Interview with Doutzen's mother Geartsje from VogueNL
Specially for Doutzens 30th birthday her nearest and dearest tell exclusive to Vogue about the special connection they have with her, including Doutzen's mother Geartsje.
Until her eighteenth Doutzen lived with her parents in a country house in the Frisian town Eastermar. Geartsje mother is a nurse and works as a teacher. Rule-moderate Doutzen still staying at home.
"Doutzen secretly had some photos sent to Paparazzi Models. If I had known, there were of course been all kinds of "buts". When she was invited for a test shoot, I went along. It was quite strange to see people with a tape measure at the hips of my daughter. The modeling world is very different from the Frisian village where she grew up. But I've always let Doutzen make her own choices. I see it this way, as a parent you accompany your child, after that you have to give her the freedom to explore the world.
Of course it worried me. I thought she was going to Milan or Paris, but she went straight to New York. Occasionally flashed the image in my head beyond: a child of eighteen with a modelingbook under her arm, trudging to castings through the busy streets of a metropolis. She had a lot of nostalgia in the beginning. We called almost every day. "I want to go home," she sometimes cried. Then I said: "There is always a place for you here. Decide for yourself if that is what you want. "
Those first years in New York were difficult for her, but she did not give up. Doutzen is a whole-hogger, she was as a child. Hard for herself also. I remember when she was sixteen and had a boyfriend, Eddie, in a village 25KM away. "I'm going to run to Eddie," she said one day, pulled her sneakers and walked the half marathon. She was a tomboy, very physical. With seven months she crawled out of the box by itself, the stairs and she was to my great surprise behind me. With nine months she could walk. In everything she did she was fanatically: skating, Netball. Doutzen like to win. She was always a bellwether, a real leader. She also wanted to experience everything; life is quickly boring.
When her career took off, she was in her early twenties, she called me once crying (emotion). She had a shoot on a Bounty Island in a beautiful house: fluttering curtains, overlooking an azure blue ocean. She cried, not of sorrow but because she almost could not believe that she could experience. Why me?, she thought. But that day, on that island she has turned a knob. "If I can not enjoy here," she said, "I better stop." I think Doutzen then discovered the pleasure in her work.
Doutzen has a strong intuition, if a job does not feel good, she will not do it, how lucrative too. Together with Sarah and Mo, it forms a top team. They have made the right choices in defining her career.
"I'm not getting a normal regular life when I'm older," said Doutzen often when she was eight years old. When she still dreamed of a secluded cabin in the woods. I'm sure the glamorous life she has now, has never proposed. But it suits her. In the woods she would miss the city, as they are in town nature can miss. Finding balance is difficult, Doutzen is a constant battle.
If Doutzen is in Friesland, we have quiet days where everyone does their own thing in the house until we come together at the dinner table. We love to philosophize with a glass of wine and a cheese. If Doutzen is with me, we are just back mother and daughter. That changes the fame or success to nothing.
#fendi
oh my god, Doutzen!
