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There's a flood of rich-hippie fashion coming down the pike for Spring '02 and there is no girl on the map more authentically and effortlessly rich-hippie than DNA's Italian sensation Mariacarla Boscono. One of the most wanted girls of the moment, Mariacarla is certainly racking up those frequent flyer miles as she ricochets from the set of the Dior, Chanel and Marc Jacobs campaigns as well as her shoots for The Fashion with Mikael Janssen, Numero with Nathaniel Goldberg, Italian Vogue with Steven Meisel and Enrique Badulescu and Harpers Bazaar with Patrick Demarchelier. Draped in a fetching mix of designer pieces and her Mom's bonafide 70's vintage togs the red hot Mariacarla catches up with MDC. We had the customary questions but that Mariacarla, she's so good at speaking for herself, we just gave her free reign.
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On her upbringing
"My parents traveled a lot, all over the world. They lived for seven years in Thailand before I was born. Then my Mom got pregnant and my family moved to Rome. My mom is from Tuscany and my Dad is from a little city where most of the fabric is made in Italy.
After Rome we all went to Providence, then to Key West when I was two years old. I went to school in America.
They had this shop where they were selling Saucony. The shoes. They invented that. They were featured in Time magazine which did a big interview on them and things started to go well.
After that period they decided they wanted to go back to Italy for me to study. I was Italian, they wanted me to grow up in Italy.
Then when I was 9 my Dad went to work in Kenya. He had this cave with this beautiful material... huge... molto... unbelievable when you walk in. Because when you walk in, you're in this huge hole in a mountain. The material was... I don't know what the name is in English... but it's very very white. So you have this beautiful light pouring in. We did five years there in this little village which is between Malindi and Mombassa. The village we were living in was really small, Kilindi. It wasn't even on the map then. It is now but not then. But it was the most fantastic five years of my life. Have you ever read this book... I can't translate the title but it talks about the unique feel and smell and taste of Africa. The heat, the slow life. Hakuna matata. Everything was like that.
But at one point you had to go back to reality, because that's a more fantastic world which was a beautiful thing to experience, but as a kid, it was strange for me too. I had no friends. I was alone in this huge house, in this huge park, with this huge balboab tree. You had to watch out everywhere because there would be snakes everywhere, falling down from trees, in the toilets, in the rooms. Everywhere.
I had this little puppy which we found in the streets called Pippo. We had this iguana, who just walked into the house one day so we adopted him. We'd feed him. We'd call him and he'd come for his food, like a pet. But I never touched him. He was huge. I was a kid and he scared me."
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On being discovered
"When I was seventeen, this friend of my Mom's and Dad's who used to do the photography on the Fellini movies, Catallini, came over for dinner and he hadn't seen them in ages. He remembered me when I was very very little. I didn't know who he was, it was like my parents were going "Oh we're having this friend over for dinner; He's a nice guy. A photographer." So I was like OK. So we were talking and he said, "Would you like to take some pictures?" and that's how it began. He took the pictures and you know it's when you're in that teenaged period where you feel skinny and ugly and very tall with no boobs and every guy called me Olive Oyl. "Where's Popeye? Where's Popeye!" they'd go. I hated it so much. So my mom pushed me to do these things, because I never saw myself that way. I never thought I could have this power to be this beauty. Plus I was in that depressed phase, not depressed in my personality but as a teenager in the way I dressed. Everything was all dark. My socks was dark. So this guy took those pictures and my Mom was like, "Why don't you take them to this agency?" So there were agencies interested but I was in school and I just felt like you cannot do two things together. You have to focus on one thing at a time. So I worked on believing in myself and making myself stronger and having a good attitude. So it's good that I started full time, a year ago, after I finished school. Because also by then I was mature. But back then through the Milan agencies, I started doing the Milan shows, doing well, like 13 or 15 shows but I never had a book. It was Piero Piazzi, he's a really big booker who used to take care of Naomi, who believed in me in Milan. At first he was at Ricardo Guy, then he moved to Tomei. He really believed in me and really wanted me to model and really pushed me. So then I came to DNA in New York with nothing in my book planning to stay one month doing editorial and then come back home. But I liked this agency a lot. I felt there was something going on here and I decided to stay in New York.[/FONT][FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]
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On being in demand
"When I walked into DNA I started working a lot. I mean when you have nothing in your book, Harper's Bazaar is not going to come calling, you know. I think the reason I started working is because I'm just myself. It's more about personality now anyway. You have to give something to the clients. If you've had twenty five castings for that day, they've already seen fifty girls. I've always been one of the anti-models. I never position myself like "I'm this star model". I get to my castings and I think, I'm meeting somebody new. It's more "Hey how are you!"
