ON IMPOSTER SYNDROME AND THE LITTLE BLACK BOOK

“I struggled a lot with imposter syndrome,” she tells me. “Even when I was walking for some of the biggest fashion houses and flying all over the world for work, my mind was always elsewhere. I remember sitting on long flights with a notepad, my little black book of ‘Jessica’s million-dollar ideas’, writing business plans for things I wanted to build.”

It is often said that people who enter modelling have simply won the genetic lottery; that their success is inherited rather than earned. That idea can breed a lingering sense that you don't quite belong, no matter how many runways you walk. And while Jess undeniably benefited from genetic luck, modelling is a demanding industry that requires far more than a good face.

“I had this voice in my head telling me that the congratulations really belonged to my parents – to my DNA – rather than to something I had actively achieved,” she says. “Deep down, my desire was always to build something of my own and 
 to define success on my own terms. I could see that path for myself from the 
very beginning.”

ON WHAT MODELLING GAVE HER

What modelling did give her, she says, was resilience and range. A decade
 of being dropped into new countries, new rooms, new languages. Every day, the office was different. If you were listening, you absorbed lifetimes of experience. 
 “It taught me how to be tough and kind. How to be strong but likable. How to keep getting up when rejection is inevitable, and how not to take no for an answer.”

She pauses. “It didn’t take anything from me. It showed me the most eccentric version of this world.”

ON THE LIGHT FLICKERING OUT

A decade into her career, Clarke's light was flickering. Her body was failing her; she was constantly sick. And then her mother died.

“I was just tired,” she says, quietly. “Mentally it wasn’t serving me any more. 
My mother died from cancer when I was 25, so I chose to pause for a bit. 
I still modelled a little, but I took time to focus on my business degree and travelled around the world with my boyfriend at the time, who was in a rock band.” 
She laughs. “It was that much of a cliché. But I needed to recalibrate and find 
my centre.”

ON CLING FILM, SAUNAS, AND PISSING IN THE WIND

Before mushrooms found her, Clarke tried everything. The juice cleanses, the aggressive detoxes, the manufactured health remedies that the wellness industry was pushing relentlessly through the late 2000s and early 2010s. “I don’t think we have all day,” she says, “so it’s probably safe to say, if you’ve heard of it, I’ve tried it. The most ridiculous one was wrapping my thighs in cling film and sitting in a sauna, all in the hope of shedding half a centimetre off my arse.”

In the years following the 1990s era of heroin chic, when counting calories to fit into a Hervé Léger dress was routine, genuinely healthy options were hard to come by. Professionally, Clarke was thriving. But when it came to supporting her health, the prevailing advice felt futile.

“It honestly felt like pissing in the wind,” she says. “A lot of what was being pushed really fucked with your mental health and hormones, depriving you of essential fats and nutrients your brain actually needs. People were trying to follow fad diets, failing at them, and then turning that failure inward. Everyone was getting upset with themselves for not being able to keep up.”

ON GETTING STUCK AT THE END OF THE WORLD

When the pandemic struck in 2020, Clarke became trapped in a border-closed New Zealand with just one suitcase. She was supposed to be there for two days. Then the prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, shut the borders. But on one of the last  flights into the country was Clarke's best friend from school in Palmerston North, Emily Blanchett, carrying, among other things, half a suitcase filled with functional mushrooms.  

Blanchett had her own entrepreneurial track record. In her early 20s she had co-opened The Green House, a health product shop, with her mother in Palmerston North. Zero business experience, zero fast-food experience, never paid for advertising. They built it entirely through social media and word of mouth, were run off their feet from day one, and ran it for six years before selling. After that, Blanchett headed to New York, tried medicinal mushrooms and got hooked. Clarke, meanwhile, had been living in LA, where mushroom lattes were a staple at her favourite cafés.

“As soon as Emily landed, we knew we had to figure out how to source them properly,” she says. “So there I was, bunkered down in one of the furthest places from anywhere on Earth, trying to build something from scratch. That moment became the beginning. Not because it was convenient, but because it forced me to slow down, get resourceful and really commit to creating something better.”

The whole of 2020 was dedicated to research and development. They launched in early 2021, making Mother Made, New Zealand’s first mushroom-centric wellness brand. The name itself, Mother Made, is a deliberate counterpoint to “man-made”, an ode to drawing nourishment from the natural world.

Running through the brand is the Māori concept of kaitiakitanga, the principle of guardianship and care for the land and its resources. “Kaitiakitanga is about being guardians of the land and what it provides,” Clarke explains. “For me, in business, it means caring for the land, respecting the resources we take from it, and being a responsible guardian of the mushroom.”

ON WHY MUSHROOMS ARE NOT A TREND

Functional mushrooms are often viewed as a trend, a fad, or an overpriced latte additive rather than what they really are – quite foundational to overall human health. Clarke is clear-eyed about the distinction.

