LAYOGA.COM 29T
here are some people who remind you that there’s
magic in this world. Beings who shine so bright they
can sometimes blind. Normandie Keith, with her long
blond braids and thousand watt smile is one of these
people. She has the ability to be as opened-hearted and
present with the homeless gentleman leaning against
the bus stop, as the A-listers with whom she shares
30-year friendships. Normandie is a formidable Kundalini Yoga teacher
who leaves behind a little trail of glitter (and evil eye necklaces) everywhere
she goes. Students, friends, colleagues, social critics, former fans, and other
football moms may think that she effortlessly has it all figured out. What
they don’t realize is that it’s often pressure that makes diamonds.
As a young model spending time in the Bahamas, Normandie Keith
could not stop staring at a local shopkeeper. Sixty-five years old and well
over two hundred and fifty pounds, the woman contained an energy that
was unfamiliar to the aristocratic East Coaster. Normandie recalls, “She
was just the most beautiful woman to me, her eyes, her face, and I just
kept saying to her, ‘You’re so beautiful, where did this come from?’ She
said, ‘It comes from the spirit, the spirit is inside you, and you have it
too!’ She made me feel and know that beauty was on the inside. So, I was
always looking for that spirit.”
A few years and several print campaigns later, London’s Tatler
Magazine...put model Normandie Keith and gal pal Tara Palmer-
Tomkinson on the cover. Big, bold lettering labeled them “It Girls”
inciting an international phenomenon. The duo were part of a pack of
twenty-something socialites who traveled by private planes to private
shores, where paparazzi used long lenses to get shots of them with Prince
Andrew, Simon Le Bon, and Posh Spice. Processed negatives were print-
ed next to pics of Princess Di on every tabloid cover in London-town.
Normandie Keith married The Honorable Lucas White, becoming part of
the English aristocracy herself.
Normandie Keith White with her high cheekbones, perfect nose, and
porcelain skin, became a muse to icons of fashion. In Valentino, Vera
Wang, and Diane Von Furstenberg, she graced the pages and some covers
of magazines including French Vogue, Harper’s and Queen, Hello!, OK,
and more. Polo matches, Dom Perignon, party favors. “It was Balenciaga’s
at dawn,” she laughs. “It was a time of amazing opulence, but it was also
a very high pressure time. A time when I felt like I had to compete and
wear the season’s couture and carry the most current handbag, I had the
outfit together on the surface, yet I wasn’t complete in myself. So [I won-
dered] how can I arm myself, and put on enough of a shield, a costume,
so that nobody knows that I’m really afraid?”
Normandie read books on Buddhism, studied Kabbalah in a tiny room
in Regent’s Park, and attended the Landmark Forum. She even enrolled
in a Kundalini Yoga course, but at the time that didn’t click. She reflects,
“I obviously wasn’t ready for it then.” While at home one day working
on her beauty column in You Magazine, Normandie saw Cindy Crawford
on TV. The American model had written the forward to a yoga book.
Normandie remembers, “I saw a quick flash of this woman in Los Angeles
with a turban, and I thought, well that’s interesting.”The home of Normandie Keith, located in the Hollywood Hills.