Old Friends of Nastasia Urbano Join To Help the Ex-Model

I am back today with another El Periódico article from Mauricio Bernal about my dear friend Nastasia Urbano, the 1980s top model from Spain.  Apparently, friends of hers who have known her far longer than I have are reaching out to help Nastasia, and efforts to get her out of harm's way and relieve her of her plight are accelerating. I am heartened greatly by this news.

As with my previous post on the subject, I present this article translated from the original Spanish, with the inevitable corrections and cleanup work necessary for a foreign-language text translated automatically by computer software.  It is Mauricio Bernal's article and his alone; I take no credit for it.  The picture of Nastasia was taken by photographer Elisenda Pons. Thanks to my fellow journalists in Barcelona for everything they do.

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A group of former co-workers of Nastasia Urbano has decided to organize to help the ex-model who, in the 1980s, was part of the elite world of modeling, and who now, in poverty, has to sleep in the streets of Barcelona.  Overwhelmed by the story of Urbano's fall from grace published by El Periódico, Ruth Schuler, Liz Beltrán, Patricia Soler Beltrán and photographer Robert Suárez are getting in touch with other professionals from the business who knew the model at that time that she began her career - to let her know that she is not alone and, in the end, to reach out to her.

"It has left me in shock.   I believe that all of us never expected this, to say the least of it," says Schuler, Urbano's partner in the Group Model Management agency. "We were at the princess level, but she, she was at the goddess level," she recalls, "I remember her as an introverted person, very beautiful and very generous with others."  Then, in the '80s, Urbano did her first modeling work. Almost immediately, global stardom awaited her - first in Milan, and later in New York, where she worked with famous models such as Linda Evangelista and world-famous photographers such as Richard Avedon and Helmut Newton.

"We are gathering more people, many people are signing up to help. The first thing is to talk to her, know how she is and what she needs.  Every one of them is collecting information to see how we can help her, Schuler says.  "We have to help her in a sensible way; opening an account in her name may not be a solution.  We have thought about going to the homeless program at Sant Joan de Déu Hospital, helping her in the process, of course, but above all, letting her know that she is not she is alone, and that there are people who appreciate her and who remember her from that time.  You have to make that help concrete, but a lot of people are signing up."

The 1980s were Urbano's golden age. In New York she worked with the Ford modeling agency and did advertisements for brands such as Revlon, Yves Saint Laurent and Virginia Slims, among many others.  She made a lot of money, but she lost it because of an unhappy marriage.  From her beginnings in Barcelona, ​​Schuler recalls that at the headquarters of the agency, "in a tower on Muntaner Street that no longer exists," they spent a lot of time together, "because it was like a second home" for  models. "We were eating there, we spent the day there. Sometimes we went together to the castings. Then of course, we'd follow each other's work. 'Have you seen David Lynch's commercial?'  I remember we were talking about that."

It is not the only show of solidarity that has awakened memories of Urbano. Hernando Herrera, a former model who now works at HH International Modeling in Barcelona, believes that a person with Urbano's experience still has much to contribute in the world of modeling. "She could do many things - not only work as a model, but also give lectures, host talks on fashion, and do countless activities," Herrera says, "and I am willing to retrain her and talk with photographers and agencies so that she can return to work." Esteve Llanes, who works for Foto K, a Barcelona store specializing in photography and video equipment that organizes workshops in which models often participate, has also offered his help. "We do workshops with models and I think that somehow she could share her experience with these women who start," Llanes says.

Beyond the world of modeling, Urbano has generated sympathy among people who have lived similar stories. Rosa Montané, a friend of Urbano in the town of Torroella de Montgrí just northeast of Barcelona, says she knows what the ex-model is going through. "Everything she talked about in your article, I lived through.  I was an advertising producer and I was ruined at a difficult age, like she was, at 55 years old.  I lost everything and the world turned its back on me; it took me almost seven years to get back up again. I know how it is that society will blame you by saying that if you end up in such a situation, that's because of something you must have done. Now I have a non-buoyant situation, but it's stabilized, and have a place where I have some room. She's welcome if she wants to come. "

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The one thing that makes me feel worse than knowing that Nastasia is homeless is that there is little if anything that I can do about it.  But she clearly has a lot of friends in Spain who want to help her.  And I'll let you in on a little secret; as a fashion and modeling outsider who's befriended many models of the eighties through social media as a result of me preserving their work on my beautiful-women picture blog, I can assure you that Nastasia has many more friends in America and elsewhere who want to help her.  Dozens of us have expressed a desire to do whatever we can to come to Nastaais's aid.  For now, all I can do is relay translations of these articles coming out of Spain to arouse more awareness of her plight.  Until and unless she makes it back to New York and needs help from those of us in the Tri-State area, this is all I can do.

Nastasia, if you're reading this . . ..  If you ever make it back to New York, I hope I'm one of the first people at the airport to greet you.  And when I see you, I'm going to give you the biggest hug and the smoochiest kiss I can give you for a welcome.  Not because I want to fulfill a fantasy of being with the woman in the Yves Saint Laurent Opium ads - because that woman is a fantasy herself, a fictitious image.  Rather, it's because I love you as a friend because of who you really are - a sweet, generous and caring woman who's always been very dear to me and who I know would help me if the situation were reversed.  I don't care about the fantasy goddess in those old ads.  I care about you. 

Hold strong, my dear . . . you have friends who love you and want to see you back on your own two feet.

Nastasia Urbano: From Top Model in New York To Homeless in Barcelona

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. :-(