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Every supermodel needs a partner in crime. In Kass's case, it's Vodianova, whose beginnings were every bit as grim and hardscrabble. Like Kass, Vodianova had an estranged father. Her mother, Larissa, worked three jobs while taking care of three daughters, one of whom was mentally disabled. As with Kass's mom, Larissa occupies an enormous space in her daughter's heart and is one of the chief beneficiaries of her good fortune. "She didn't really have youth," says Vodianova, who exudes a kind of soulful vulnerability and self-protectiveness. "So now I think it's time to have her youth and live her life and go shopping and spend time for herself. This is everything I dreamed about-for her to be happy." Like Kass, Vodianova brings along her man wherever she goes. Portman unabashedly describes his life's occupation as "following her around the world."
Now the two models and their guys make a bit of a foursome. While Portman and Lobron cool their heels at the bar, hunched over knights and pawns (Portman, too, is a chess aficionado), Vodianova and Kass work hard, but also enjoy their status, which they know won't last forever. When the light is changing and everyone else is eager to get started, they take their own sweet time, leisurely putting on lotion, administering eyedrops, having one last cigarette. "Is there anything else you need?" asks a wardrobe assistant as the two head to the shoot on the beach, wrapped in white movie-star bathrobes. "Just a Bloody Mary," Kass calls out behind her. The diva antics may inspire a little eye rolling, but it's part of the whole supermodel package, cultivated in the heyday of Linda, Christy, and Naomi. "Those girls were so spoiled," says Vodianova. "It was a great era."
"Come on, Carmen. Come on, Natalia," says Karolina Kurkova, clapping, visibly exasperated that the pair are doing push-ups on the beach while she and the rest of the girls are down by the water waiting to do pictures. Ask anyone in the fashion world about 21-year-old Kurkova and the answer is always the same. She is a dream. A tireless worker, never late, doesn't party, and gracious to everyone in the process-right down to Wilfred, the seven-year-old Bahamian kid who has cheerily made himself available to help haul equipment. "I'm Karolina," she says to the boy, flashing her warm, enormous smile. "What's your name?" Though she has just reached the legal drinking age, the six-year veteran calls herself an "old chicken," and in fact she is the mother hen of the group. She takes it upon herself, for example, to tell the confused, somewhat zoned-out newer girls which forms they all need to fill out at customs.
Much of Kurkova's remarkable levelheadedness stems from her healthy upbringing. She was raised in DyeIin, a small city 50 miles north of Prague. Her father was a professional basketball player on the Czech national team and the chief of police, so there was always food on the table. She attended a selective high school. She speaks about her parents-both of them-as being unwaveringly supportive and loving, two people who wanted more for their children than what they themselves had had growing up during the Communist era. When the chance came for her to model (on the sly, a friend sent a picture of her to an agency), her parents were encouraging. "They always wanted me and my brother to have an opportunity they never had," Kurkova says, "to experience and to travel and to see the world and see something in their lives-something different than just the school, then get married, have the kids, working in supermarket."
At age 15, Kurkova set off for New York-her first time ever on an airplane. As she tells it, she went more to learn English than to model; she wasn't even signed to an agency yet. DNA's Bonnouvrier quickly scooped her up. He recalls, "She was a beam of light in a very gloomy moment." He promptly arranged the meeting that would change her life-on September 7, 1999-with Vogue editor Anna Wintour. Still ignorant of the fashion world, Kurkova quickly caught on that this was a big deal. "It was nerve-racking, because everyone is telling you ... 'Oh my God.' They made me freak out!" Kurkova dressed simply that day-white shirt and khaki skirt-and Wintour approved. Next thing Kurkova knew, she was sitting in front of photographer Steven Meisel for her first cover, as one of the youngest girls on a Vogue cover ever.
Despite her campaigns for Victoria's Secret, Tommy Hilfiger, and Chanel, her six-figures-a-day fee, her three-bedroom loft in Tribeca, the house in Switzerland, and the DyeIin home she just bought for her parents, Kurkova remains the same big, beautiful, cheerful kid who hopped off the plane at age 15. Her best friends aren't models. Rather, they include a publicist and a Czech-born, Harvard-educated lawyer at Skadden Arps. She credits them and her parents with keeping her feet on the ground-away from the potentially damaging fabulosity of many supermodels.
"I was never really falling into the circle of 'Oh my God, I'm so this and I make this and I'm the best and you're ****. Let's get ****ed up.' ... I was never into that," Kurkova says. "I believe in family and hard work. Having a good time is fun, but still, work hard." Yet she feels that after six years she has squeezed almost all there is out of modeling. "Now it's time to start another life," she says. For her, that means picking up where she left off in high school-studying on the side with private teachers-and seeing where that leads, which may even mean back to the Czech Republic. Just as Carla Bruni did with Kass, Kurkova quietly looks out for the newer girls and wishes them luck.
