Helena Christensen on the perfect highlighter, wild swimming and treating her skincare routine like a workout

When Helena Christensen pops up on my Zoom, she’s in a swimsuit. Fresh from cold water swimming, she is bare-faced, tanned and glowing, her hair dripping wet and tousled. It's the quintessential supermodel moment and only serves to prove how genetically blessed she has always been.

Born in Copenhagen to a Peruvian mother and Danish father, Helena Christensen rose to fame in the 90s as one of the original supermodels, an elite quintet of the most in-demand personalities on the catwalk, who graced the covers of countless fashion magazines. 

She's full of beans as we speak, putting her skin's luminosity down to the power of Cellular Goods CBD skincare, which she started using about six months ago (she is the new face of the brand's Rejuvenating Skincare Campaign), and her connection with nature. “When you grow up in a Nordic country, you also grow up with stories of trolls, mermaids, berries and the fairytale side of nature,” she says. “I feel really connected to that. I think I was meant to live in nature and just roam around out there in the forest.” 

Here Helena walks us through her supermodel skincare secrets and the one thing she really wishes she'd done more of in the 90s…

I have always believed in mixing up your products and surprising your skin. This is also my approach to how I work out: surprise your body, surprise your muscles and keep mixing it up so that your body gets the reaction.

My face cleanser is from an amazing Danish brand, Sard, and I exfoliate with coffee grounds mixed with the Lumity Skin Nutrients Facial Oil. I save the grounds every time I grind the beans and use it to exfoliate my body and face – the rest I give to my plants. I really love exfoliating – the feeling of the little granules wakes your skin up. 

I am obsessed with serums and oils. I put them on my face, my chest, shoulders, hands, elbows, knees, belly. Whatever is left in my hands, after using it on my face, I use on those parts as well. So I'll add a few drops of Cellular Goods Cannabinoid Face Oil and SPF25 Rejuvenating Day Cream, which immediately makes my skin tingle and tighten and leaves it with a dewy glow. My whole life I've had this feeling that I need my skin to be thoroughly hydrated. I absolutely do not drink enough water, and it's a lifelong process for me to remind myself to do it. 

If I'm at home working, I will go through quite a few masks before I do anything else. Exfoliating masks, hydrating masks, deep pore masks… anything that actively does something to your skin that you can leave on for a while. I always see a change when I take them off.  But also it feels good to touch your skin, to massage it and to stimulate and activate the blood flow and lymphatic drainage.

I think cold water swimming is good for the soul, it's good for the body. I mean, that circulation boost is incredible. We have a tendency to make everything more complicated and to go to the darkest corners of our minds and just look at everything from a very complex perspective. I go to so many dark places in my mind. But it really can be very simple if we just allow that to happen. If we just look at what's around us. 

Nature has always been there and is the answer to so many of our mental and physical issues. I can talk about this for days, but really the primal basic idea of how we coexist with nature is for me the most important part of my life. So that's why I jump in the freezing river!

For many years I’ve been interested in how inflammation causes so many of the health issues within our bodies and how important it is to keep inflammation as low as possible. I immediately jumped at the chance of working with a skincare company that focuses on that and uses CBG, a more rare form of the cannabinoid, and a highly potent anti-inflammation ingredient.

Having skin that is dewy and shiny is way more beautiful than putting on layers of foundation and powder. I learned that in my early twenties doing those incredible photoshoots with Peter Lindbergh and his insanely talented team of hair and makeup people, where I absolutely could see the difference from using glossy products and using your fingers to add it on. A face is interesting when your skin is still showing – you know, all the beautiful little freckles and skin texture. You do have makeup on, but it's used in a way that only enhances your own features.

Just something that has a beautiful pink, orange, reddish tone to it. I can use that on my cheeks (I love that sunburnt, rosy cheek look). I can use that on my eyelids and I can use it most importantly on my lips. I love red lips. I'm absolutely obsessed with red lips [below Helena is wearing Lisa Eldridge Velvet Ribbon]. I think the idea that we can put this vibrant tone in the middle of our face and that it is absolutely okay – it's really such a radical thought.  

Because I'm a photographer the way light hits your skin is something that I’m really aware of. When you look through a lens and are doing portraits of someone, you really notice the way the face moves and how the natural light from above hits the parts of your face – the cheek bones, the curve of your upper lip, the bridge of your nose and the colour in your eyes. You can also add a lip balm to your cheeks and eyelids. You get a gorgeous highlight from that – far better than literally highlighters.

I didn't really think too much about it. In the early days, my teens, I think I had three products and I don't even think any of them were skin products. It was like a frosty pink lipstick and a blue mascara or something like that. You kind of take over a few little jars [of skincare] from your mom at some point and that's where it all starts. 

I used a few bare necessities so I appreciate the periods now where I have time in the morning and in the evening to really go through it all and make it a beautiful ritual to have with yourself. The more I learned about products and the more nerdy I got about it all, the more curious I am about which products to use and how my skin reacts to them. I'm obsessed with products so that relationship has changed.

I've been boxing and doing very intense workouts since my mid thirties. I wish I had started all of it earlier because it really is so great for your body physically, but also mentally. When you’re young, you’re going to parties and having late nights. But think about how beneficial it would have been had we done all this earlier, then the hangovers wouldn't have been so bad! So I am absolutely grateful that I at least discovered something that I do enjoy and respond to physically. You can't start early enough being in a close, beautiful and balanced relationship with yourself, your mind and body.