“Mushrooms are adaptogenic, antioxidant and anti-inflammatory. They can help with sleep, focus and energy levels, but the main thing is that they work with your body, not against it. They’re not a quick fix.” As she begins to talk of mushrooms, her passion lights up like the mycelium network. “Functional mushrooms support the whole system. They help bring your body back into balance. Rather than forcing quick results, they work by strengthening the body’s own regulatory systems, the immune, gut, nervous and stress responses, so everything communicates more clearly. Honestly, it’s about doing less, and letting your body remember how to do what it already knows how to do.”

ON PAPATUĀNUKU, RONGOĀ, AND TALKING TO LORIS

Clarke’s insistence on doing things properly is rooted in something deeper than business strategy. Raised in a Māori household, she grew up around Rongoā, the traditional Māori form of herbal medicine. Oils from harakeke bushes, kawakawa leaves for sore stomachs, onions for boils, spider webs for small cuts. It was practical, intuitive and woven into everyday life.

“In Māori culture, nature isn’t just something beautiful; it’s sacred,” she says. “Papatuānuku is the Earth Mother, Ranginui the Sky Father. When I sat with Loris and felt the wind singing through the branches, that was Tāwhirimatēa – the god of the wind – moving around us.” She smiles. “So I think it’s safe to say nature isn’t just an influence in my life. It’s a fundamental part of who I am.”

ON REAL STEWARDSHIP VS MARKETING LANGUAGE

It is this thread, indigenous knowledge meeting modern entrepreneurship, that makes Mother Made something more than another supplement brand. When Clarke talks about sustainability, she is not reaching for marketing language. She is talking about planting trees to offset carbon, using recycled cardboard for packaging, choosing USB-rechargeable whisks over cheaper battery-powered ones. Small, consistent choices. “We’re not perfect, and we’re still learning,” she says. “But real stewardship is about taking responsibility, making better choices where you can, and committing to do better over time, quietly and genuinely.”

I ask her what businesses working with natural resources need to stop doing. She doesn’t hesitate. “Nature isn’t a trend, a marketing tool or a raw material to be stripped until it’s gone. If you’re taking from the Earth, you have a responsibility to give back through regeneration, transparency, fair sourcing and respect. That’s why we’ve chosen organic, farmed mushrooms over wild-harvested ones, so we’re not taking more than the land can give.”

ON WHERE MOTHER MADE IS NOW

Mother Made have now served more than 50,000 customers. Their products are stocked in 240 stores across Aotearoa, New Zealand and Australia. Rita Ora was an early fan of their “I Love Mushrooms” T-shirt. They've been featured in UK Vogue, Vogue Business, Marie Claire, Glamour, Puss Puss, Sunday Times Style, 10 Magazine and Tatler, where the company received the renowned Tatler Beauty award.

In November 2024, they launched mothermade.uk and brought the brand to Britain, finding their home in stores such as Liberty, Harvey Nichols, Estelle Manor, the Roof Gardens, Corner Shop, Koi Bird, Supermarket of Dreams and Healf.com.

ON WORLD DOMINATION (KIDDING) (NOT KIDDING)

I ask Clarke, finally, how she defines success now.

“World domination,” she says. Then laughs. “Kidding. I want Mother Made in every home. My vision is to make natural health accessible, simple and genuinely empowering, not intimidating or overcomplicated. I’m not anti-modern medicine; it absolutely has its place. But I do think we’re missing a step. Education, prevention and reconnecting people to their bodies and to nature should come first, before things become serious.”

She pauses. 

“Ultimately, I want natural health to feel normal, warm and approachable –something that fits seamlessly into everyday life. It’s about giving people choice, confidence and the reminder that they’re not broken. Supporting your health doesn’t have to be complicated. It can be simple and, most of all, joyful.” 

If you’re taking from the Earth, 
you have a responsibility to give back.

On the tube ride home, my conversation with Jess Clarke struck a nerve about how society has a way of framing burnout as personal weakness, when in reality it is often a signal that the life you are living simply no longer fits the person you are becoming. Although Clarke continues to model, she has largely exited the industry; the exhaustion was not a dead end so much as a lily pad she leapt from to a new pond. When life said recalibrate, she returned to practices rooted in care rather than performance, and built something that not only looks good on the packaging, but actually feels good to live inside of.

Sometimes the breakdown is the beginning. Clarke's story arc is tidy enough to sound cinematic: scouted at 15, Calvin Klein at 17, burnout at 25, mushrooms at 28, business expansion at 32, and Māori identity threaded through it all.

But the real story is messier and more honest than that. It's about a woman who grew up barefoot, talking to a sheep on a hillside, who spent a decade inside one of the most appearance-driven industries on the planet, and who came out the other side with a notebook full of ideas and the conviction that doing good and doing well are not mutually exclusive.

At its core, her story is shaped by care. For the body. For the land. For the people around her. It is unmistakable. And yes, she really is that beautifully kind. The rare, no-agenda kind most people only manage as an aspiration