Natalia Vodianova

NATALIA VODIANOVA is a supermodel, philanthropist, and now, with her latest venture, a friend to women everywhere

- Alexandra Marshall

There’s this little part of you that wants to believe supermodels look the way they do in magazines because of lighting and airbrushing. And then you meet Natalia Vodianova at the impossibly posh Balmain spa in Paris, her local, while she’s preparing for a photo shoot. Scrubbed of makeup, in a bathrobe, with a messy ponytail, she kills those retouching dreams dead. Now 36, the un airbrushed, unvarnished, unadorned mother of five is even lovelier in the flesh than what you see in those Calvin Klein and David Yurman ads. Her wide-set blue eyes are now dusted with delicate lines, her porcelain-doll skin is ever limpid, and her legs are still like a gazelle’s. What you don’t see in two dimensions is how full of big ideas and ambition she is as a philanthropist, which is now her full-time job 11 months out of the year.

Vodianova is producing today’s photo shoot herself to promote the Fabulous Fund Fair, a recurring benefit for the first of her favorite causes, the Naked Heart Foundation. Imagine an impossibly glamorous version of a country fair where Eva Herzigová is handing out the soft-serve ice cream, Karlie Kloss is selling the cookies, and the balloon-popping contests and catapults are brought to you by Louis Vuitton and Givenchy. The Fabulous Fund Fair, back in London after traveling last year to New York, is space-themed, so along with the Paco Rabanne and Michael Halpern looks Vodianova pulled for the shoot, she will also be wearing a large astronaut helmet. Of course she will crush it.