Tall, blond and beautiful, Anja Rubik would be easy to pigeonhole. But whether she’s discussing feminism, sex or why women are natural-born leaders, this supermodel defies all labels, finds Laura Craik.
In some ways, the story of how Anja Rubik, 34, came to be a model tells you all you need to know about her. “I wasn’t really ‘discovered’,” she says nonchalantly. “When I was young, I was obsessed with George Michael videos, especially Too Funky [starring supermodels including Naomi Campbell and Cindy Crawford]. I would look at these women who were strong and sexy, with the world at their feet, and I thought, ‘I want to be one of those women.’ But I lived in a tiny city [Rzeszów in Poland], my chances of being discovered were none, so I took things into my own hands and sent pictures to competitions.”
Rubik has been modeling for 18 years, at first squeezing jobs in-between school before committing to the profession 13 years ago. “When you start young – I was 15 – you’re still developing,” she says. “You enter a world where everyone is expecting something from you: the photographer tells you how to be, then the stylist, then you have feedback from casting directors. You want to do your job right, but you lose your identity.”
It’s hard to imagine this self-assured woman sitting in front of me as ever having suffered an identity crisis, even as a teen. What has changed most about the modeling world since she started? “Social media. Back in the day, girls were just pretty faces on pages. Now most have something to say.” How does she feel about these models? “Well, things change,” she says, cryptically. “The world moves on. There are a lot of young girls now, way more than before, and they come and go faster; people don’t really give them a chance to build a career. It’s quite sad. Also, since we have such an over-saturation of images and magazines and designers, what you do is not as important as it used to be. Back in the day, if a girl had a cover of Vogue Italia, she was ‘it’ for the next two or three seasons. Now, it’s still a very prestigious magazine, but it doesn’t build a career.”
Models can be guarded, especially those with a rumored $10million fortune such as Rubik, but she is unexpectedly candid on all topics bar her personal life (she married Serbian model Sasha Knezevic in 2011; they separated in 2015). Is she in love at the moment? “I met someone I really like, so we’ll see how it goes.”
On designer relationships, however, she’ll wax lyrical, notably about incoming Givenchy designer Clare Waight Keller (“I’m so excited to see that brand with a female perspective”) and Stella McCartney (“I love that she was one of the first to have the courage to introduce awareness into high fashion”). Anthony Vaccarello is one of her closest friends: she walked in his first show in 2010; he dressed her in that skin-baring, headline-generating white dress for the 2012 Met Gala. “Still a very cool girl, but she’s feminine, sexy and chic” is how she describes Vaccarello’s take on Saint Laurent: “He likes to say, ‘My girls are as chic as f***’.”
Rubik has always been seen as a ‘sexy’ model, forever in the tabloids for some ‘nipple slip’ or other. How does she define the term? “Sexy is just confidence,” she shrugs. “You can have the most beautiful girl walk into the room, wearing the most gorgeous dress, and if she doesn’t feel confident, you’re not attracted to her. I only started to feel really good in my skin when I was 27. Some people get there earlier, and I envy them. It took me quite some time.”
Her own style “goes from a bit hippie and ’70s in the summer to a bit more masculine in winter”. For fall, she’s coveting a pair of Saint Laurent knee boots, black Isabel Marant pants and lots of Chloé, a brand she is especially fond of thanks to having been cast in its 2004 campaign (“My big break”).
With the gender pay gap such a hot topic, I wonder how mindful Rubik is of the fact that modeling is the only profession in the world where women get paid more than men. “I love it!” she exclaims. “A lot of people consider modeling as objectifying women – I don’t think that at all. A girl in this industry is usually smart, a strong feminist and completely independent. Of course, she’s judged on her looks, but at the same time, she can pick what she wants to do with her life.” Has she ever felt discriminated against? “When you’re a tall, blond model, unfortunately you’re still very quickly identified as not very smart with not much to say. But that gives you a kick to break those stereotypes.”
Rubik is no dumb blond. She is particularly vocal on women’s rights: on the day we meet, she has had an article published on the Huffington Post about women’s reproductive rights in her native Poland. “We managed to elect a right-wing nationalistic party, and they are going for women’s rights,” she explains. “Abortion in Poland is illegal, but they are trying to make it illegal under all circumstances. So if a woman is raped, she is not allowed to abort; if her life is in danger because of the pregnancy, her choice is prison or death. There is no sex education in Poland – they pulled it out of the schools.” She pauses. “These laws have been changed by a bunch of men who don’t think about what is happening to a woman’s psyche.”
It’s great that she is using her platform to get the message out, I say. “A lot of the things I do are about empowerment or women’s rights,” she says, adding that even the fragrance she launched in 2015, Original, is built around the notions of independence and power. “I get upset when I speak to people and feminism comes up, and a woman says, ‘Yeah, but I’m not really a feminist.’ What are you talking about? Do you know what it means? It’s equal rights!”
And then you have all the male feminists, I say, who talk the talk but never do the dishes. “Because we’re born into a sex where we’re automatically supposed to do that!” she agrees, incredulous. “We are entering very interesting times where women are stronger – although a lot of countries seem to be going backwards on women’s rights, I think we’re going to gain more strength out of it – and I’m waiting for more female leaders to appear because I think we’re more natural leaders than men. We can multitask. We have it in our Dna.”
She is a keen advocate of women supporting other women. “Even between models, that whole vision of competitiveness, it really doesn’t exist,” she says. “Maybe it did back in the day, but now girls fix each other’s clothes tags. You’re part of a bigger vision, you work together, you want it to be the best. It’s not just about you.”
As a woman with such clear principles and focus, does she feel that she has ticked off all of her life goals? “No, no! I haven’t!” she laughs. She’ll continue to be an ambassador for environmental group Parley for the Oceans and helm independent fashion magazine 25, which she set up in 2012. There’s also a book in the pipeline. Judging by the amount she has managed to cram into her 34 years, it’s guaranteed to be a must read.
