‘I used to stand on the street in a bikini selling ice-cream' – Vogue Williams on early modelling career

Irish Independent

26-06-2025

While speaking on Kate Thornton's podcast, White Wine Question Time, Ms Williams spoke of her experiences while starring on Irish reality show Fade Street, which followed a group of young adults navigating life and careers in Dublin.
'We used to do modelling on TV in the mornings, and [my father] would be telling everybody he saved all the newspapers and stuff,' she told the podcast.
'But that show, it was the show that everybody loved to hate. But it got me started. And I don't think I'd love to do a show like that now, but I just kind of took every opportunity when I was young.
I wasn't storming any catwalks. Weirdly enough, I wasn't invited on them
'We used to do modelling on TV in the mornings, and [my father] would be telling everybody he saved all the newspapers and stuff,' she told the podcast.
'But that show, it was the show that everybody loved to hate. But it got me started. And I don't think I'd love to do a show like that now, but I just kind of took every opportunity when I was young.
'When I was younger, modelling in Ireland was a very different thing. I always have to point that out. So, when people say 'model', I'm like: 'Oh no, please don't say model'.
'I used to stand on the street in a bikini with a Magnum ice-cream selling Magnums or a €50m thing for the Lotto, standing on the tracks of the tram line.
'That's the thing. I wasn't storming any catwalks. Weirdly enough, I wasn't invited on them. But we loved it. Sadly, the pictures still very much exist, but I'm not embarrassed of them.
'You'd be sitting in a giant cocktail glass sometimes. You just never knew. It was wild,' she said.
The author of Big Mouth also spoke of meeting her husband and TV personality Spencer Matthews when he was 'very fond of the drink', but 'he was so much fun'.
'I always said about Spencer, we're not going to go out with each other, but we'll be friends forever,' she said.
'That's a really good base for a relationship. But then, when it all kind of came to a head with him with the drink, I just kind of stood back and I was like: 'I'm not asking you to stop. This is kind of your own path'.
'Particularly when it comes to drinking, you can't change somebody; they have to want to change themselves because it just won't stick otherwise.
'They must want to do it themselves, and that's what he did, thankfully.'
She also said she believed her late father, Freddie Williams, who died in 2010, would have 'really liked' her husband.
'Strangely enough, everyone says that. My whole family say that.
'They're like: 'No, he would have actually really gotten along with him', even though he didn't like me having boyfriends because I was his youngest child,' she said.
'So, he was very protective over me. But I think Spencer would have passed the mark eventually.
'He would have started talking to him after a year or so. You can't not like Spence.'
In her memoir Big Mouth, she also revealed she felt like an 'ugly duckling' growing up.
'When I was younger, I just wasn't the one that the boys fancied. It didn't bother me too much, I knew my place,' she said.
'I was always hunched in pictures, and I'd smile with my mouth closed and, yeah, now it's always open.'