Kirsty Hume's Fashion Comeback

Kirsty Hume is making a fashion return. The model - who was shooting Chanel campaigns when many current catwalk faces were shooting, well, nothing but baby snaps - is back with a vengeance, and this time she has even bigger plans.

"This career just sort of happened back then, so I was like, 'OK' and did it. I think that happens to a lot of girls who have another plan; mine was art," the Ayrshire-born, LA-based beauty told us. "Now, I would love to develop a knitwear line. It's something I've wanted to do for a long time actually. I studied permaculture in northern California and I feel that I can combine that interest in sustainability - as well as my arty side, I've always painted - with my fashion experience. Plus, I'm a big knitter. I have lots of plans in the pipeline."

Famous for noting that the most exciting part of her modelling life was "the money", Hume has always been - to all intents and purposes - a reluctant supermodel, but the next decade will be anything but, she asserts. Famous by 18 and expecting her daughter at 27, she was credited as having "retired" after a decade in the business, but explains that she actually never consciously removed herself from fashion - she just slowly begun saying "no" to more jobs than she said "yes" to; a concept that many a previously career-driven new mother can relate to. But, now that Hume's daughter Violet is 10 - and is securing her own modelling work with brands like Zara thanks to her inherited good looks - it's time to turn her attention back to her career.

Kirsty Hume

"I think being in LA, just from a very practical point of view, contributed to the perception that I was 'retiring' from fashion because I was just that much further away from the hub and everything that was happening," she said. "But also, I had my daughter. I spent 10 years very focused on her and now I've begun thinking, what do I want the next 10 years to look like? What do I want to do?"

At 38, Hume still retains the same sense of otherness that set her apart as a model in the Nineties. The only Scot on the New York scene; the only long-haired, fairy-pure wood nymph in a sea of grungy club kids; the only 19-year-old emanating wisdom to rival your grandmother, she has always been different. She shifts uncomfortably at any suggestion she is special - any mention of her beauty makes her visibly cringe - but one topic makes her eyes sparkle: her homeland.

"I've always missed Scotland," she nodded. "I grew up on the beach. I miss the cold, fresh air, and the wind! I have a picture on my desk in LA of me and my mum and my brother on Ayr beach, with jackets up to our eyes, smiling away. It's the first thing I do when I get home; just go to the beach and breathe some fresh air. I was standing outside my dad's house a few nights ago and the wind was amazing. Just having my feet planted on the earth in Scotland, it feels like I'm home. My dad thinks I'm crazy!"

She has a quality of the Scottish literary heroine about her - calling to mind Sunset Song's Chris Guthrie with her talk of "the land" - and how alien she feels in LA is almost palpable, slight California twang notwithstanding. Hume's memories of Scotland often describe her mother - windswept and smiling, who she lost as a teenager - and err on the wholesome and affectionate side, as only someone who left their hometown before boredom and disaffection set in can do. Her daughter, with soon-to-be ex-husband Donovan Leitch, is as American as apple pie, however, and it's clear that the thought of removing her from her native country in order that Hume can begin the next phase of her life weighs heavy on the model's mind.

"I'm really ready to leave LA," she admitted. "Violet's dad is from there, and she has lived there for the past 10 years, but I definitely think a lot about coming home to Scotland. My dad is 80 now... and I'm sad that my daughter is growing up with no sense of my culture."

Flipping through images of Hume - who was walking in the Victoria's Secret show alongside Gisele Bündchen and Stephanie Seymour, or for Gianni Versace at the Ritz in Paris, while many fashion names were still at school - provokes awe for many; obsessed with the stories, relationships and memories that must have been forged in such a seminal time, but Hume retains a down-to-earth absence of nostalgia about the era.

"I didn't really understand why  Victoria´s Secret wanted me.¨she shrugged. "I'm not exactly a classic lingerie girl, I didn't think. I'm quite a quiet person and not really someone who relishes being dressed up and put on a stage... I became a face of Chanel beauty when I was 19 and it feels like another life when I think about it now, but in many ways it felt like another life even then! 'Where am I?! What am I doing?!' I never really made a decision to leave fashion, but this definitely feels like a conscious return. I'm ready to embrace my life, in several different ways, and stepping back into modelling and fashion is a big part of that. I'm back!"