Not all of the six other models will make it big. Chances are, there is one (maybe two) future Natalia or Karolina or Carmen in the group. Who will she be?
Hana Soukupova, 19, from Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic, took the lead a while back, thanks to a strong push from Meisel and Vogue. Of the lesser-known girls, she was the only one to appear on the Vogue model foldout cover of September 2004-the sole cover of the year not to feature a celebrity. At six feet one inch, she is one of the tallest girls in the business, one of the skinniest, and sweetly shy. Her quiet musings, such as the one about her first days in New York City-"It was really hot and then the black people in the city!"-are endearingly honest. Once a child who'd wander out of her apartment with her dog, look up at the sky, and wish that someday she might ride on an airplane to Paris, she is now doing campaigns for Escada and Envy (a Gucci fragrance) and has also done Bulgari and Versace eyewear campaigns. Her parents have become downright fashion-obsessed. Her mother, a nurse, now knows who all the models are, and her father routinely brings his daughter's pictures into his metal factory to show off. "He stick on the wall there," says Soukupova.
There's a buzz about 19-year-old Natasha Poly, from Perm, Russia, who can be seen lounging provocatively, flanked by two hot, randy men, in the new Gucci print ads. In real life, she looks like a very pretty babysitter, with a button nose and an adorable smile, and she is the proud daughter of a former policeman who now works in the Perm airport. "He takes care of all the security," Poly says. "People coming, check-over stuff. He makes the airport better.... My father is very the man who everybody can ask him for help." Horrified, at first, that his daughter was going to drop her studies, he is now "like, 'Oh, good, good, good! Don't stop! Yes!'" reports Poly. As a reward for being such an amazing man, she got him a new apartment and car.
If it were a matter of sheer determination, then Marija Vujovic would be a shoo-in to the supermodel pantheon. "In my country, what we want, we get. If we don't get, we trying," says the 20-year-old Montenegro native. The only brown-eyed brunette of the group, she has the focus and gravity of an Olympic gymnast or a concert pianist. In fact, before she became a model she was busting out Rachmaninoff on a concert grand. "Everybody in school wanted me to stay pianist," says Vujovic, who wore hand-me-downs, lived in a house with both her parents and grandparents, and is still dating the same guy she met when she was 14. "But, for me, was enough." Winning a modeling contest in Montenegro led to signing with DNA, which led to a W shoot with Craig McDean. Cut to three campaigns, for Dolce & Gabbana, Yves Saint Laurent, and MaxMara. You'd never know that during a shoot for the last she was battling body chills and a killer fever. On the way back from Harbour Island, she's not feeling so great, either, but you won't hear any whining. She simply puts her head in her hands and makes a couple of stoic trips to the bathroom. A Montenegrin through and through.
Who's the prettiest? She goes by one name-Valentina-is blonde and blue-eyed, and has an angelically soft face, shaped a bit like, well, a valentine, with a touch of Elizabeth Hurley thrown in. Anyone who has worked with her finds it nearly impossible to take his eyes off her. Ralph Lauren, it appears, was one such person, and he gave her an exclusive, seven-figure contract. But at 22 and married (to Maiko Kurahara, a half-Brazilian, half-Japanese businessman), she has other aspirations. "[Modeling] isn't serious-minded," says Valentina, who finished two years of college in her native Russia. "For sure, I want to go back to college." (She has another, incongruous passion: jujitsu. "It's so nice," she says sweetly, about no-rules wrestling.) Unlike the others, who have no particular timeline for their future, Valentina has decided two more years are enough. Why linger?
Don't count out 21-year-old Euguenia Volodina, from Kazan, Tatarstan. A favorite of Valentino's, she did her first Italian Vogue cover at age 17 and has achieved a financial and emotional stability that some of the others lack. With her strong nose and Slavic eyes, she may turn out to have the long, "interesting beauty" career of an Erin O'Connor. As for Inguna Butane, the baby of the group, who just two months ago was living in Riga, Latvia, playing the violin and contemplating art school, it's too soon to tell. Everything is happening so quickly, and, quite frankly, she seems to be freaking out a bit. One moment she looks like a grubby, if sexy, grocery-store cashier and is telling you how scared to death she is to be here. "I don't know how it going to go." The next, she's done up like a movie star-hair in rollers, lips brilliantly painted-saying it's no big deal. Who can blame her for being schizophrenic? A year from now, Inguna may be back in Riga, with her mom, dad, and violin. Or maybe, just maybe, she'll be leaping onto Patrick Demarchelier's back.
