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i have the Es interview! enjoy it!!
I bump into Natalia Vodianova and Justin Portman on their doorstep. They are returning from walking their five-year-old son Lucas to school across Hyde Park. Their daughter Neva, who had her first birthday last month, haw been whisked off by the nanny to absorb some spring sunshine and to de spared the chaos of the ES shoot tha is about to flood their Knightsbrige flat Natalia, dressed, is a selection of expensive and mismatching knitwear, may look like a teenager but she is one of the most successful models of the century an her husband is a member of the Portman family who own 100 acres of Central London, including Oxford Street, Marylebone and of course, Portman Square.
Natalia at 25, is three and a half months pregnant with the couple’s third baby. “I love little boys and I think I’ m going to have another boy and I’m really excited about that. It was my dream to have a daughter and I have Neva, my little present, my little bonus. She is exactly as I imagined she would be. I think I needed a daughter. I don’ t know what it is. Perhaps it’ that feeling of security, of knowing that there will be someone for me just as I am there for my mother. She’s very strong little girl. She looks like me.
Three children in six years, combined with inordinate, however rich you are. “Of course it is challenging to balance work and being a mother and traveling so much an another baby” she lists. But “I feel amazing”. And the strain would tell on many a marriage too. “This is not a problem actually”, she says, “and we are excited about the new baby. I always feel so in love with my husband when I am pregnant, and he is so protective of me. My husband is my right hand in everything I do and he feels the same about me”. Certainly, it is to Justin’ s credit that Natalia’s English is as expressively varied as it is after only seven years. Clearly this is a couple who talk.
Their children are enjoying a very different sort of childhood from the one their mother experienced in Russia, until her modeling career lifted her out of Nizhni Novgorod seven years ago.
Natalia’s mother Larisas was 19 when she gave birth to Natalia, not that it’ unusual to start early in provincial Russia. After Natalia’s father walked out when she was two, they moved in with her maternal grandparents, where life was all about manners, pulling your weight, saying your prayers and using a napkin. Natalia’s grandfather worked in the same car factory for 55 years on a minimal wage, but in Russia material poverty doesn’t necessitate culture deprivation and her childhood was punctuated by trips to the ballet and the opera.
Then, when Natalia was six, Larisa remarried and gave birth to a second daughter, Oksana, who was born with cerebral palsy , and they moved into one of the city’s grey high rises. Soon, Larisa was a single mother again and trying to hold down four jobs to feed the girls, before marrying a third time and having a third daughter, Kristina, who is now 11. This stepfather was a violent drunk and he didn’t last long.
By the time Natalia was 11 she was selling fruit and vegetables on the street, often late into the night and in temperatures as low as -30C. At 14 she was borrowing cars to collect stock. At 15 she moved into a flat with a friend and, at 16, she had her own market stall in the mafia town with its corrupt police force doing little to protect enterprising young women. “ I sometimes see that a lot of my anger and expectations towards my children come from my childhood, she says. ‘ So when my son really wants something, “I want it, I want it, I want it… Please Mummy…” I realize that I would never have allowed myself to behave like that when I was a little girl, so it’s really hard for me to hold myself back from going “Don’t you know how lucky you are?’ I think that in those situations- when you can hardly afford anything at all- the problems have to be shared between children and parents. As a little child, once you are aware of what’s going on, you understand that you cannot demand things, you cannot even ask because you know your mother wants to give it to you and it would be too painful for her to say no and you don’ t want to hurt her. You want to protect her from pain.
On New years Eve 1999, having been forced to go and see a model scout by her then boyfriend, she landed in Paris and a new life was beckoning. And yew she has reinvented herself as some kind of wide-eyed Russian princess in an attempt to sell a sanitized version of her past to herself or to others. “By facing and understanding my past I’ m trying to make my future better” she says. “I left when I was 17 so I was pretty much established as a person and I would say that I’m really proud and happy about my life. I didn’t have really big tragedies. I hear stories about some girls who were raped or abuses and, for sure, I now realize that full potential for disaster and for disaster and I also see what my life would be like if I hadn’t left, even though I find that hard to think about”.
Career opportunities in her home town present themselves in the form of the factory floor at the car and vodka plants.
