Nastasia Urbano Returns

Nastasia Urbano, the Spanish supermodel who ended up homeless on the streets of Barcelona, is back.

Nastasia, who has been a dear friend of mine through the magic of social media since 2009, is being helped by a GoFundMe page that is still a few hundred euros short of the 6,000-euro goal that her friends have set for it.  It will get to that amount eventually - she has so many people helping her out, it's inevitable that it will - but Nastasia is not one to wait for that moment to come.  She's already resumed modeling, having done an editorial session for the weekly edition of the Spanish newspaper El País with an accompanying article by fashion reporter Patricia Soley-Beltran. This article-cum-photoshoot is likely to lead Nastasia to more lucrative opportunities. The article, with two absolutely gorgeous poses from Nastasia, is reproduced below, translated into English from its original Spanish.  I give all of the credit to Patricia Soley-Beltran for the article and to Nastasia for the wonderful poses, courtesy of photographer Manuel Outumuro.

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The supermodel that ended up on the street returns to pose

Nastasia Urbano was one of the top models of the eighties. A muse of masters like Yves Saint Laurent. On the covers of great magazines. Icon of the best photographers. She's been in the news for having lived on the street. Today she struggles to recover her life. And she stars in a unique session in these pages

Nastasia Urbano, a supermodel before the term existed, returns to the set almost a quarter of a century after retiring. In the eighties she posed for the best photographers: Irving Penn, Helmut Newton, David Lynch, Steven Meisel, Peter Lindbergh and Fabrizio Ferri. The list of those who photographed her is as long as the list of her numerous covers of international magazines. The roster of her clients, fabulous: from Armani to Loewe, along with Yves Saint Laurent, whose iconic Opium perfume ad bore her image.  She shared a dance floor at Studio 54 with Jerry Hall and Melanie Griffith, and she dined with Jack Nicholson. The world was at her feet. But the headlines that she has attained recently do not refer to this successful career, but to the difficult situation that has crossed her 57 years. Last November, after her "third eviction," Nastasia was forced to live on the street.

It is news that a glamorous model is now homeless, but it should not be; the precariousness of the profession at any age is the norm. The models, often minors, are workers with little or no legal and union protection in an unstable and arbitrary market. The reality of a model's life and work is far from the glamour that the advertising creates.

Consuelo Urbano, as she was originally named, is the daughter of Spanish emigrants in Switzerland, where she was born.  Her mother was employed at a factoy ,and it wsa in Switzerland where young Consuelo herself began to work at the age of 16. She says that a photo of her on the beach ended up in the hands of a modeling agency, and that's how her meteoric rise began, the last stop of which, to date, has been reflected in these pages. She had not been in front of the camera for twenty-four years.

Nastasia speaks five languages ​​and arrives on time. Stylists combine costumes and accessories, while photographer Manuel Outumuro and his assistants prepare the set of the impressive Fonollar Palace where the session takes place. Discreet, Nastasia glides on the exquisite pavement towards the hangers. "You can do what you want with me," she tells Outumuro.  Nothing else; she puts on the first dress and dazzles.

In photography, one of the challenges is to get the perfect light. Nastasia has incorporated a light of her own. Two of their partners, she says, tried to turn it off. First, a man who apparently wanted to separate her from her career, and then later, her husband, the father of her two children, in whose projects, she says, he invested all the money she had earned. And that was a lot. She tells us that she even signed contracts for one million dollars in exchange for twenty days of work. "I left these relationships alone," she says, "because one day I got up and said: 'It's over.'"

For some, beauty is an enigma; for others, a construction. For Nastasia, it's quite simple. "Beauty is knowing how to take the years, accept your wrinkles and accept that your hair is not the same as before," she says.  "Beauty is to be so happy on the inside that it looks on the outside."  Does she feel that way? "I never thought anything about myself," she admits.  "I did not see myself as beautiful or ugly. Maybe I did feel special, because that's what they told me I was." At mid-session, her oldest son, a handsome young man with a maternal face tattooed in color on his right hand, visits.

Beauty ceases to be an impenetrable mystery when Nastasia lets herself look ahead with candid generosity, because what she likes most is to be in front of the camera. "I love to immerse myself in my own world, forget about myself, playing with clothes that favor me, being me," she says.  This animated sculpture is all permeability and delivery.

"You are a machine!" Outumuro says, praising her. All the shots are good. For Nastasia, photographers are the most interesting characters in the fashion business, although she recognizes that "a bad one can sink you."  For mythomaniacs, she evokes Irving Penn - "very silent, he gave you very few guidelines" - and director David Lynch - "super-caring and close, just the opposite of what he projects in his movies."  Her favorite session was with Steven White in the Italian Alps, playing with snow and huskies, remembering her childhood in Switzerland. A childhood that seems to continue accompanying her in her sweet remembrance of the writer Stendhal, who defined beauty as the promise of happiness.

"We are normal girls.  It scares me when they find me on the street because they have seen me divine in magazines, they have believed it and you are disappointed," she says, conscious of the magical deception. But now she's recognized by people who know the difficulties they have gone through and wish her a good life.

The session ends, and the performance ends. The team gives her low-key applause and she smiles with embarrassment, with sincere humility. They are not the only ones who have been seduced by her presence.  One of the most important model agencies in Spain has already shown interest in her. Maybe it will be hard for us to understand it, but we will always love Consuelo. 

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Nastasia looks older, to be sure, but hardly the worse for wear.  Her smile reminds those of us who were teenage boys in the 1980s why we fell in love with her and her attitude reminds those who were teenage girls in that decade why they wanted to be models.  As you may have noticed, her hair is still short - less suitable for Paris than for Parris Island - and she will likely grow it back, but her magnetic aura in the pictures above reveal a timeless beauty that nothing can seem to alter.  And she still knows how to model after being out of practice for so long, as if it were like riding a bicycle - once you learn, you never forget.

I could never forget Nastasia Urbano. And I remain deliriously happy for her return to modeling and for the ability to call her my dear friend.  I love you always, Nastasia.