Elle Macpherson Recalls 'Traumatic' Moment She Set Her Wedding Dress on Fire: 'I Think About It All the Time'

Ella Macpherson’s first divorce had an unusual victim – her wedding dress.

While appearing on the podcast Fitzy and Wippa with Kate Ritchie on Monday, Sept. 2, hosts inquired about the dress-burning incident she describes in her newly published memoir, Ella – and the Australian supermodel (60) revealed that it still bothers her today.

When asked about the moment, Macpherson clarified that “it wasn’t only wedding dress — It was an Azzedine Alaïa dress made for me by one of the world’s greatest designers.”

The model said she was haunted again by the moment when the late couturier’s museum asked for the dress — which she wore to marry her first husband, French fashion photographer Gilles Bensimon, in 1986 — and she had to turn them down.

Elle Macpherson and Gilles Bensimon.

Ron Galella/Ron Galella Collection/Getty

“The awkward thing was many years later, the Azzedine museum asked me for the dress, and I couldn’t tell them that it was stuck to the bar on the stone slab where I lived on Ninth Street in New York, the way only nylon sticks. bar,” Macpherson told the hosts.

And no fire engines were called to save the dress, the supermodel revealed.

“They didn’t have smoke alarms like that, which were so sensitive, at the time,” she said, adding that “fire hazards were different in the ’80s and ’90s.”

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Reflecting on the painful moment, which apparently came after the former couple’s split — they divorced in 1989 — the supermodel said: “I just think it’s a beautiful indicator of how frustrated and angry and desperate I felt and so, you know, so in your burn your wedding dress face down.”

Elle Macpherson 1998.

Daniel SIMON/Gamma-Rapho/Getty

“But the remarkable thing is that I got through it and made progress,” she continued. “And that was a turning point in my life, in the freedom to express myself in different ways.”

“Although it seemed very traumatic and dramatic at the time, it actually turned out to be an extraordinary turning point and freedom,” she added.

However, she still regrets the dress, the model admitted.

“I keep thinking about it, like, ‘What was I thinking?’ But at the time it seemed like a good idea,” she told the presenters. “I’m sure there are many women who can relate to that.”

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Elle McPherson with ex-husband Jeffrey Soffer.

John Parra/Getty

After her divorce from Bensimon, Macpherson dated Arpad Busson, with whom she shares two sons, Arpad Flynn Busson (26) and Aurelius Cy Busson (21).

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In 2020, she reunited with Bensimon, who previously served as International Creative Director Ellato appear on the cover of a magazine with both of her sons. Bensimon photographed the cover.

As for Macpherson’s current love life? The supermodel, who was also married to businessman Jeffrey Soffer from 2013 to 2017, teased on Fitzy and Wippa with Kate Ritchie that he is currently “loving life”.

But, she added, she is also “in a relationship with an extraordinary musician.”

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Source: HIS Education