I wish I didn't have to post a story like this.
Spanish fashion model Nastasia Urbano is one of the models I befriended on Facebook, and I have been in touch with her before, both on social media and by telephone. I'd lost contact with her recently, and I had no idea what happened to her until someone who follows my beautiful-women picture blog found one of my posts devoted to Nastasia and left me a link to an article from the Barcelona daily El Periódico. It turns out she is homeless, sleeping in different places throughout the city.
I am devastated. Nastasia has been one of my dearest and sweetest friends in the modeling profession, despite the fact that I have never met her in person, and so many people who know her better than I do love her. She is a warm, caring, generous person, and even at 57 years of age she retains the earthy sensuality that made her a star in the modeling world back in the 1980s. A combination of factors has left her homeless, but the biggest cause is a former husband who left her higher and drier than she could have imagined.
The following is a translation of the original El Periódico story by reporter Mauricio Bernal. I automatically translated it with Google, and as it was a literal translation that did not recognize the differences between Spanish and English, I reworked it, changed a few words, and cleaned it up a bit. The photos and the video below are from the Internet version of the original story. I take no credit for this article; this is still Mauricio Bernal's reporting, and I want to make that point clear. I post it here because I care deeply about Nastasia, I love her as a friend, and I want as many people to read this - because she needs help. I wish her the best, because she deserves much better than what she has, or doesn't have, now, and I wish I could do more than just relaying this story to make people aware of her situation.
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One day, when she went to a local official in Barcelona ask for help, Nastasia Urbano was told that she had to register first, and when she explained that she was sleeping in an ATM booth, he answered that there was no problem, that she could register there. If the official who tended to her then would have had the curiosity to search for her name on the Internet - aesthetic reasons could have persuaded him - he would have discovered that a certain form of apocalypse existed for this woman . . . a personal one, which consists of falling from the highest peak to the lowest depth. He would have found covers of magazines and advertising campaigns of major brands, and in all of them he would have found an exceptionally beautiful model, and yes - very similar to the woman from the ATM booth.
New York, 1981. Nastasia Urbano has just arrived in the city. She is 20 years old and has the feeling that the world is at her feet. The world of fashion, at least. She'd done her earliest modeling work in Barcelona, and then, with photographer Fabrizio Ferri, in Milan, where she had been cover of Vogue and other major magazines. "I traveled all over Europe for work, I was called from London to take catalog photos, then I went to Paris. I was doing very well, I was very much appreciated, so I went to New York, because in the world of modeling, once you've done Europe, you go to New York to try." The city of skyscrapers received her with open arms, and quickly the new arrival made a name for herself. Well recommended, she signed with the greatest of New York modeling agencies - Ford. "I did all the magazines, everybody loved it, and I was very chameleonic. People did not get tired of me," she says. "There are models that are very beautiful, but they only have one image. I never had that problem."
Urbano reviews her story in a café in the Plaza de Espanya. She is 57 years old. She bathed in abundance and now she is in ruins. Sometimes she sleeps in the street and sometimes in the house of a friend who opens the doors for a few days. From time to time, she gets some money doing some precarious work. She suffers from depression and has to take medication. Looking back sometimes means remembering the times of splendor, and sometimes the beginning of the fall. "Every year I came to Barcelona to visit my parents, and one of those times I met my ex-husband. That was the end of it; he left me with the clothes. The only good thing about that relationship was my children, but the rest was horrible. I paid with my money, the second day I met him. He wanted me to buy him a BMW, and I, like a fool, wrote the check. I was in love. If you don't trust the person you're in love with, who do you trust? But he didn't love me."
