Helena Christensen: the lady and the lace

Forget handbags, forget shoes, my personal obsession is lingerie. For some mysterious reason I get a kick out of knowing that underneath my clothes I'm wearing something beautiful and delicate next to my skin. It's the first thing you put on in the morning after you shower, the first layer on the canvas. Wearing interesting and aesthetic-looking lingerie seems to have an important psychological effect on me. And the thought of it being underneath my clothes carries me gracefully through the day. It is also one of the little secret reasons I feel grateful to be a woman.

Some lingerie is like a work of art. I display vintage pieces on the walls of my home in Copenhagen – not just in the bedroom but all over the house. My favourite at the moment is an early 18th-century camisole in deep lavender blue with little hand-embroidered flowers protruding from the fabric. I bought it for about 50 from the flower market in Nice. It's one of those pieces you can barely look at, it's so close to falling apart. I don't wear it. It just makes me smile when I glance at it. It is a beautiful, melancholic thought to imagine who might have owned it before me, a girl or an old lady who wore it, loved in it, cried in it, laughed in it. Somebody's hands washed it, folded it, cared for it, and now it's in my possession.

Obviously I was attracted to judging the Triumph Inspiration Award for innovative young underwear designers – and modelling the work of all 27 finalists. Some of them are very extravagant, dramatic designs. None of the designers seem to have put any restrictions on their imagination. Some pieces look like they're costumes from a vaudeville musical, others from an Astérix cartoon. Wearing the pieces made me feel like so many different characters: a forest nymph, a bird in flight, or a crazy warrior hero. I must admit, when I saw the sketches online, I thought, 'Am I going to be able to present these as their creators imagined them? How is this even remotely going to work?' Then when we were in the studio, and I got to wear the designs, in different lights and positions, I suddenly felt like we were on a very cool, dark, sensual, avant-garde Vogue Italia shoot.

Avant-garde underwear is fun to model. You just have to go with it. I have shot big-budget campaigns; one was styled like a highwayman's debauch, the set was very busy, almost like a movie set, with multiple cameras around. And there I am, wearing this crazy piece of lingerie with a sword in my hand, thinking, 'Whoah, just another day at work.'

Growing up I didn't wear a bra until I was much older than other girls. I was very willowy, to say the least. My first bra was probably an intricate push-up affair for an Albert Watson shoot in Paris when I first started modelling aged 20. I had ten pairs of false eyelashes and boobs I could rest my chin on – the style back in the early 1990s was to exaggerate everything, from shoulder pads to big hair to upholstered lingerie. I remember thinking, 'In life, this is not going to work for me, it is so far removed from who I am on the inside.'

I prefer to wear pieces that you can barely feel you have on, that emphasise your individual shape, but feel like they're made out of the finest cobweb or feathers, almost like a whisper on your skin I've never yet worn control pants. That might come later. I like vintage lingerie for nostalgic and visual purposes, not to hold things in. I recently bought a red silk set to show under a tiny little top – just a bright strap peeping out. I can spend hours in Coco de Mer in Covent Garden. I get absorbed in all the detail, the hand-stitching, the lace. Last time I went there was 75 per cent off. It doesn't get any better than that.

In Copenhagen, a magnificent little place to shop for lingerie is Tekinoktay, named after its founder, an inspiring artist called Evren Tekinoktay. This place is like a candy store. I buy my bikinis from the French brand Eres – they're pricey but I look on it as a great investment because I know I will really treasure and appreciate them. But I also wear a lot of stripey pieces from American Apparel or simple underwear from American Vintage.

When I was pregnant with my son Mingus, I didn't buy a single piece of maternity wear: not the bras, not the pants, nothing. I'm not very traditional in that way. Whenever I looked in a pregnancy store window I just thought, 'Why would I wear this? It's so depressing!' Instead, I used some of my vintage lingerie because the bras had bigger cups and I wore vintage empire-line dresses all the way through my pregnancy.

Lingerie is a romantic gift because it's so personal: you have to know the recipient's shape very well, and know all the contours of their body like crazy. For me it's always, always a wonderful present to receive, almost like a piece of jewellery. I've never received any lingerie that I didn't love. I can walk into a shop and almost pick the right size for myself by looking, because as a model you get so used to knowing your body.

I love stockings and suspenders – they're what I imagine classy women from the 1950s such as Catherine Deneuve and Brigitte Bardot wore under their tight skirts. Some can seem vulgar, but if you feel like buying vulgar underwear that's fine, too. I don't tend to go in that direction. One day, as a photographer, I would like to do a photo shoot of fragile, transparent underwear too delicate to wear, just arranged over naked girls, laid as art on top of them.

In the end, lingerie is mostly for us girls. I don't think women wear sensual, pretty lingerie just to be admired by men. There's a more profound and personal reason for girls feeling drawn to wearing beautiful lingerie. And then there are, of course, men who also enjoy putting it on, but that's a different story...

Triumph International invites young students from fashion schools around the world to take part in an international lingerie design contest. The winning designs from 27 countries will be judged at a grand final in London, but you can also vote for the winner online. View all 27 showpieces at triumph-inspiration-award.com
and vote for your favourite design between 2 and 31 August