Miranda Kerr's secrets

For once, supermodel Miranda Kerr has her valuable assets firmly under wraps. In a demure, dark-blue Victoria Beckham dress, she is darting around Los Angeles between interviews to promote the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show, which will be lighting up our screens with lingerie night.

Her input, it must be said, is possibly unnecessary; the recorded show will be watched by tens of millions in 184 countries. But the 29-year-old Australian beauty is nothing if not on-brand. “Under this, I’m wearing the Victoria’s Secret Fantasy Bra, and lacy pants,” she informs me, with a saucy smile. “In case you were wondering.”

A few weeks earlier, much to the envy of every male friend — and a fair few female ones too — I copped an eyeful of Kerr’s pants up close at the live show itself in New York. Featuring 40 of the world’s most comely models, clad in skimpy smalls and accessorised with feathers, foliage and five-foot wings, the annual pageant of pants and bras, sequins, stilettos and spray-tans has become one of the biggest events in the fashion calendar, employing more than 1,000 people and costing an estimated £7.5 million to stage.

And Kerr — who has a lucrative contract as an “Angel”, one of the official faces, and bodies, of the brand — is undoubtedly the star of the show. When she emerged, sporting a forest-green corset festooned with Swarovski crystals plus a matching cape, and sashayed down the runway in towering Nicholas Kirkwood heels, the photographers flew into a frenzy, and the audience greeted her with a cheer even rowdier than that reserved for Rihanna and Justin Bieber, both performing at the event.

The next morning, Kerr’s dimples filled the front page of the New York Post, America’s biggest tabloid. Today, though, she’s acting coy when I ask her how it feels to be the most popular Angel. “All the Angels are so different, they all have their unique charm and unique, individual personality,” she demurs. “But when I saw myself on the front of the paper the next day, I was, like, ‘Wow, that’s amazing’.”

As the reigning Queen of Pants, she has an appropriately high-profile King: her husband of two years is the British actor Orlando Bloom, 35, star of Pirates of the Caribbean, The Lord of the Rings and its upcoming prequel, The Hobbit.

Quite how the couple co-ordinate an A-list film career, international modelling commitments, homes in New York, Los Angeles, Sydney and London, and their 23-month-old son, Flynn, is anyone’s diary-juggling guess. “I am really lucky that I can take my son with me to work,” Kerr concedes. “But it is all about compromise, meeting each other in the middle, and accepting that we both have busy careers but that at the end, family is the most important thing.”

After her Twitter account was hacked last month, Kerr was forced to quash rumours that she was pregnant again. “Carrying two around the world would be quite a challenge. It’s a lot of extra luggage. But I love being a mum; I kind of wish that I had done it sooner,” she gushes.

For in spite of all the continent-hopping glamour, Kerr likes to paint herself as quite the happy housewife, also quashing more rumours, this time that the Bloom-Kerrs are on a break. “I love to get in that kitchen,” she insists. “I just spent two months in South Africa with Orlando while he was filming Zulu,” she reveals. “It was great to spend time on set with him, and just be there for him, being a mother and a housewife.

“We haven’t decided where we’ll be spending Christmas yet,” she claims, though I suspect that’s a pap-dodging ruse; the family is followed and photographed everywhere, apart from their English countryside retreat. “It is a total secret where that is. It’s the only place we go where we can completely get away from everything,” she says.