Monnelia Kennedy: Memoir SOUP reflects on foster care, fashion shows for Yves Saint Laurent and Princess Diana

After she was born to a young nurse who arrived in West Yorkshire from Barbados in the 1960s, Monnelia writes in her new memoir how much of her early years were spent with foster carers.

She and her mother were reunited but they were never on great terms, and things weren’t much better in school.

"I always knew that I wanted to do something more but, being dyslexic at school, I just couldn't keep up,” she says. “Everybody said, ‘Oh, why don’t you do modeling?’ It was the only option because I didn't need any qualifications.”

After doing a modelling course in Leeds, she moved to London by 17 with her sights set on a career walking the runway.

“I had a friend whose father was in a pop group, who I met at school, and I went to stay with her in Camden for a while. Then I tried to get into an agency and I just couldn't get it because they weren't taking black girls at that time. It was difficult for for black models to get into an agency and and I just was really struggling.”

She signed on for benefits but continued to look for modelling work and eventually went to see an agency based near Hyde Park in London. They asked her to walk up and down, and then again for the owner.

“She asked me what I was doing that afternoon and I said, ‘Nothing’. And she said: ‘Well, can you go for an audition at Brown's Hotel, off Dover Street, opposite the Ritz?’ And she said: ‘But for God's sake, tie your hair back’. You know, look good. I went into his hotel and I remember going up the stairs, and they said: ‘Are you here for the audition for Yves Saint Laurent?’ And I said yes.”

Soon after that, Monnelia was getting work for YSL fashion shows and on the runway for other houses such as Karl Lagerfeld and Bruce Oldfield in the 1980s.

“It's a whole different world,” she says. “We'd all being doing our make-up and they'd be talking about Annabel's and (going) here and there. One person was flying off to Monte Carlo and I was going back to my bedsit!”

Monnelia has documented this turnaround in her fortunes in her memoir, SOUP: From Shadows to Spotlights, from Rejection to Redemption. It’s a title which she doesn’t want to explain too much except to say that “it’s a mixture of everything, really”.

Of course, you don’t work for major fashion houses without rubbing shoulders with household names too. In Monnelia’s case, Princess Diana was around a number of times.

"She was really into fashion, so she would come to all the shows,” says Monnelia. "I spoke to about twice after the show. She would come back and say hello to some of the models. But I used to always see her around, because I used to work for Bruce Oldfield. She used to wear a lot of Bruce Oldfield and a lot of Bellville Sassoon.”

What was she like?

"Oh, she was adorable. In the book, I used to say that when Diana used to laugh, it used to start at her feet and sort of go up her body and then her head would go back.”

She also met Margaret Thatcher through Aquascutum, which provided outfits for the former Prime Minister.

"It was a few nights before she resigned,” says Monnelia. “She just got back from Paris and she just come to the show at Aquascutum And she came backstage to say thank you to everybody. She came up to me and started talking to me and everything else. And then she went for the hem of my coat, but in the photographs it looked like she was about to kiss my feet!”

After modelling, she went on to volunteer and sit on the board of ActionSpace, which supports people with learning disabilities in the arts world, then joined Smart Works, which helps women get employment. Meanwhile, she got into property investment too.

Monnelia is now 62 and living between Barbados and Tuscany. “Some people have read the book and have said, ‘You've had a really sad life’,” she says, referring to her early years.

But she says that “when you get to a certain age, you have to take responsibility for yourself. And I don't know how I knew that at such a young age, but I just knew that.”