Vodianova with her children’s furniture range for made.com and, below from left, with Mario Testino, Patrick Demarchelier and Anna Wintour at her 35th birthday party in Paris
The Naked Heart Foundation Fund Fair
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On the runway a month after having her fifth child
hunger, survival — these were not alien or romanticised concepts. The mark of poverty is still on her, she says, most With, from left, Caroline Winberg, Cara Delevingne explicitly in her understanding and Doutzen Kroes of the ‘shame’ that surrounds it. When I ask if she can see it in others, she surprises me: she starts to cry. It touches something visceral. ‘It’s a very emotional question. For those simple families who nobody cares about, really living with that stigma [for example] of disability, then even if I give them money, it’s not enough. The best thing I can do is spend time with them listening and to share my story. And, yes, we cry a lot. Usually.’ She says shared traumatic experiences — whether it is living in poverty, with someone disabled, or losing someone to cancer — transcends friendship, nationality, blood ‘or any other bond’. In an ideal world, she says, we would draw on our experiences to comfort one another more often. ‘We have blind corners in our lives; we may have next door someone who we could understand.’ I’m sure psychologists could find an unconscious link
between the hardship of childhood and her attraction to extremely rich men, but one driving ambition has been to improve her mother’s life. ‘And I have succeeded. My mother has a little business and is independent. She can buy me presents that I did not pay for.’ She says Larissa instilled in her two things: self-reliance and a steely drive. (‘I tell myself this is the heritage I am leaving my children: a work ethic.’) ‘My mother was in a desperate situation, working four jobs, raising kids alone. From a young age she taught me: “Only rely on yourself. You have to be strong. No one will do anything for you; you have to do it for yourself.” ‘And she lived it. I had this idea that the government is a faraway thing that does not affect me, touch me or help me.’ Of course, her children are growing up in a different universe, with easy proximity to the French government. Vodianova has met Emmanuel Macron, and Macron’s wife, Brigitte, is friends with Antoine’s sister, Delphine. (I make a terrible faux pas by asking if Delphine helps Brigitte with her wardrobe — ‘Ha! Fashion for Delphine is a businesswoman, not a Relief with Bella stylist. How funny that you thought she Hadid, Kendall This is a Jenner of and was a stylist. I must tell her.’) swathe Naomi Campbell We sidetrack to discuss the age difference between the President and his wife — it’s 25 years — and Vodianova gives me a Gallic shrug and says this is not unusual in Paris. ‘I often see it where you have this incredibly handsome young guy with this beautiful older woman — and obviously much older. It’s quite common. If he wasn’t the President, no one would blink.’
“If you haven’t been born into the British aristocracy, it can be difficult to be part of. I was born working class” We are sitting in the showroom of Made.com on Rue Étienne Marcel surveying yet another of her projects combining tech and fundraising: a children’s furniture range she has designed for the online company cofounded by her buddy Brent Hoberman of lastminute. com fame. A bedroom scene — bed, wardrobe, bookshelves decorated with matryoshkas — has been set up in a little tableau vivant beside us in. Vodianova tells me she met Hoberman through Founders Forum and he insisted she get involved, which wasn’t a chore as she loves tech (‘It’s where everything is going’). Most importantly, all proceeds go to Naked Heart. She takes me through the detail — the pull holes for drawers to stop little fingers getting trapped: ‘This is a phobia for me because when I was five someone closed the door on my finger. I still remember the pain.’
08.09.17 es magazine 15