“I was 16 and next thing I knew, Karl said, ‘We’re going to put Naomi in the show and she’s going to walk after Ines de la Fressange’,” she says. “I had so many camellias, everywhere that I could have one, I had a camellia even on the bags, all these flowers. I was 16 and I didn’t know anything but I thought that this was a big show and I mustn’t mess up because it’s important. But it was fun times with all the girls.”

Campbell is the rare fashion model who has managed to stay relevant long after the halcyon days of her youth. Now she is now trying to make the fashion industry more inclusive. With endeavours such as the Diversity Coalition, which she established with fellow model Iman and former model turned agent Bethann Hardison in 2013, Campbell was speaking out about fashion’s need to take a stand long before inclusivity became a hot-button issue.

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“You do see me but what I do in my life now has changed, because my relevance to me is that I have to help the continent of Africa and I feel that I want to be inclusive in the world that I know, which is fashion, and I mean all over Africa,” Campbell says, referring to her involvement in a slew of projects on the African continent.

“We’re global so global means the whole planet. Right now, where I’m at in my life, having known the wonderful Mr Nelson Mandela, what he used to say to me when I was 23 and I wasn’t quite understanding [it], I feel now that I understand and I’m trying to put into action.”

“The misconception about Africa is that it’s dangerous and you shouldn’t go there, but I just took 25 people there, including [fashion editor] Andre Leon Talley and [British Vogue editor-in-chief] Edward Enninful and some journalists from London, and if you’d like to come next year I’d love to invite you,” she says.

“I own part of Arise Fashion Week in Lagos and it was really a wonderful experience. Everybody loved it. Andre can’t stop talking about it, and before he had said to me that he was not going to come and he came and loved it. It’s great to see through someone else’s eyes how they feel about a place. Lagos is bursting with creativity and so is Ghana.”

Campbell herself has taken an active role in the response to those mishaps. She was, she says, recently named “a global change-maker for Gucci, which is part of an initiative to give fellowships and scholarships across Africa in the arts, design and fashion”.

“This is a start and I hope that everyone else will realise that this is a place that’s been untapped for so long and there’s so much talent there,” she says.

While Campbell can’t reveal much about the upcoming announcement of the winners, she says that she’s proud of the African candidates and “their innovative ways of designing and the fact that they are really involved in the fabrics before they make the designs. That’s how I think it should be.”

Campbell, who reveals that she barely has any downtime and “doesn’t know what to do with myself when I have a day off”, is clearly passionate about her new-found mission to celebrate Africa’s vibrant culture.

She is also at a place in her life where she’s comfortable in her own skin and confident of what she has accomplished on, and more importantly, off the catwalk.

“I don’t have any regrets and I think my part is to be where I’m supposed to be and I’m grateful for it – all the ups and downs [and] the lessons that you have to learn growing up in front of the world,” she says.

“When people ask, ‘Wasn’t it lonely when you were younger?’ – it actually wasn’t because we were all together and it was out of genuine wanting to be together. After 33 years, I think that I can now say that there’s never going to be a group like us, solid friends like we were, who supported each other and stuck together.

“I will always be eternally grateful to Linda [Evangelista] and Christy [Turlington] for all the support they gave to me. We still speak today and try to see each other. Our love for each other now is as unconditional as it was then.”