Heather Bellamy spoke with Lorraine Poulton

Lorraine Poulton

Lorraine Poulton is a make up artist, colour consultant and style coach. As a teenager from a difficult background, she had a desire for a glamorous life and so began modelling. This led quickly into using drugs and eventually hitting rock bottom after her first marriage broke down while living in LA. Heather Bellamy heard her story.

Heather: How did you get into being a make up artist, colour consultant and everything else?

Lorraine: I think I've got an inherent love for make up and the girlie things. I always used to dress up in my mums net curtains and her high heels when I was little, as little girls do. I also used to dig into her make up bag and watch her putting on her eyeliner and getting ready to go out. I loved it all. When I came into my teenage years I was a bit of an ugly duckling at school, but I found that if I put make up on and dressed up I could even get a wink from the boys. That was good enough reason to start layering it on. I started to learn how to apply make up to look prettier, not just because of fashion, but to actually enhance my appearance and somehow I just had the knack to do it.

Heather: So how did that go from just enjoyment for personal use to being a job?

Lorraine: That was where it all started to get interesting, because I came from a difficult background. My mum got married three or four times and I never really met my own father. Growing up was not a very charmed life, to put it like that. It was quite difficult. My mum was beaten up and battered. Sometimes we'd lie in bed and we'd hear her getting beaten up by one of my stepfathers. I think when I grew up I thought that is not the life for me; I am not going down that route. I wanted something different; to see how the other half lived. When I was a teenager I knew that there was another way of life. We were quite poor as well, we didn't have much of anything and I wanted what the other half had. That was what got me going; I wanted the glamorous life.

When I was 16 I took off and I went to Spain and got a job. I got a one-way ticket actually; I was very brave. I went with a friend and got a job as a nanny and when I came back I'd been working in a rich house and I'd seen what it was like to live with money and glamour and I thought that I'd like to do something like that; I'd like to be a model. When I came back from Spain I thought I'd get a job in a boutique and a photographer came in and asked if I would like my photograph in the local newspaper. I said I'd love that. Once I'd done that I thought I'd like to be a model and that's how it started.

I got a set card printed and joined a model agency. I moved to London and I began modelling in showrooms at first. A buyer would come in and say, "I want to see that garment, that one and that one out of the range". I would nip into the changing room and put it on. I'd do my little turn and then the buyer would order it, or not.

I did some photographic work and I went to Japan doing a nice contract. I was well into the lifestyle. I wanted to be a fashion model, but I was never tall enough; you've got to be five foot eight at least and I was five six. Although I would get a few fashion shows I was never going to make it as a fashion model. I was never really beautiful enough, but I knew how to make the most of myself. That was the important thing and I think that's what got me by. That's how I got started.

With modelling, once it got going it became a lifestyle. It wasn't that I loved being a model, because you know, that wasn't so glamorous. It led me into all kinds of places, like into drugs. One day I was at a fashion show; it was actually at the London Collections and I was working on a stand and I had the flu. The guy that hired me said, "Here try this". He took me to the side and he give a little bit of white powder and a little spoon and he said, "Sniff that". I said, "I'm not sniffing that up my nose it looks horrible" and he said, "No, you'll feel better"; so I did and I did feel better. That's exactly what drugs do. It lifted me for about half an hour, but after that you don't go back to normal; you kind of go back down below normal. So then I asked him for some more and he gave me bit more and then I went up again, but not quite as high as the last time and then you come down even lower. In the end people take drugs I think just to feel normal and in the end a drug habit, a bad drug habit, gets you to the point where you don't even feel normal anymore. You always feel under the influence and you never really feel great. So that's the illusion of drugs, but that's where it all really started; drugs and drinking and out clubbing. I was the typical teenager doing all that stuff and looking for happiness and looking for it in external things like my job, my lifestyle, my friends, a boyfriend and being loved. That was what I was after.

Heather: This all started from you wanting to get away from the life your mum had with how she was treated by men. You wanted a different life for yourself. Did you find with the money and the glamour that that different life came, or did you find the same sort of issues, just with a bit more money and a bit more glamour?

Lorraine: I think I got what I was looking for in one respect; what I did get was noticed. I was one of six kids and being stuck in the middle of six there wasn't a lot of love to go around. So I got what I was looking for in one respect; I got the attention and I got some fun, but in a way I got so damaged modelling because you get so much rejection. So in a way it was out of the frying pan into the fire. It's funny how we think we'll do something and we don't really realise what we're leading ourselves into. Plus there were the drugs and the lifestyle, which was very damaging. In one way, although I thought I was getting everything I was looking for in life, in fact I was getting everything I didn't need; I was getting the opposite.

Heather: What led you to become a Christian?

Lorraine: Becoming a Christian was totally unexpected for me. You can imagine here's this worldly girl trying to live life to the full; trying to get everything she can and to fit everything she can into that hole in her. There I was stuffing it with everything; trying everything; plus I'm an extrovert and I love to try new things and I do get bored.

I think what had happened was I'd had a low spell. I was living in California at the time and that was a tough time because I got married and the guy I got married to was well into drugs. We split up and when we split up I left him; I couldn't really take it. He was seeing other women and there was the drugs going on and there was the late nights and the financial insecurity and I was out there on my own.