From Russia With Love

SHE MAY HAVE BEEN BORN IN THE USSR, BUT SUPERMODEL ANNE V IS NOW A PROUD AMERICAN CITIZEN, LIVING A DREAM THAT STARTED 15 YEARS AGO WITH A PLANE TICKET.

- Mickey Rapkin

ANNE VYALITSYNA, KNOWN TO ALL AS ANNE V, IS A 5'10" RUSSIAN supermodel who once posed naked for the cover of Vogue. She’s a woman with a face so coveted—by the likes of Chanel and Calvin Klein—that she fronted a reality series called The Face. And yet, when we meet for coffee in Manhattan’s West Village, what she really wants to talk about is decidedly less titillating. It’s America’s citizenship test. Or more specifically, her issues with it.

She tucks her impressively long legs underneath the table and gets right to the point. “I take this shit very seriously,” she says. V was a straight-A student in Russia and wants me to know that she approached the exam with a similar resolve; she didn’t want to pass the test so much as crush it. “I had to know all the answers,” she says. “But it was actually really easy. I was like, Is this the best question you can give me? Who is the vice president? I was expecting it to be so much harder.”