New York, the 1980s. There are several moments suitable to measure the kind of life that Urbano led in that decade. For example, the brands for which she was the image in their advertising. The list is long and impregnated with glamour: Yves Saint Laurent, Opium, Virginia Slims, Revlon. "I did the Revlon campaign, all the 'top models' of that time did that campaign, and I did it too. I worked with Helmut Newton for Opium, and later I was hired for Yves Saint Laurent, for which David Lynch did a commercial for. He had been commissioned as much for the cinematography as for the photography. When you sat with him, as I remember, he would sit on a sofa in front of you and stare at you without saying anything. But not out of ego. Because he's not like that, he's a sweet man." The Internet archives have preserved those images of the past, the chameleonic beauty frozen in the time when New York surrendered at her feet, as here, for example, where she is photographed (second from left) for the Revlon "Unforgettable Women" campaign with, from left, Michele Brooks, Linda Evangelista, and Sandra Zatezelo.
In the café in the Plaza de Espanya, Urbano explains that she has just cut his hair. "I'm extreme, either I have very long hair or I cut it to the ground," she says. Three decades after her conquest of New York, the young woman who lent her beauty to the great brands in fashion and cosmetics is recognizable by her eyes, by the curve of her mouth, by her poise and by her elegance. These are things that she has not lost. "I want to live, not survive," she says. "I'm tired of surviving and asking for money, the people around me move away, they all leave, and I'm not surprised, I've already been evicted three times. If I had to pay for the flat I could not eat, or I could not pay for the electricity, or I could not pay for the water and I'd have to go down to the fountain to get it. I have worked cleaning houses, taking care of children. Now I'm at the house of a friend, Toni, who is an angel. But I can't settle there, it's always for awhile. In a few days, when I leave that house, I wonder where I'm going, I'll be with my cart and my four things and wherever I'm going to sleep."
There is another eloquent yardstick to measure the luminosity of that New York past: acquaintances, friendships, names . . . the people with whom Nastasia Urbano, the "top model" on the crest of a wave, rubbed shoulders. "I was a very young and very curious person, eager to enjoy myself. I met many actors and actresses. I dined one day with Jack Nicholson, another day with Andy Warhol, or with Roman Polanski, or with Harrison Ford, with Melanie Griffith and Don Johnson, with Simon and Garfunkel, and I was about to go to Madonna's wedding with Sean Penn because David Keith from An Officer and a Gentleman was invited, and I was going out with him at that time, but that day we woke with such a hangover that we could not even get up. I had everything, I lived like a queen." Urbano says she had problems with drugs and alcohol, but she does not regret anything she did then. "I had to live life to the fullest. "
Urbano made money, a lot of money. "I think I was the first girl who signed a multi-million dollar contract to advertise clothes, they gave me a million dollars a year for 20 days of work, and for three or four years. When they paid that kind of money at that time you only earned it when you modeled beauty products." A friendly banker convinced her to deposit part of the profits in a Swiss bank. Although from Barcelona parents, Urbano had been born in Switzerland. "At the bank, they told me that with the interest I could live the rest of my life, and to think I'd done so well. . . and because of this man, my ex-husband, now I'm here. All of this happened . . . I've signed documents, but I don't remember having signed anything. Money has never been my goal in life, and when I've had it, I've been generous. And now I'm like this."
At the end, in the café in the Plaza de Espanya, Urbano starts crying. She says she can't do it anymore, and that she wants to get out of the hole not so much for her as for her children. "I want my children to see me well, I want to recover as a person to be at their level. I want them to be proud of me, I want them to live their life without worries, not to suffer more for me, but they have a father who is nothing and a mother who lives on the street. My daughter has anxiety attacks because of me. They are adults and they have their lives and they do what they can for me, but I try not to disturb them. I want them to see me with a home, working and paying for my things. I want my grandchildren to come to my home for lunch, and I want to be able to make them some cookies. I'm good at making cookies. I'm going to have that? I don't know. I think not. I have lived well because I could live well, but I've adapted to what I need. I need a break."
Urbano misses New York. "I miss it day and night," she says. "New York is a city that makes you vibrate; you go out and you get goose bumps. Here," she concludes, referring to Barcelona, "I've been dying, that's the way it is. Here, my soul has been dying out."
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I hope she can come to America again, and as I live in the greater New York area, I'd be happy to help her in any way I can if and when she does. But until I am in a position to help Nastasia, all I can do is hope and pray for her. :-(
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