She returns regularly to see her family. Her mother has recently been reunited with her second husband and it has emerged that he is the father of both her younger sisters- the couple were carrying on an affair during their entire 12year separation. Larisa is now a very pampered woman with social life and a shopping habit. Lest year Natalia’s grandfather turned 80 and the family gathered for a celebration- they have much to celebrate with Natalia acting as a joyous patron to the clan. “ I absolutely love spoiling them”, she says. “I see that the town has changed for the better since I left. I see that there are more middle classes rather than just very than just very rich and very poor people, but what I see is largely irrelevant because I stay uptown now. But when i go to the supermarket I still see old grannies taking out their purses to buy a loaf of bread and counting out every penny. I know how that feels and it’s heartbreaking. People suffer a lot in Russia and they work themselves into the ground.
Natalia herself is a worker. She met Justin at the end of 2000, at Le Georges, the restaurant at the top of the Pompidou Centre, where her headstrong conversation and gesticulating, impassioned impetuousness utterly enchanted him. Today, sitting eating her breakfast, she is calm and sunny but the lioness is nonetheless visible beneath a veil of pregnant serenity.
Anyway, Justin pursued and chased and dashed back and forth from Paris and finally, after two months, he was rewarded with his first kiss. Just over a year later Lucas saw born and, finding herself suddenly thinner that se had ever been. Natalia was back on the catwalk, opening for Tom Ford’s Yves Saint Laurent two weeks after giving birth. She then shot the autumn/winter’s Gucci campaign with Mario Testino, making her easily the most important model of the year. She walked in 40 catwalk shows that season, acquiring the nickname Supernova and putting her health at some risk. More of which later.
I bump into Natalia Vodianova and Justin Portman on their doorstep. They are returning from walking their five-year-old son Lucas to school across Hyde Park. Their daughter Neva, who had her first birthday last month, haw been whisked off by the nanny to absorb some spring sunshine and to de spared the chaos of the ES shoot tha is about to flood their Knightsbrige flat Natalia, dressed, is a selection of expensive and mismatching knitwear, may look like a teenager but she is one of the most successful models of the century an her husband is a member of the Portman family who own 100 acres of Central London, including Oxford Street, Marylebone and of course, Portman Square.
Natalia at 25, is three and a half months pregnant with the couple’s third baby. “I love little boys and I think I’ m going to have another boy and I’m really excited about that. It was my dream to have a daughter and I have Neva, my little present, my little bonus. She is exactly as I imagined she would be. I think I needed a daughter. I don’ t know what it is. Perhaps it’ that feeling of security, of knowing that there will be someone for me just as I am there for my mother. She’s very strong little girl. She looks like me.
Three children in six years, combined with inordinate, however rich you are. “Of course it is challenging to balance work and being a mother and traveling so much an another baby” she lists. But “I feel amazing”. And the strain would tell on many a marriage too. “This is not a problem actually”, she says, “and we are excited about the new baby. I always feel so in love with my husband when I am pregnant, and he is so protective of me. My husband is my right hand in everything I do and he feels the same about me”. Certainly, it is to Justin’ s credit that Natalia’s English is as expressively varied as it is after only seven years. Clearly this is a couple who talk.
Their children are enjoying a very different sort of childhood from the one their mother experienced in Russia, until her modeling career lifted her out of Nizhni Novgorod seven years ago.
Natalia’s mother Larisas was 19 when she gave birth to Natalia, not that it’ unusual to start early in provincial Russia. After Natalia’s father walked out when she was two, they moved in with her maternal grandparents, where life was all about manners, pulling your weight, saying your prayers and using a napkin. Natalia’s grandfather worked in the same car factory for 55 years on a minimal wage, but in Russia material poverty doesn’t necessitate culture deprivation and her childhood was punctuated by trips to the ballet and the opera.
Then, when Natalia was six, Larisa remarried and gave birth to a second daughter, Oksana, who was born with cerebral palsy , and they moved into one of the city’s grey high rises. Soon, Larisa was a single mother again and trying to hold down four jobs to feed the girls, before marrying a third time and having a third daughter, Kristina, who is now 11. This stepfather was a violent drunk and he didn’t last long.
