Hello! It’s been 12 years, and I haven’t really introduced myself... Apologies. I had a young child...
I was born and raised in Switzerland, of Irish and Polish descent. Daughter of a diplomat and a professor, global politics was a daily discussion at the dinner table.
I’ve worked with horses, in music, in film, in modelling, and in companies ranging from pharmaceutical research to Innocent Drinks.
At age 12, I started to explore my sensuality, intellectual curiosity, and my body's natural desire for expression.
And I quickly found it all clashed with the rules I was absorbing socially as a girl, based around shame, playing small to stay out of trouble, and serving others before my own needs.
So much of my life has unfolded in the space between those competing realities.
Commercial and patriarchal interests feed us - and rely on us believing - constant messaging that we are not enough. It’s pissed me off since I first noticed it when I was 12.
As far back as I can remember, I’ve wanted to be able to walk the world with my body safe, and my mind heard and respected. It’s always felt like a pretty basic ask.
I'm full of gratitude towards women like Madonna, Pink, Beyoncé, Stella McCartney, Coco Chanel, Jennifer Anniston, Reese Witherspoon and others who have exploded the rules on how a woman is supposed to show up to be acceptable.
Tori Amos, Liz Fraser and Lisa Gerrard taught me to use the voice that I have, and not change it to sound like anyone else.
I started horse riding when I was 3, and trained to Grand Prix level in Switzerland, the UK and Germany. The connection with horses brings me a serenity that nothing else does, alongside a deep love of Nature.
It kept me on the rails, and gave me a solid sense of our human species just being one of many, and how deeply connected we are to other species, and to the land we live on.
I dropped out of school three times as a teenager. I was bored, restless.
At 15, I took myself off to Florence, Italy, to study drawing, painting, jewellery making and cinematography. My parents agreed, which, looking back, was probably a bold mixture of foresight and despair.
One of my tutors was icon and erotic jewellery designer Betony Vernon.
We would go on to meet again 20 years later and shoot a music video together, without realising we had already met.
At 21, I moved to London to go to music college. I lived there for 16 years, till I met my husband and moved to Bristol.
I was signed as a solo artist to Sony Music in 2006, and got to make an album with the legendary producer and nicest man you’ll ever meet, Mike Hedges.
I was also a nude Artist's model for 20 years. I modelled in London, Paris, Dublin and Switzerland for Sir Peter Blake, Anna Nightingale, François Berthoud (for Betony’s book The Boudoir Bible), a Prince, a Sultan, and countless others.
At the same time I was making music and learning from some of the best Artists of our time, I was drawing, producing short films and music videos.
My passion for Art was like a PIG IN SHIT.
In 20 years of nude modelling I never felt unsafe once. Not once. The Artists and students I posed for were focussed entirely on bettering themselves, honing their skills to try and capture shapes and colours that inspired them and often eluded their grasp.
In the streets, bars, buses and parking lots however, it was a very different story.
And I learned that women’s bodies and nudity are not the problem at all.
Rather, the eye of the beholder is everything.
“If a pickpocket meets a saint, he sees only his pockets.” Baba Hari Dass.
Fair warning, lads.
Women’s bodies are beautiful, incredible, the source of all life on Earth. And they belong entirely to the woman. Nothing entitles anyone to a woman’s body, ever.
That anyone thinks otherwise has always fascinated and enraged me. It’s been a thread that calls me to action as far back as I can remember.
I also worked for many years as a film and TV extra. I got to work on Hollywood movies and TV series, including Extras with Ricky Gervais, the most fun of all.
I was Sharon Stone's body double for
one of her movies. She’s really lovely.
It paid the bills whilst I was working on my album. But it also became an invaluable, accidental apprenticeship in story telling, teamwork and big projects that shape our perception of the world.
But here’s where it all changed. Despite all this passion for discovering and working with my body, I arrived at motherhood without knowing a damn thing about my biology.
I had my son in 2012. 16 months later, Human Milk was born. Accidentally. It was a cry from the Heart, from a place of struggle and outrage, as early motherhood had left me completely broken and feeling so alone.
I had moved to Bristol very soon after meeting my now husband, Neil, and knew nobody else. He was working 24/7 on composing the soundtrack for Halo 4 (on which I did most of the vocals).
I couldn’t understand any of my social structures anymore. I thought I knew my body. I thought I was prepared. I thought I was confident. HA.
It was nobody’s fault, but it was brutal.
Building Human Milk pulled me out of a dark place, into a whole new era, meeting some of my favourite people ever.
It’s taken me the best part of the 12 years to see how it joins all the dots and passions in my life. Love and rage.
It wouldn’t exist without my husband’s unwavering support, or without our son’s birth. Saying I’m the founder feels a bit simplistic.
Meeting Emma in 2023 was a life-size puzzle piece I’d been looking for for a really long time. Arguably since way before Human Milk. She’s now the other half of the Human Milk equation and is incredible. But I’ll let her introduce herself.
Motherhood and breastfeeding is a portal into every foundational conversation our generation needs to face. Because how we women listen to our instincts, and how others listen to us, is critical to our human survival.
I’ve spent a decade listening to profound and passionate breastfeeding stories from both mothers and fathers, filled with beauty, guilt, regret, triumph, anger, defiance, grief, pride, rage... All driven by so much love at the epicentre.
Mothers hold so much wisdom. And so far, science has backed us up without fail.
We would do well to listen to mothers.
I want every woman to be heard and respected. I want mothers to be a thriving local and global communal force.
And I want to leave a clean planet to my son and his generation. That’s what Human Milk is being built on, and for.
So let’s do this.
Claire
