Five-star Supernova: inside the world of supermodel Natalia Vodianova →

From poverty to top supermodel, marriage to an aristocrat and a new relationship with the heir to the LVMH fortune, Natalia’s life is one hell of a rags-to-riches fairy tale. Here she talks about the birth of her fifth baby and why she is as much in demand as ever

Outside the flagship Guerlain boutique in Paris, the atmosphere is nervous because of the current heightened security situation. In fact, all along the Champs-Elysées, people are jumpy. Inside, however, it’s a world of serenity, and the Russian supermodel Natalia Vodianova is calmness personified. Just five months after the birth of her fifth child, she is pencil-slim and has a wide, friendly smile and soft, intelligent blue eyes. Her sparkle and natural warmth make it immediately evident why people respond to her so well, and why the camera loves her.

The story of how Natalia rose to become the face of one of the world’s leading perfume houses is certainly compelling. She was born into poverty in Nizhny Novgorod, a Russian city then called Gorky, but her father left before she was two years old. 

Stability from a paternal figure was not forthcoming; her stepdad walked out on her mother Larisa when their daughter, Natalia’s half-sister Oksana, now in her late 20s, was born with cerebral palsy and later diagnosed with severe autism.

As Larisa struggled to support her children – she also has a third daughter, Kristina – she set up an illegal fruit stall. The young Natalia (then just 11) started to skip school and worked 12-hour days in below-freezing temperatures with her mother. And when she wasn’t doing that, she would help care for Oksana at home.

Her life changed dramatically at the age of 17 when a model scout encouraged her to go to Moscow, where she signed to an agency. Soon she was on a plane to Paris, from where she became one of the best-known models in the world, with campaigns for brands including Calvin Klein and Diane von Furstenberg.

At 19, she married the British aristocrat Justin Portman and had three children – Lucas, now 14, daughter Neva, ten, and Viktor, nine – before the couple split in 2010.

Shortly after, Natalia was spotted on holiday with Antoine Arnault, CEO of Berluti and chairman of Loro Piana – and also the son of Bernard Arnault, chief executive of LVMH, the company that owns Guerlain. The couple now have two sons together – Maxim, two, and Roman, five months – and the family live in Paris.

‘My children are my priority; I fit everything around their schedules,’ Natalia explains. ‘When I’m not travelling, I work from home and as a couple we rarely go out unless it’s for work, but we come back as soon as possible. Otherwise we always have dinner at home with the children.’

What do you eat? ‘Some French food, some Russian food, but also Häagen-Dazs Dulce de Leche which we all love.’ As if the weakness for ice cream weren’t enough, her wide eyes get even bigger with her latest discovery to satisfy her sweet tooth: ‘I have recently found this brand of chocolate from Beirut called Patchi – it’s crazy delicious!’ 

Natalia models her new Holiday Make-up Collection with a helping hand from Guerlain creative director Olivier Echaudemaison

Natalia is the first to admit that having five children is a challenge. ‘Each pregnancy gets more difficult; it’s long and every time the body is giving up a little more. But afterwards you feel so much better straight away and having a baby is very good for your skin and organs, apparently – although of course my back has weakened. I can’t wear heels so much any more,’ she says with a mock grimace.

Apart from her family, her other great passion is her charity, the Naked Heart Foundation, which raises money to build playgrounds across Russia that are suitable for all children, whatever their abilities. Its remit is to encourage children – whether disabled or not – to play together and tackle the stigma of disability in her homeland.

However, there is a long way to go: just last year, Oksana was asked to leave a café in Nizhny Novgorod, with its owners allegedly telling her carer that Oksana’s presence was ‘scaring’ other customers. Natalia was very vocal in her criticism and received a lot of support from Russians and others alike. If anything positive can be taken from the incident, it is that awareness was raised further for the cause.

With headquarters for the Naked Heart Foundation in London as well as Moscow, Natalia visits the UK regularly. Is there anything she misses from her time living in London and West Sussex? ‘I made some really strong friendships in London and I miss the countryside; to me the whole of England seems like a big park.’

Today’s event in Paris is all about love: the room where we meet is decorated in Indian style, scented and inspired by Shalimar, the iconic oriental fragrance created in 1925, conjured up around the legendary love story of Emperor Shah Jahan. Four centuries ago, the emperor fell hopelessly in love with Princess Mumtaz Mahal and created the Gardens of Shalimar for her, as well as dedicating the Taj Mahal to her memory after she died.