Every supermodel needs a partner in crime. In Kass's case, it's Vodianova, whose beginnings were every bit as grim and hardscrabble. Like Kass, Vodianova had an estranged father. Her mother, Larissa, worked three jobs while taking care of three daughters, one of whom was mentally disabled. As with Kass's mom, Larissa occupies an enormous space in her daughter's heart and is one of the chief beneficiaries of her good fortune. "She didn't really have youth," says Vodianova, who exudes a kind of soulful vulnerability and self-protectiveness. "So now I think it's time to have her youth and live her life and go shopping and spend time for herself. This is everything I dreamed about-for her to be happy." Like Kass, Vodianova brings along her man wherever she goes. Portman unabashedly describes his life's occupation as "following her around the world."
Now the two models and their guys make a bit of a foursome. While Portman and Lobron cool their heels at the bar, hunched over knights and pawns (Portman, too, is a chess aficionado), Vodianova and Kass work hard, but also enjoy their status, which they know won't last forever. When the light is changing and everyone else is eager to get started, they take their own sweet time, leisurely putting on lotion, administering eyedrops, having one last cigarette. "Is there anything else you need?" asks a wardrobe assistant as the two head to the shoot on the beach, wrapped in white movie-star bathrobes. "Just a Bloody Mary," Kass calls out behind her. The diva antics may inspire a little eye rolling, but it's part of the whole supermodel package, cultivated in the heyday of Linda, Christy, and Naomi. "Those girls were so spoiled," says Vodianova. "It was a great era."
"Come on, Carmen. Come on, Natalia," says Karolina Kurkova, clapping, visibly exasperated that the pair are doing push-ups on the beach while she and the rest of the girls are down by the water waiting to do pictures. Ask anyone in the fashion world about 21-year-old Kurkova and the answer is always the same. She is a dream. A tireless worker, never late, doesn't party, and gracious to everyone in the process-right down to Wilfred, the seven-year-old Bahamian kid who has cheerily made himself available to help haul equipment. "I'm Karolina," she says to the boy, flashing her warm, enormous smile. "What's your name?" Though she has just reached the legal drinking age, the six-year veteran calls herself an "old chicken," and in fact she is the mother hen of the group. She takes it upon herself, for example, to tell the confused, somewhat zoned-out newer girls which forms they all need to fill out at customs.
Much of Kurkova's remarkable levelheadedness stems from her healthy upbringing. She was raised in DyeIin, a small city 50 miles north of Prague. Her father was a professional basketball player on the Czech national team and the chief of police, so there was always food on the table. She attended a selective high school. She speaks about her parents-both of them-as being unwaveringly supportive and loving, two people who wanted more for their children than what they themselves had had growing up during the Communist era. When the chance came for her to model (on the sly, a friend sent a picture of her to an agency), her parents were encouraging. "They always wanted me and my brother to have an opportunity they never had," Kurkova says, "to experience and to travel and to see the world and see something in their lives-something different than just the school, then get married, have the kids, working in supermarket."
At age 15, Kurkova set off for New York-her first time ever on an airplane. As she tells it, she went more to learn English than to model; she wasn't even signed to an agency yet. DNA's Bonnouvrier quickly scooped her up. He recalls, "She was a beam of light in a very gloomy moment." He promptly arranged the meeting that would change her life-on September 7, 1999-with Vogue editor Anna Wintour. Still ignorant of the fashion world, Kurkova quickly caught on that this was a big deal. "It was nerve-racking, because everyone is telling you ... 'Oh my God.' They made me freak out!" Kurkova dressed simply that day-white shirt and khaki skirt-and Wintour approved. Next thing Kurkova knew, she was sitting in front of photographer Steven Meisel for her first cover, as one of the youngest girls on a Vogue cover ever.
Despite her campaigns for Victoria's Secret, Tommy Hilfiger, and Chanel, her six-figures-a-day fee, her three-bedroom loft in Tribeca, the house in Switzerland, and the DyeIin home she just bought for her parents, Kurkova remains the same big, beautiful, cheerful kid who hopped off the plane at age 15. Her best friends aren't models. Rather, they include a publicist and a Czech-born, Harvard-educated lawyer at Skadden Arps. She credits them and her parents with keeping her feet on the ground-away from the potentially damaging fabulosity of many supermodels.
"I was never really falling into the circle of 'Oh my God, I'm so this and I make this and I'm the best and you're ****. Let's get ****ed up.' ... I was never into that," Kurkova says. "I believe in family and hard work. Having a good time is fun, but still, work hard." Yet she feels that after six years she has squeezed almost all there is out of modeling. "Now it's time to start another life," she says. For her, that means picking up where she left off in high school-studying on the side with private teachers-and seeing where that leads, which may even mean back to the Czech Republic. Just as Carla Bruni did with Kass, Kurkova quietly looks out for the newer girls and wishes them luck.
