Sumner's here

Mickey Sumner, the 20-year-old daughter of Sting and Trudie Styler, is coming down. She has just experienced her first catwalk high - modelling for newcomer Alistair Carr - and is torn between elation and disappointment. 'I thought I was going to be really scared, but once the music started I thought, "Oh, I want to stay out here!" I was really pissed off when I came back - I'd been getting ready for hours and it was over in less than 50 seconds. Then I had to take it all off again...'

So here she is in the offices of her modelling agency, scrubbed clean and ready for her next booking. Save for the Ugg boots, she is scarcely in the kind of civvies favoured by models. Asked for details of her outfit, she yelps with surprise - 'You mean labels? I've no idea.' She wears a green shiny jacket with tiger appliqué borrowed from her younger brother, Jake, and jeans, bought in India, now splattered with paint.

She has been at art school in Paris since September and luxuriating in the fact that, for the first time in her life, no one knows who she is. 'Growing up, at school the teachers and all the students knew, so I never really got away from it. But in Paris only three friends know. No one really cares and it's great.'

But in fashion and modelling, people certainly do care who your parents are, and after a picture of her with Sting and Trudie appeared in this very magazine, Mickey was ' discovered' by Karen Diamond of Models 1. 'She called me through a friend of a friend and asked if I'd come over,' says Mickey. 'It was the summer and I said, "OK." '

I can quite see why Models 1 would want her on their books - she's beautiful, she's famous, and she's 5ft 9in - but it's harder to understand why Mickey, who's obviously shy and keen on privacy, would agree. Even she seems a little perplexed. 'I've always gone with my mother to fashion shows and I think it's every girl's dream to be a supermodel,' she begins. 'But I still find it a bit weird - in a good way.

'I'm really doing it because it's an experience not many people get,' she continues. 'You gain confidence about how to handle yourself in situations and if I can make a bit of money...not that it's important,' she adds, blushing.

The daughters of the rockocracy are the debutantes of our time: attractive, moneyed, dripping with Bohemian cool. But while nobody ever accused the Mitford girls of trading on their father's name, it's an accusation repeatedly hurled at Jade Jagger, Stella McCartney et al.

Determined to make it in her own right, Mickey has paid close attention to Stella's career. 'I met her at her show in Paris, and she was really inspirational, actually. I said to her, "You make me want to do something with my life, because you've done the hardest thing - with that name." She's done it, and succeeded and she's talented. She really inspires me.'

But anyone who has met either Jade or Stella knows that a froideur can descend at the mention of their famous parents. Mickey is so relaxed she even volunteers that a recent assignment for Harper's Bazaar was the result of nepotism. 'My mother hired me, which was kind of cheating,' she smiles. 'She knows the editor.

'There are some disadvantages to having famous parents,' she notes. 'But the advantages definitely outweigh them.' And what are the advantages? 'Of my lifestyle?' she gasps. She's right - it's a silly question. But she politely answers it anyway.

'I go travelling, I have security, I have an amazing family and parents who support me, clothes and food. I have everything. There's nothing I don't have,' she concludes. At the same time, she was never showered with money. 'My parents are really down-to-earth. They weren't into spoiling us. At least I hope I'm not spoilt,' she adds tentatively.

Brigitte Michael Sumner, to give Mickey her full name, is the third of Sting's six children. He has two children by his first wife, Frances Tomelty: Joe, 27, a working musician and music teacher, and Kate, 22, an actress. Mickey is the eldest daughter with Trudie. She was conceived while Sting was still married to Frances and publicly described Trudie as 'my mistress'. She has a younger brother, Jake, 18, a sister, Coco, 13, and a little brother Giacomo, eight. As a child she went to private schools first in London (her parents have an 18th-century townhouse in Highgate) and later in Wiltshire, where they have a mansion with 800 acres where she used to ride horses.

'When we were younger we travelled with my parents but once we moved to Wiltshire I didn't like missing school, so we stayed at home more.' Besides her parents, there were nannies and other household staff who formed a kind of extended family.

Her mother is said to have one of the best address books of anyone either here or in America (she introduced Madonna to Guy Ritchie) but Mickey won't divulge who's in hers, besides telling me that the artist Emma Sergeant helped with her art-school portfolio. Even the subject of which rock stars' children she knows is taboo. 'Of course there were a few people, but it wasn't like, "You can only hang out with rock stars' kids." Mostly I spent time with school friends.'

In any case, despite their rock'n'roll lifestyle, her parents were quite traditional. 'They were always saying, "School and work are very important, you can make something of yourself.''' (It's worked for Sting, of course. The son of a milkman, he's now a multi-millionaire, with estimates of his wealth ranging from £85 million to £200 million.)

It was Mickey's own choice to board at Marlborough from the age of 13. She says she wasn't a wild child at all. 'I used to be much more serious and intense. I wanted to be so grown-up that I was uptight and found it hard to have fun. In the past two years I've chilled out.'

I think I would have been uptight, too, if my father spoke publicly about practising tantric sex. Extremely loyal to her parents, Mickey will not concede that they have ever embarrassed her. When the subject of yogic sex inevitably rears its head, she sighs slightly. 'I think it's boring. It's so over-talked about.'

Her father's liberal stance on drugs - also much discussed - has, if anything, driven her towards clean living. She neither smokes nor does drugs. 'It was never taboo so it was never an issue.'

Asked about the wildest thing she's ever done, she's momentarily stumped. 'I don't know if it's wild but I did go travelling by myself to Bangkok,' she volunteers. During her gap year (actually two) she taught English in an Aids orphanage there - somewhat to the horror of her parents. 'They were nervous but I was adamant this was what I was going to do,' she laughs. 'In the end my mum came to visit and loved it.'

Mickey now lives alone in a rented two-room flat in the St Germain district of Paris. She's studying at the French annexe of Parsons, the New York art school, and would like to be a professional artist with her own studio. 'But I don't think that's realistic,' she adds modestly. 'I think you have to be more commercial in the beginning - establish yourself - then you have the ability to do what you want. I'm interested in graphics and music videos.'

Every other weekend, she hops on Eurostar to visit her boyfriend, an aspiring chef. 'He's lovely. I went to school with him,' she says, declining to name him. 'He's not a well-known chef, but he will be - I hope.'

In Paris, she mostly works, she says, but sometimes her art-school friends drag her out. 'We go to Favella Chic, a Brazilian restaurant bar with good music, which is not too pretentious. Some of the Paris clubs can be quite arrogant,' she adds. She grins and bears it - the words 'Don't you know who I am!' are not ones that ever pass Mickey Sumner's lips.