father is French Swiss. After she’s put them to bed at 9pm, she “works globally” with her associates on the other side of the world until 1am. The business now employs 250 people — “although don’t quote me on that” — and has factories in China, which she’s checked out herself “to make sure no child labour’s involved”. She’s “very hands-on”, but has got to the point where she leaves the day-to-day designing to a team of 12. In the weeks without children, she gets to party. “My days tend to be longer and much more free-flowing,” she says. What a brilliant, postmodern arrangement! “It’s . . . an arrangement,” she says crisply.

Whenever I don’t ask the right questions — “although you’ve put a lot of thought into them, and I appreciate that” — she lapses into curt Meg Ryan “wrap it up” behaviour, bristling with some kind of peculiar anger or frustration. But I don’t know what the right questions are, so there’s “I think I answered that in your last question”, or, on the uncontroversial subject of how to survive business as a youngster, “I like having this conversation, but I don’t know if it’s the right conversation for this interview”. Finally, when I ask her to evaluate my correct bra size, she snaps, “This has been done to death, so I’m not going to do it. But I can tell you what it is.”

She makes me feel anxious, so I ask her if she is happy.

“I don’t believe . . . I find it really difficult because ‘happy’ comes from ego space: ‘Is your ego getting its way right now?’,” she says. “In philosophical terms, I would say that my life is amazing. I mean I always say that, I am enjoying my life, I have infused my life with joy.” But not happy? “I’m . . . fulfilled.”

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