I'm a really positive person. I enjoy meeting people so much. I love my life very much. I love the people around me. I love being here talking with you. I love having a drink with a friend. I try to give a lot of energy. I'm not bored. I'm not tired, about modeling. You have to enjoy something to be good at it. I walk into the Dior fitting and I'm thinking Hmmm. What is John going to do? If I'm working with a Karl Lagerfeld, I'm not thinking," Oh I'm doing the Chanel campaign. Oh Wow." It's more like "Hello Mr Lagerfeld. How are you!"
When I work with somebody like Karl Lagerfeld, who I think of as this really big genius... I've never met someone who you talk with them and he speaks to you in Italian, French, English, what like... ten languages. I speak English but I'm Italian when I speak English. He speaks Italian but it's like an Italian. So when I work with him, I'm happy that it's a great job and very prestigious, but for me I'm more happy that I get to meet Karl again and he's going to maybe tell me one more great story about his life and we're going to get to do some pictures that could be brilliant."
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On settling in New York
"I live in Harlem in New York. We searched for three months. We had a broker downtown. In Brooklyn. In Midtown and we then had a broker Uptown. They would give us this list of things, possibilities. So one night I called up this lady because it was taking so long. So we took the car and went to the address, because the description was great. 7 windows, wood floors... and my boyfriend is Italian too. And our Italian impulse is very strong. We are both... all the way Italian. We have a very strong sense of home. We love to cook. Italian people, in a family, you have to have dinner all together, sitting down. We wanted to have something that when you walked in, you felt like, "I want to be home"
I find that the downtown places are very noisy, very small. And the walls are very very thin, you can hear everything. If you don't have the top floor you hear walking and walking and walking. And what I found in a brownstone is that you have a sense of a real house. There's less stress. Everybody is more warm. There are more kids, more family, more animals. It's more like... cozy."
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On the best thing about modeling
"It's a good life and it's a moment that's not going to come back. I'm very lucky to be here. To be twenty years old and to be so free... it can be a little bit scary too.. because all my other friends are in the university... they have their driver's licenses, I don't have mine. I'm paying taxes. I've got to go catch that plane... this plane. But I still realize that modeling is a very lucky thing. I love the energy. I love also working with people on a job. Modeling... actually... the whole fashion industry is commercial because we're doing something that we have to sell. So we're thinking about money which can be a very, very crude thing. But we're also selling something that is unbelievably artistic, where we can put some of ourselves into it."[/FONT]
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On her astrological sign
"Virgos are so terrible. We're very special people but we've got to find a person who matches with us, otherwise... ciao! Capricorns are good!"[/FONT]
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On fashion shoot protocol
"Me I'm more like somebody when I'm on a set, I try to catch everything that I can. The details, the lights. I feel like sometimes my life is going very fast, so I want to know everything. I'm trying to imprint it on my mind. So I talk to the lighting guy. Just to know him. When I'm leaving I hug everybody, the buffet guy, just because he's been there all day too and maybe you said to him, "Could I have two spoons of sugar instead of one." You can't think, "Oh he's the photographer, that's the assistant, so I give a hug to the photographer then I wave to the assistant."[/FONT]
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On her future
"I find that the fashion business is not geared to keeping the model forever, anymore.
I think that's a really good thing. It's a business of the new. It's a young thing. It doesn't last forever. You have to move on! It's very unreal. I'm lucky that I can keep my feet on the ground. I'm from the countryside. My mom, she calls me every day. All that helps me to see it for what it is. For my future, what I would like is to have a magazine. It has to be a homemade, high quality travel magazine. Not as professional and cold as National Geographic. In that vein, but more homemade, more poetic! You go somewhere, you're a very good photographer, you're a very good writer and you go for a holiday and then you come back with an amazing story about this guy you met... who teaches you how to cook fish on the beach. Very personal. Like a letter from a friend."[/FONT][FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][/FONT]