By the time Natalia was 11 she was selling fruit and vegetables on the street, often late into the night and in temperatures as low as -30C. At 14 she was borrowing cars to collect stock. At 15 she moved into a flat with a friend and, at 16, she had her own market stall in the mafia town with its corrupt police force doing little to protect enterprising young women. “ I sometimes see that a lot of my anger and expectations towards my children come from my childhood, she says. ‘ So when my son really wants something, “I want it, I want it, I want it… Please Mummy…” I realize that I would never have allowed myself to behave like that when I was a little girl, so it’s really hard for me to hold myself back from going “Don’t you know how lucky you are?’ I think that in those situations- when you can hardly afford anything at all- the problems have to be shared between children and parents. As a little child, once you are aware of what’s going on, you understand that you cannot demand things, you cannot even ask because you know your mother wants to give it to you and it would be too painful for her to say no and you don’ t want to hurt her. You want to protect her from pain.
On New years Eve 1999, having been forced to go and see a model scout by her then boyfriend, she landed in Paris and a new life was beckoning. And yew she has reinvented herself as some kind of wide-eyed Russian princess in an attempt to sell a sanitized version of her past to herself or to others. “By facing and understanding my past I’ m trying to make my future better” she says. “I left when I was 17 so I was pretty much established as a person and I would say that I’m really proud and happy about my life. I didn’t have really big tragedies. I hear stories about some girls who were raped or abuses and, for sure, I now realize that full potential for disaster and for disaster and I also see what my life would be like if I hadn’t left, even though I find that hard to think about”.
Career opportunities in her home town present themselves in the form of the factory floor at the car and vodka plants.
She returns regularly to see her family. Her mother has recently been reunited with her second husband and it has emerged that he is the father of both her younger sisters- the couple were carrying on an affair during their entire 12year separation. Larisa is now a very pampered woman with social life and a shopping habit. Lest year Natalia’s grandfather turned 80 and the family gathered for a celebration- they have much to celebrate with Natalia acting as a joyous patron to the clan. “ I absolutely love spoiling them”, she says. “I see that the town has changed for the better since I left. I see that there are more middle classes rather than just very than just very rich and very poor people, but what I see is largely irrelevant because I stay uptown now. But when i go to the supermarket I still see old grannies taking out their purses to buy a loaf of bread and counting out every penny. I know how that feels and it’s heartbreaking. People suffer a lot in Russia and they work themselves into the ground.
Natalia herself is a worker. She met Justin at the end of 2000, at Le Georges, the restaurant at the top of the Pompidou Centre, where her headstrong conversation and gesticulating, impassioned impetuousness utterly enchanted him. Today, sitting eating her breakfast, she is calm and sunny but the lioness is nonetheless visible beneath a veil of pregnant serenity.
Anyway, Justin pursued and chased and dashed back and forth from Paris and finally, after two months, he was rewarded with his first kiss. Just over a year later Lucas saw born and, finding herself suddenly thinner that se had ever been. Natalia was back on the catwalk, opening for Tom Ford’s Yves Saint Laurent two weeks after giving birth. She then shot the autumn/winter’s Gucci campaign with Mario Testino, making her easily the most important model of the year. She walked in 40 catwalk shows that season, acquiring the nickname Supernova and putting her health at some risk. More of which later.
An exclusive Calvin Klein deal followed and she has been the Calvin girl from 2003 until now, bill boarded internationally in his underwear, ready- to wear, make up and swimwear, as well as opening all the Calvin Klein shows. But recently, she and the fashion company ended their relationship. “They were late with the clothes and I would have had to shoot two weeks from now for 17 days and I saw horrified because I went trough that with Neva”.
When I last interviewed Natalia she was four and half months pregnant with her daughter and had, the day before, finished shooting the Calvin swimwear collection with Steven Meisel in St. Barths. “The whole experience was very challenging” she says “and I knew what I was doing, but I wouldn’t want to do that again. And they have been so respectful and treated the situation with such elegance, but it’s very weird feeling. I don’t thingk it matters if I don’t do their campaigns any more. I still think I will be their girl and I feel like their girl and I’ m planning to be very loyal and supportive”. She has, however, just signed a beauty contract with Chanel.
