Flaminia Villagrán: Redefining Beauty, Power, and Purpose.
April 11, 2025
London Fashion Day | Season 5
April 24, 2025
Gemma Felicity Harborne is a woman shaped by contrast—introspective yet expressive, delicate yet resilient. A singer, model, songwriter, traveler, and trained Creative Arts Holistic Therapist, she weaves creativity and healing into every part of her life. Her journey is not about surface or spectacle but about depth—about turning pain into purpose and vulnerability into strength. She has just released a new song, Tired—a powerful anthem about realizing your worth and walking away from those who don’t. In this conversation, Gemma reflects on the experiences that have shaped her voice, her style, and her spirit—from early journals to international stages, from beauty rituals to soulful songwriting. What emerges is a portrait of someone committed to living—and helping others live—with honesty, presence, and courage.
Gemma, you sing, model, travel, work as a songwriter, and are trained as a Creative Arts Holistic Therapist. How do all these parts of your life come together to shape who you are?
Ever since I was so young, I have always loved singing, performing, and writing, so that has always been a part of me. Music was my first love, and I think that really is at the core of who I am. If I’m not writing and making my own music, I’m usually going to gigs or festivals, or I’m listening to other people’s music.
In terms of songwriting and lyrics, I started writing poetry at a really young age, and I would write for hours and hours in my journal too—so writing is genuinely how I have always processed my experiences and emotions.
Travelling I definitely got from my dad, as he has always travelled a lot since I was a kid. He took me on my first trip abroad to Paris when I was eight or something, and he lives in Thailand, so I have always gone out there to visit him. He’s always encouraged me to see the world, so I definitely think I got that adventurous part of me largely from his influence. I have his gypsy blood for sure.
The modelling, beauty, and fashion side of me came at a later age, I think. I wasn’t into that sort of thing until my mid-twenties really. I actually think I largely became more and more interested in fashion and beauty when I was struggling with a lot of really challenging health problems. I began to focus a lot on my fashion and beauty, because it was something I could do every morning to make myself feel and look beautiful when I was struggling in many other ways. It kind of empowered me, and I noticed how looking good affected me mentally in a positive way.
Many may have felt I was hiding how I felt behind a polished image, but really, looking good helped me to be able to pick myself up, to feel more empowered, and to get through moments when I was feeling so dark. Fashion and beauty for me isn’t about being vain—it can actually be a real form of self-expression and self-empowerment, I think.
My health issues also pushed me to want to train as a Creative Arts Holistic Therapist, because I realized how much I wanted to help other people. I think this part of my life helps me to feel fulfilled, knowing I can really impact others positively, rather than being too self-absorbed. I love looking deeply into other people, unravelling them and figuring out why they are the way that they are. I’m also extremely emotional, empathetic, and caring, and I think these traits make me a good therapist.
As someone who writes and performs your own music, how has creativity been a healing tool in your journey with health challenges?
Creativity has been an incredible healing tool for me. I do love to perform, but for me, as an introvert and someone who has a lot of emotions, I think writing songs really is my safe space. Sometimes in life, it’s hard to say the things that we feel out loud. Our deepest, darkest feelings can be hard to voice.
Especially if you are going through something traumatic that is ongoing—like a major and life-long illness—it can be really challenging to put your feelings and emotions into words.
And I struggled with this for a really long time, because the pain of what I was going through just felt too much to actually express outwardly.
So I kept it all inside of me for a long time, but that hurt me so much more. I didn’t feel like anyone around me could truly understand what I was going through, because often the people around you can invalidate your emotions without even realizing it, since they don’t fully understand them.
But being able to write songs about all of the confusing feelings I had gave me a method to express myself more easily. It made it easier for me to identify my feelings, to find the right words for them. Then being able to perform these songs and show them to people vulnerably was in some ways very challenging—but has helped me to learn how to really own my feelings.
A few times, people at my shows would be taken aback by the honesty of my lyrics, but I realized that it was okay if they didn’t understand, because not everyone will. But it is important to always own your emotions, because they are your emotions. People may not understand them or validate them, but that is okay—because they haven’t been through what you have, at the end of the day.
Can you tell us about a moment during your Holistic Creative Arts Therapy training that deeply changed the way you see the mind-body connection?
I think many things throughout my training were deeply life-changing. For example, we watched a documentary quite near the beginning of the course called HEAL, and it spoke a lot about how our childhood experiences and subconscious belief systems directly influence our bodies and health—literally for the rest of our lives.
A lot of my course delved into how our minds and our thoughts influence everything in our lives, including the cells in our bodies and the state of our health. We were also told about how people who had cancer were much more likely to survive if they had good mental health—so things like good relationships, a strong reason for living, a feeling of purpose, a sense of community.
