She’s an artist, she’s a model, and she’s an avid snowboarder. But what you might not know about Daria Werbowy is that in light of her recent trip — sailing across the Atlantic and Mediterranean with her father, sibling and friends — she’s reassessing her life. “For the first time since all this started I really felt I was on vacation, completely separate from the Western way of life and at one with nature,” she said. “We left from New York and it was 24 days until we hit land. We saw whales, dolphins, had crazy storms with 15-foot waves, things breaking and snapping off.” Not only has she started looking to studying philosophy or psychology, but Daria has begun to spend more time painting and sculpting.
It seems like sailing has taken hold of Daria and isn’t letting go. She wants to sail around the world alone in the Volvo Ocean Race, and as soon as she has kids, they’re getting their sea legs too. “For the first three years, I’m taking them sailing.” she said. “I think it’s super-important for kids to have an imagination, to create their own world as opposed to just being surrounded by televisions and toys. That was one of the great things about my first years in Poland; we were forced to go outside and make up our own games.”
But back to the current career of Daria, as a model. She was known at one point for opening the most shows in a season, and credits Steven Meisel for teaching her the ways of the industry, including, “all the old-school tricks; how to move, how to jump, how to pull back my ears to prepare my face for the camera. Working with him is a little like modeling school.” On the theme of iconic photographers, she was the last model to work with Helmut Newton before his car crash.
Other things to note about Daria: She could have been featured in the Vogue story about models and their boyfriends (she’s dating Mario Testino’s former assistant, Kenny Jossick), she bought her parents a house in Toronto and goes to visit frequently, and she has a love-hate relationship with her opinions. “The great thing about my Lancôme deal is I get to be not just a model, I get a voice,’ she says. ‘Sometimes I wish I didn’t have one because I get really insecure about what I say. But at the end of the day, it is what it is, and I always try to speak the truth.”
And while she’s been a model for years now, the pictures that come out still astonish her. “I sometimes find myself staring at it because I don’t really know who that girl is,’ she says, gesturing at a picture of herself. ‘I guess a lot of people don’t realize, but I’m always playing a character when I’m working. When you’re always having people’s images projected on you, who ‘Daria’ is as a person sort of disappears.”
They called the guy next to her Mario Testino!
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