Despite making noises about finishing of all her commitments and taking time out, she is heavily involved with an event taking place later this month in London. She will host the Russian Rhapsody dinner at Old Billingsgate Market in aid of her charity, the Naked Heart Foundation. Backed up by the Russian Economic Forum (an annual business conference focusing on the growing impact of Russian money), the 800 places are bound to be filled by not only her fashion friends but also some high rollers from the financial world.
Tickets are on sale for 1.000 E and the money will be uses to build playgrounds all around her home country.
The foundation opened its first playground at the end of last year in Nizhni Novgorod. It is 3.000 sq m with sections for toddlers, young children, older children and physically challenged children, with its upkeep and round- the- clock security taken care of “My feeling about Russian Childhood is that we have a lot of warmth and a lot of love that our family give us and it doesn’t matter if you have hardly anything to eat o if you don’t have a father, somehow you just get on and enjoy your life. But what I found really hard was life outside the home and getting n with other children. I have an invalid sister- I was teased all the time and I was also taking care of her a lot of the time’. The Idea of these playgrounds is to include the disables children and to prevent the care-givers from becoming too isolated by providing a place for them to sit and talk.
Natalia’s childhood was largely about work and any playtime was pent, in retrospect, at some risk. “We used to play in basements and derelict buildings’ she says, ‘ because the playground had one broken slide that was put there in the Fifties. And you would have some alcoholic guy sitting there as children were playing and it all provoked an unhealthy and unsafe atmosphere for play”.
Lest anyone forget why the are dressed up and mingling on the appointed night at Billingsgate, the whole event will be inspired by play. “We will turn the whole place into a kind of playground for adults with roundabouts and swings and giant mobiles hanging in the air” she says. And there will be an auction, previewed by Christie’s the night before, selling haute couture toys that Natalia has persuaded designers to make and donate.
“I suggested that John Galliano might do a puppet theatre and he loved that an so it’s going to be a puppet show of a Galliano show. Valentino is doing a rocking horse, Lacroix is doing a doll’s house and Karl (Langerfeld) is giving us a doll she’s super-cool with pearls and a little black Chanel dress”.
Natalia will play hostess, displaying her increasing confidence. A couple of months ago she gave a speech at the CFDA (the Council of Fashion Designers of America)- her personal response to that tired but nonetheless important size zero debate. “ My point about anorexia is that you don’t realize what is happening to you and your body” she says. “Food is normally not an issue when you start- you are chosen because you are skinny. But a lot of girls are very young so, of course, by the age of 18 their body might change. So they put pressure of themselves because they know what everyone wants from them”.
Natalia was too happy to be in Paris and making money to feel any pressure at all when she started.
But her career really took off after her first baby was born “That’s when it all started for me”, she says. “ I lost all my puppy fat, because I was quite curvy and baby- faced when I started, but after I gave birth my face and body changed and everyone was shocked. It takes some kind of shocking effect to make a star really and I was very skinny”.
Campaigns and endless shows had Natalia existing on very little sleep and eating whatever came her way. “I don’t think my body really recovered from my birth”. She doesn’t regret this time- “Of course not, it is part of my destiny, part of my success, part of my story”- but it took its toll. “I had to stop. My hair was thinning and I was too skinny”. With the help of a nutritionist, a psychiatrist and a trainer, she was reenergized and glowing when she and Justin married in September 2002 at St. Vladimir’s Cathedral in St Petersburg, with a reception at the Palace of Catherine the Great that included performance from Cossack dancers and Kirov ballet stars. But when returned to work that autumn, people were calling her agency demanding to know why she had put on 2cm all over. “ And I laughed”, she says. “Who were these people? But I was in a position to laugh. I had a Calvin Klein contract so I didn’t need to care but still, it was bitter. It gave me a taste of what’s going on and if I had been younger, less mature, if I had just started, if I didn’t have my husband, if I was just a girl by myself who had just started to have a bit of success and was suddenly faced with failure, the I don’t know how I would have handled it”. She speaks like a politician- impossible to interrupt and, considering she’s eating a boiled egg while wearing a dressing gown, amazingly charismatic.
