A fairytale life
The Daily Telegraph

When Sophie Dahl first told me at a party that she had written a book I felt envy and, I am loth to confess, suspicion. What kind of a book, I asked her. 'Oh, just a short, little book,' she said kindly, reading my dismay. 'A fairy tale for adults.' When is it being published, I asked. 'Valentine's Day,' she said. 'By Bloomsbury. They've been absolutely magical.' Ah.

You can get away with querying an adult fairy tale: they are hard to pull off after all, but Bloomsbury? An esteemed literary publishing house with authors such as Margaret Atwood, John Irving, Hubert Selby Jr and Will Self on its books list, not to mention JK Rowling, Bloomsbury doesn't publish any old thing.

There is a lot about Sophie Dahl's life that is magical (and a good deal that isn't, too). Her grandfather, of course, was Roald Dahl, who wrote, among other things, a fairy tale - The Big Friendly Giant - for the then geeky, bespectacled child who was Sophie aged five. Then there are Dahl's various fairy godmothers, several of whom have conjured up party dresses and made sure she has gone to the ball. The first was Isabella Blow, whom Dahl met on a Knightsbridge street.

She has told the Blow story a hundred times, but like all good raconteurs Dahl, 25, relates it with wonderful relish. 'I was 18 years old, and sobbing on Elizabeth Street because I'd had a ghastly row with my mother. I suddenly saw this vision in a Philip Treacy ship hat, red lipstick, [see-through] McQueen trousers, and Agent Provocateur knickers, flying about with all these bags. I thought, I don't know who that woman is, but I want her in my life, so I asked if I could help her. I carried her bags up to her house, and she said, "Actually, why have you been crying?" I told her I'd been rowing with my mother about my future and that I didn't know what I was going to do. And she said, "Do you want to be a model?" I said, "OK." "Come on, then," she said. "Let's go and find your mother and tell her." '

Then there is the story of Dahl and the photographer Stephen Meisel. In December 1999 Meisel saw Dahl dancing at a Dior party in New York, and the next day he hired her for the cover of Italian Vogue. Of course, Dahl wasn't just at the party. She was at the party in extremis, dressed in Gucci courtesy of another fairy godmother, this time a male friend, who lent her $2,000 to buy the magic outfit after she lost a bag containing all her favourite dresses (she had just picked them up from the dry cleaners) somewhere in the department store Bergdorf Goodman.

What was a 22-year-old English girl doing in Bergdorf Goodman with all her dry cleaning? She was having her hair styled; need you ask? 'I was broke,' Dahl says. 'So poor it wasn't funny. But I was going to a party, and I was not sensible then, nor am I now, so that is what I did. It really was "Cinderella, you shall go to the ball". And that night, armed with my Gucci and my red lipstick, I did.'

That meeting with Meisel led to Italian Vogue, Italian Vogue led to the famous and infamous Opium campaign of 2000 (Meisel photographed Dahl wearing nothing but high heels and jewels posing as if she were reaching a climax; but a few months later, after the image received a record number of complaints, the billboard ads were taken down. When asked about it, Dahl is breezy and undefensive. 'I was surprised by the reaction,' she says, 'and because I don't live in London the fuss somewhat went over me.' (In New York, where Dahl now lives, the ad appeared only in magazines.)

The Opium campaign led to endless speculations about Dahl's love life, a subject on which she is resolutely private. For the record she is currently single; she dated the actor and director Griffin Dunne for more than a year, and has been linked to, among others, Mick Jagger, Queer As Folk actor Charlie Hunnam, and Benicio Del Toro. All of the above has led Dahl to the beginnings of a film career (she has a part in Alex Cox's A Revenger's Tragedy), which is one of the things she is keen to pursue seriously. The other is writing. But this is not to say Dahl is dismissive of the work that first made her famous.

'When I was at school I wanted to be a writer and an actress,' she explains. 'Then this whole modelling thing happened. It went through its various incarnations, and now the nice thing about it is that I can just do enjoyable jobs. At some point, of course, it will just reach its natural conclusion.'

What Dahl actually means is two incarnations. She began her professional life as an unwitting celebrity model, becoming instantly famous for being Sophie Dahl: gorgeous and largeish, hired to promote sex and flesh, lots of it. Her image was used to sell newspapers and magazines.

Dahl describes these early modelling days - she was just 18 when she began modelling in 1996 - as if they were decades ago. 'It was a heady time,' she says. 'After Issy discovered me, I spent three weeks being shot by Nick Knight, Ellen Von Unworth and David LaChapelle. Then Storm took me on and the rest was a chain reaction. Those times were full of ups and downs. Then again, I'm always like that: either blissfully happy or wretchedly miserable. I'm ready to be off to the country, have my chickens and write my novel,' she says laughing. 'Probably go out of my mind with boredom,' she adds sardonically.

Part two of her modelling career began in 1999 after she moved to New York, and was hired by the likes of Versace, Alexander McQueen, Yves Saint Laurent, W magazine, Italian and American Vogue. But her career arc is usually summed up in simple terms: that she was overweight and successful, and then became thin and more conventionally successful. She was heralded as being an oversized model who broke through the ceiling of fashion; then, when she lost weight and became a more successful fashion model, she was accused of buying into the very thing she apparently stood against.

In fact, Dahl's weight was often exaggerated, both in print (frequently quoted as being a size 16, she was in fact closer to a 12), and on film. For her first modelling job, she posed nude for Nick Knight and i-D magazine, but her curves were digitally and deliberately exaggerated by the photographer. Looking at another photograph, taken on the same day by David LaChapelle, for Vanity Fair's March 1997 'Swinging London' issue, Dahl, dressed in just a bikini, was in fact sexy and though not skinny, positively streamlined. 'I get asked about my weight endlessly,' says Dahl. 'There is no story. It doesn't merit so much talk. I had puppy fat when I started out, and it went. It was part of growing up. It was never a burning issue for me.' Read more (free regis. needed)