WHEN I WAS GROWING UP, a young Black girl in 1980s South London, just a couple of miles from Campbell’s own childhood home, her omnipresence was a palpable part of daily life. The hairdresser who came to our house claimed fame for knowing—no matter how remotely—Campbell’s mother. I remember sitting on a low Ashanti stool by my parents’ shelves of records, listening to Sade—another Black British female icon—while we had our hair blow-dried and braided, reading magazines inevitably filled with images of Campbell.
My mother would often come home from work with some new revelation around Campbell’s own beauty practices, insisting we adopt them immediately. I remember slathering my skin with baby oil, on the suggestion that this highly affordable drugstore product might somehow transform me into a goddess of similar proportions.
To us, and many other Black British people in my world, none of the media’s attempts to depict Campbell as a monstrous diva were persuasive. We loved her anyway, because she was ours, and no one could dispute that she was the best in the world at what she did.
It’s hard to be objective about someone whose achievements have so permeated my psyche—from my childhood memories to my very notion of Black beauty and excellence. Even so, I was unprepared for the gracious reception I received during our interview. As we were speaking at her kitchen table, in true British fashion, Campbell served me endless cups of tea. She insisted on decanting oat milk into a jug, to avoid the travesty of pouring directly from the carton. Her attentiveness was such that, once she realized the extent of my appetite for leaf-based caffeine, Campbell switched the dainty teacup I’d initially been given for a large mug.
It dawned on me then that Campbell is actually remarkably old-fashioned, imbued by the women who raised her with the values of the colonial Caribbean. Morris-Campbell tells me she had specific ideas about the social training her daughter should receive. “I used to take Naomi to places that would educate her and give her that confidence,” Morris-Campbell says. “Places that don’t exist anymore, like tearooms, for high tea. Naomi had to learn to ski—she used to go to Megève.”
At London’s Barbara Speake Stage School, which Campbell attended from five to 12, she received elocution lessons alongside a curriculum that included dance, music, and drama. If the idea was to prepare her for a life of glamour and fame—Morris-Campbell hoped her daughter would become an actor rather than a model—it worked. “When I got invited to my first dinner as a model,” Campbell says, “I realized I knew exactly how to deal with things.” The school, Campbell adds, prepared her for a world in which you encourage your peers to thrive rather than compete against them. Two school friends, Justine and Nicole, who have now joined us around the table, concur.