Fierce but measure, she continues “I think people shouldn’t employ girls under 16. I mean, I had a hardcore childhood and i had to grow up very quickly, but before 16 even I was a total baby. I think it’s irresponsible to take immature young girls and make them into women and expect them to be sexy and to be on top of everything. It would also more respect and sensitivity towards these girls and to handle them like flowers because that is what they are. It shouldn’t be a meat market. We are dealing with human beings”
And as quickly as she tensed up, she relaxes, smiling over her cup of tea as we talk about the house they are planning to build n some land they have bought in Battersea and the old mill they are doing up in West Sussex.
She shows me Luca’s new hamster- a teeny, shivering ball of fur. “He desperately wants a dog” she says. “So we told him that if he looks after the hamster properly then we’ll think about it. But I don’t want a dog. It will wreck the country house that we are decorating so beautifully”. Surely three children under six will wreck a place more efficiently than a Labrador. “Oh no”, she says, smiling beatifically. “Not my children”. And I believe her.
She runs her own little army with great gentleness but you wouldn’t mess with Natalia Vodianova. It wouldn’t be worth because you wouldn’t win.
When I last interviewed Natalia she was four and half months pregnant with her daughter and had, the day before, finished shooting the Calvin swimwear collection with Steven Meisel in St. Barths. “The whole experience was very challenging” she says “and I knew what I was doing, but I wouldn’t want to do that again. And they have been so respectful and treated the situation with such elegance, but it’s very weird feeling. I don’t thingk it matters if I don’t do their campaigns any more. I still think I will be their girl and I feel like their girl and I’ m planning to be very loyal and supportive”. She has, however, just signed a beauty contract with Chanel.
Despite making noises about finishing of all her commitments and taking time out, she is heavily involved with an event taking place later this month in London. She will host the Russian Rhapsody dinner at Old Billingsgate Market in aid of her charity, the Naked Heart Foundation. Backed up by the Russian Economic Forum (an annual business conference focusing on the growing impact of Russian money), the 800 places are bound to be filled by not only her fashion friends but also some high rollers from the financial world.
Tickets are on sale for 1.000 E and the money will be uses to build playgrounds all around her home country.
The foundation opened its first playground at the end of last year in Nizhni Novgorod. It is 3.000 sq m with sections for toddlers, young children, older children and physically challenged children, with its upkeep and round- the- clock security taken care of “My feeling about Russian Childhood is that we have a lot of warmth and a lot of love that our family give us and it doesn’t matter if you have hardly anything to eat o if you don’t have a father, somehow you just get on and enjoy your life. But what I found really hard was life outside the home and getting n with other children. I have an invalid sister- I was teased all the time and I was also taking care of her a lot of the time’. The Idea of these playgrounds is to include the disables children and to prevent the care-givers from becoming too isolated by providing a place for them to sit and talk.
Natalia’s childhood was largely about work and any playtime was pent, in retrospect, at some risk. “We used to play in basements and derelict buildings’ she says, ‘ because the playground had one broken slide that was put there in the Fifties. And you would have some alcoholic guy sitting there as children were playing and it all provoked an unhealthy and unsafe atmosphere for play”.
Lest anyone forget why the are dressed up and mingling on the appointed night at Billingsgate, the whole event will be inspired by play. “We will turn the whole place into a kind of playground for adults with roundabouts and swings and giant mobiles hanging in the air” she says. And there will be an auction, previewed by Christie’s the night before, selling haute couture toys that Natalia has persuaded designers to make and donate.
“I suggested that John Galliano might do a puppet theatre and he loved that an so it’s going to be a puppet show of a Galliano show. Valentino is doing a rocking horse, Lacroix is doing a doll’s house and Karl (Langerfeld) is giving us a doll she’s super-cool with pearls and a little black Chanel dress”.
Natalia will play hostess, displaying her increasing confidence. A couple of months ago she gave a speech at the CFDA (the Council of Fashion Designers of America)- her personal response to that tired but nonetheless important size zero debate. “ My point about anorexia is that you don’t realize what is happening to you and your body” she says. “Food is normally not an issue when you start- you are chosen because you are skinny. But a lot of girls are very young so, of course, by the age of 18 their body might change. So they put pressure of themselves because they know what everyone wants from them”.