Getting the mind right is a huge part of getting healthy, and this was a valuable lesson to learn both for myself and for my work as a holistic therapist.
How does fashion function for you beyond the visual—is it a form of storytelling, empowerment, or something else entirely?
I think fashion for me is definitely a form of personal empowerment. As I said before, I spent many years with health problems which made it often a struggle to get up and out of the house—sometimes because of physical pain and fatigue, and also sometimes because of feeling bad mentally or emotionally. But I often found that wearing beautiful clothes and making myself look nice gave me the strength to get up and to make the most of life, even if things weren’t perfect.
It was almost like a form of manifestation in a way for me. I would play the part of the healthy person I wanted to be one day. It may have confused people into thinking I was healthier than I actually was, as I would often act the part of a healthy person—wearing makeup and dressing well. But for me, looking good made me feel stronger on the days that felt really hard.
This made me realize how fashion and beauty can actually really change how we feel day to day, by improving our confidence levels and empowering us in our lives.
From the stage to the pageant, how do you navigate vulnerability and confidence in such public spaces?
I think in terms of confidence, I found it easier at the pageant than when I am singing my original songs at my shows on stage, and that is mostly because at the pageant I was able to kind of play a part. It was more like a performance where I was being my pageant queen identity. So I would meditate and envision this very confident version of me up on the catwalk, and as a result I began to radiate a more confident energy when I was up on stage.
However, when doing my shows where I am performing my own original songs which I have written, it feels much more challenging for me.
The lyrics I am singing are written straight from my own experiences and often from a painful place, which is incredibly vulnerable to share with a whole venue full of people, some of whom I don’t know that well.
I won’t lie—being so openly vulnerable whilst feeling confident performing is something I am in the process of working on and getting better at, but I am definitely improving. I am working on trying to connect to the emotions of the lyrics I am singing, while also separating the song I am singing from my performance, and envisioning myself as confident on stage, just as I did at the pageant. The techniques I used at the pageant really helped me in that way.
I also find that owning my emotions and vulnerability helps, and thinking to myself, “Not everyone in the room has to like my songs, and that is okay. It doesn’t mean they aren’t good.” I have had to learn to own who I am and be okay with other people not approving of that sometimes. Focusing on my makeup and putting a cool outfit together helps me to feel more confident on stage too, so I always keep this in mind before every performance and make sure I plan my look properly.
Travel seems to be a huge part of your life. Has a specific place or culture ever shifted the way you think about art, healing, or beauty?
It is a huge part of my life. I love it! Hmm, that is an interesting question… I think going to Central America earlier this year definitely shifted some things within me and taught me a lot. The people there are very much about simplicity, and I think in many ways that is very different to London.
In London, it is the culture to fully dress up and make a lot of effort with how we look, and there is a whole perfectionist way of thinking there—so a lot of people will get surgery as they age. But in Guatemala, for example, ageing and having wrinkles is seen as beautiful, and natural beauty is much more valued. People will go out there looking very natural, dressed down, and chilled.
And this was a big change for me, but it actually taught me a lot about learning to own my natural and internal beauty and how being raw and natural can actually be the most beautiful thing in the world. I think this helped me to accept the more imperfect and flawed parts of myself, and to not be quite so hard and perfectionist on myself, which I think felt very healing to me.
It is great to dress up and look good for things, but I think learning that the rawest and most natural part of yourself is beautiful too is a valuable life lesson.
As Miss Planet England 2024, how did you use your platform to reflect both your external achievements and inner transformation?
As a person, I don’t tend to focus too much on external achievements. For example, I was happy to be a part of the pageant, but for me, it was not about winning at all. I think life is really just about learning and growing, learning to love yourself fully, and becoming the happiest and healthiest version of yourself.
External achievements are great, but really, I believe they are just a part of our journeys to becoming happier and more fulfilled. As people, it is easy to get stuck on our external achievements and believe that if we achieve more, then we will be happy—but I think we are so much more than our external achievements, and we should learn to value ourselves for who we are, not for what we do.
So generally, before, during, and after the pageant, I tried to use my platform to focus more on my internal world and my inner transformation to becoming a better and happier version of myself. For example, the pageant taught me to have true confidence in who I am.
And I don’t mean a confidence where I believe I am better than others, but a real and authentic confidence where I do not wish to be anyone else other than who I am. Being in the pageant environment with lots of other beautiful and incredible women made me realize—I will never be any of them, so why bother trying?
I learned to embrace myself, my quirks and differences, and all the things which make me stand out.
You have to own the parts of you that make you feel different and weird, rather than trying to fit in.
I think it just made me realize I was always good enough just being myself, and that was incredibly healing for me, because I stopped comparing myself to others and just started to focus on embracing my own uniqueness.