Not all of the six other models will make it big. Chances are, there is one (maybe two) future Natalia or Karolina or Carmen in the group. Who will she be?
Hana Soukupova, 19, from Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic, took the lead a while back, thanks to a strong push from Meisel and Vogue. Of the lesser-known girls, she was the only one to appear on the Vogue model foldout cover of September 2004-the sole cover of the year not to feature a celebrity. At six feet one inch, she is one of the tallest girls in the business, one of the skinniest, and sweetly shy. Her quiet musings, such as the one about her first days in New York City-"It was really hot and then the black people in the city!"-are endearingly honest. Once a child who'd wander out of her apartment with her dog, look up at the sky, and wish that someday she might ride on an airplane to Paris, she is now doing campaigns for Escada and Envy (a Gucci fragrance) and has also done Bulgari and Versace eyewear campaigns. Her parents have become downright fashion-obsessed. Her mother, a nurse, now knows who all the models are, and her father routinely brings his daughter's pictures into his metal factory to show off. "He stick on the wall there," says Soukupova.
There's a buzz about 19-year-old Natasha Poly, from Perm, Russia, who can be seen lounging provocatively, flanked by two hot, randy men, in the new Gucci print ads. In real life, she looks like a very pretty babysitter, with a button nose and an adorable smile, and she is the proud daughter of a former policeman who now works in the Perm airport. "He takes care of all the security," Poly says. "People coming, check-over stuff. He makes the airport better.... My father is very the man who everybody can ask him for help." Horrified, at first, that his daughter was going to drop her studies, he is now "like, 'Oh, good, good, good! Don't stop! Yes!'" reports Poly. As a reward for being such an amazing man, she got him a new apartment and car.
If it were a matter of sheer determination, then Marija Vujovic would be a shoo-in to the supermodel pantheon. "In my country, what we want, we get. If we don't get, we trying," says the 20-year-old Montenegro native. The only brown-eyed brunette of the group, she has the focus and gravity of an Olympic gymnast or a concert pianist. In fact, before she became a model she was busting out Rachmaninoff on a concert grand. "Everybody in school wanted me to stay pianist," says Vujovic, who wore hand-me-downs, lived in a house with both her parents and grandparents, and is still dating the same guy she met when she was 14. "But, for me, was enough." Winning a modeling contest in Montenegro led to signing with DNA, which led to a W shoot with Craig McDean. Cut to three campaigns, for Dolce & Gabbana, Yves Saint Laurent, and MaxMara. You'd never know that during a shoot for the last she was battling body chills and a killer fever. On the way back from Harbour Island, she's not feeling so great, either, but you won't hear any whining. She simply puts her head in her hands and makes a couple of stoic trips to the bathroom. A Montenegrin through and through.
Who's the prettiest? She goes by one name-Valentina-is blonde and blue-eyed, and has an angelically soft face, shaped a bit like, well, a valentine, with a touch of Elizabeth Hurley thrown in. Anyone who has worked with her finds it nearly impossible to take his eyes off her. Ralph Lauren, it appears, was one such person, and he gave her an exclusive, seven-figure contract. But at 22 and married (to Maiko Kurahara, a half-Brazilian, half-Japanese businessman), she has other aspirations. "[Modeling] isn't serious-minded," says Valentina, who finished two years of college in her native Russia. "For sure, I want to go back to college." (She has another, incongruous passion: jujitsu. "It's so nice," she says sweetly, about no-rules wrestling.) Unlike the others, who have no particular timeline for their future, Valentina has decided two more years are enough. Why linger?
Don't count out 21-year-old Euguenia Volodina, from Kazan, Tatarstan. A favorite of Valentino's, she did her first Italian Vogue cover at age 17 and has achieved a financial and emotional stability that some of the others lack. With her strong nose and Slavic eyes, she may turn out to have the long, "interesting beauty" career of an Erin O'Connor. As for Inguna Butane, the baby of the group, who just two months ago was living in Riga, Latvia, playing the violin and contemplating art school, it's too soon to tell. Everything is happening so quickly, and, quite frankly, she seems to be freaking out a bit. One moment she looks like a grubby, if sexy, grocery-store cashier and is telling you how scared to death she is to be here. "I don't know how it going to go." The next, she's done up like a movie star-hair in rollers, lips brilliantly painted-saying it's no big deal. Who can blame her for being schizophrenic? A year from now, Inguna may be back in Riga, with her mom, dad, and violin. Or maybe, just maybe, she'll be leaping onto Patrick Demarchelier's back.
That was rough. All these girls have made it pretty big in fashion I'd say, with Carmen holding the veteran-status, and Karolina not far behind.
They have elongated her neck to help this effect.