Natalia was too happy to be in Paris and making money to feel any pressure at all when she started.
But her career really took off after her first baby was born “That’s when it all started for me”, she says. “ I lost all my puppy fat, because I was quite curvy and baby- faced when I started, but after I gave birth my face and body changed and everyone was shocked. It takes some kind of shocking effect to make a star really and I was very skinny”.
Campaigns and endless shows had Natalia existing on very little sleep and eating whatever came her way. “I don’t think my body really recovered from my birth”. She doesn’t regret this time- “Of course not, it is part of my destiny, part of my success, part of my story”- but it took its toll. “I had to stop. My hair was thinning and I was too skinny”. With the help of a nutritionist, a psychiatrist and a trainer, she was reenergized and glowing when she and Justin married in September 2002 at St. Vladimir’s Cathedral in St Petersburg, with a reception at the Palace of Catherine the Great that included performance from Cossack dancers and Kirov ballet stars. But when returned to work that autumn, people were calling her agency demanding to know why she had put on 2cm all over. “ And I laughed”, she says. “Who were these people? But I was in a position to laugh. I had a Calvin Klein contract so I didn’t need to care but still, it was bitter. It gave me a taste of what’s going on and if I had been younger, less mature, if I had just started, if I didn’t have my husband, if I was just a girl by myself who had just started to have a bit of success and was suddenly faced with failure, the I don’t know how I would have handled it”. She speaks like a politician- impossible to interrupt and, considering she’s eating a boiled egg while wearing a dressing gown, amazingly charismatic.
Fierce but measure, she continues “I think people shouldn’t employ girls under 16. I mean, I had a hardcore childhood and i had to grow up very quickly, but before 16 even I was a total baby. I think it’s irresponsible to take immature young girls and make them into women and expect them to be sexy and to be on top of everything. It would also more respect and sensitivity towards these girls and to handle them like flowers because that is what they are. It shouldn’t be a meat market. We are dealing with human beings”
And as quickly as she tensed up, she relaxes, smiling over her cup of tea as we talk about the house they are planning to build n some land they have bought in Battersea and the old mill they are doing up in West Sussex.
She shows me Luca’s new hamster- a teeny, shivering ball of fur. “He desperately wants a dog” she says. “So we told him that if he looks after the hamster properly then we’ll think about it. But I don’t want a dog. It will wreck the country house that we are decorating so beautifully”. Surely three children under six will wreck a place more efficiently than a Labrador. “Oh no”, she says, smiling beatifically. “Not my children”. And I believe her.
She runs her own little army with great gentleness but you wouldn’t mess with Natalia Vodianova. It wouldn’t be worth because you wouldn’t win.
I can't wait to see Neva all grown upsleepingbeauty13
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Thank you fenouka!!!
I love her more now!Damn she's on her 3rd child already! She does not look 7 months pregnant...that's crazy...
It's funny the way she talks about having boys and how the girl is her own...it's very old world...I guess having an heir is still so necessary in those circles...
It's funny the way she talks about having boys and how the girl is her own...it's very old world...I guess having an heir is still so necessary in those circles...
yeah, same thought here. women don't like to have children before 30 nowadays...
style_savy
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Natalia Vodianova - Valentino 45th Anniversary Celebration - Gala Arrivals
celebutopia
Pics (screencaps) of Natalia when she was younger. Afraid I couldn't do better than this:
http://img299.imageshack.us/my.php?image=22767322qj5.png
http://img169.imageshack.us/my.php?image=76764040wz9.png
http://img503.imageshack.us/my.php?image=74674588ri7.png
http://img209.imageshack.us/my.php?image=64791688cq3.png
http://img413.imageshack.us/my.php?image=93965872zb3.png
source: vogue.com
http://img299.imageshack.us/my.php?image=22767322qj5.png
http://img169.imageshack.us/my.php?image=76764040wz9.png
http://img503.imageshack.us/my.php?image=74674588ri7.png
http://img209.imageshack.us/my.php?image=64791688cq3.png
http://img413.imageshack.us/my.php?image=93965872zb3.png
source: vogue.com
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