Tyra Banks Feels ‘Empowered’ by Karen Millen Campaign: ‘Rare to Have Clothes Fit Me Like This’ (Exclusive)

With decades of modeling experience, Tyra Banks knows what looks and feels good — and she won’t settle for anything less.

As the latest supermodel to front designer Karen Millen’s ICONS campaign, the model-turned-entrepreneur opened up to PEOPLE about finding clothes that make her feel good.

“I don’t have the body I had when I was on the runways, so these clothes fit me like this…it’s rare that a tailored piece looks good on curves,” Banks, 49, tells PEOPLE exclusively on the set of her campaign shoot.

She adds, “I feel empowered. Sometimes I’ll go to a photo shoot and I’ll be like, ‘This isn’t going to fit me. It’s not going to fit me right.’ I’ll have to do all these tricks and stuff. But I feel proud that I have this outfit and that it looks so good.”

Laretta Houston / Karen Millen

When Karen Millen walked up America’s Next Top Model creator about the campaign, was moved to stand alongside Paulina Porizkova and Helena Christensen, who were also previously featured.

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“I was actually very flattered, touched and honored because Helena Christensen was everything to me. She is my generation and we were on the same runways, but she was a little… ahead of me,” he says. “To be called an icon now with her touches my 18-year-old self deeply.”

The capsule collection features Banks’ favorite fashion trends that celebrate timeless women who are unapologetically themselves, regardless of age, size or style.

Her personal favorites from the collection, she says, are the “trench-ish” coats and “olive evening gowns” that “look like couture.”

Banks’ legendary modeling career spans more than three decades, and while she’s been the face of countless “firsts” (including the first black woman to headline Sports Illustrated Swimsuit release solo, and then two decades later, at 45, the oldest woman (up to that time) to do so), she remembers the obstacles she encountered as much as the obstacles she broke through.

“I’m a model and I have to be in so many different places and hear that you can’t do something every day in your life because of my skin color [was stressful],” she recalls of the challenge. “Then, after I went through part of that hearing, ‘Oh, you’re curvy and you can’t do this fashion show anymore, and you can’t do that.’ It was very difficult.”

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Laretta Houston / Karen Millen

But all this was in the service of a very noble goal: “I wanted to be the last ‘first’,” she says. “I want variety to be boring. It should be.”

Now an entrepreneur (starting ice cream business SMIZE & Dream, among other plans) and parent (of son York), Banks only models when she’s feeling good.

“I model probably once a year, and I sit in that chair and go, ‘God, this is easy. What the hell was I thinking?’ Because now I’m in strategy sessions!” Banks says, laughing.

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Source: HIS Education