Natalia, 34, has been the face of the fragrance for eight years and has given new life to the scent – today a bottle of Shalimar is sold every minute. Yet given the impact that Guerlain has had on her own life, professional and personal (it is through this association that she met her partner Antoine), it is with refreshing honesty that she volunteers she really wasn’t aware of the brand before she was approached to represent – indeed, personify – its flagship scent.

‘I was living in New York at the height of my career,’ she says modestly (she is still at the height of her career, many would argue). ‘I was very busy, and one day my French agent called and said, “There is interest from Guerlain!” And I just said, “OK.”’ She laughs, because she simply didn’t know much about the famous perfume house.

‘I was in Paris for Fashion Week and I have a lot of friends in the city because I lived there at one point. I met up with them and they said, “How’s things? Blah blah blah…” [even this sounds enticing in her Russian/French/English accent]. I said, “Oh, I might be the face of this brand – it’s French, apparently, and they have this perfume called Shalimar.” They were gasping, saying they had worn it when they were 15 and first kissed a boy, explaining how iconic it is. That was how I discovered its magic.’

Today, however, Natalia is extending her remit beyond ‘face of’ to ‘brains behind’ for her first foray into make-up design, on which she has collaborated with creative director Olivier Echaudemaison. Fun – along with hard graft – was the order of the collaboration that took more than a year to bring to fruition. 

‘We were like two kids playing with colours and textures,’ she explains. ‘Of course, I was more of a kid as Olivier has done this for many years, but I think he must have lived it again through me because I was so excited. But I was also opinionated,’ she giggles. ‘Like when I begged him to make the lipstick more pink and he said, “But for us, the subtlety is important.” And I said, “Nooo, it’s Christmas, I want a lot of pigment – make it more pink!”’

The range is, as one might expect, beautiful. ‘We wanted to create the feeling of preciousness and luxury, of course, but what was amazing to see was how the technical team really took on board my brief about trips I had taken to India and the different things about the country that had engaged me,’ says Natalia. The Rouge G lipstick in Rouge Saphir, for example, ‘contains real ruby powder, which is why it has such a deep pigment; it reminds me of a bindi. The Felt Eyeliner in Sparkling Gold is inspired by mosaics in Indian palaces, and for the Météorites Perles de Legende – light-reflecting pearls of powder in blue, gold and pink – the balls contain diamond powder and one secret ingredient which Olivier refuses to reveal, even to me…’

She credits Super Aqua Set with keeping her skin in tip-top condition – along with beetroot. ‘Beetroot is full of antioxidants and also it’s good for your blood. It is a very Russian thing.’

Natalia with her children Neva, Viktor and Lucas

Is there such a thing as a typical day in the life of Natalia Supernova, as she has been nicknamed? ‘Not really, because I have so much going on all the time. But when I am in Paris I get up at 7am, get my children ready for school and I’m there when they get home in the afternoon. I fit meetings in between those times.’

Christmas will be spent in the sunshine, just her, Antoine and the five children, ‘probably in Los Angeles; I love LA,’ she says, before admitting there is another motive for visiting California. ‘I am building a tech project in San Francisco, so it’s a good place to be,’ she says with a laugh which concedes that building a new charity app is not what most of us do over the Christmas holidays.

But sitting in front of this extraordinary woman, I am inspired enough to start wondering – well, why on earth not?

'I’m a successful self-made businesswoman, yet I only learned to read and write at 14': Tracy Woodward uses her experiences of abuse and domestic violence to help others →

After surviving her unreliable mother’s myriad bad choices and violent boyfriend, Tracey Woodward vowed to make a better life for herself. And now she is helping others to escape similarly difficult circumstances. 

I am eight years old and cowering under my bed. I can hear my mother’s boyfriend trashing our flat, smashing her prized perfume bottles, hurling her belongings against the wall, ripping up her clothes and breaking off the heels of her shoes. I am only too aware that if my mum were here he would be killing her.

My childhood was one of fear, uncertainty, neglect and distress. Now, at 49, I am fortunate to have a happy family and can look back on a successful 30-year career in the beauty industry – quite an achievement given that I didn’t even learn to read and write until I was 14.

After surviving her unreliable mother’s myriad bad choices and violent boyfriend, Tracey Woodward vowed to make a better life for herself

I was born in 1966 after my mum, Wendy, became pregnant at 18 by Graham, the neighbourhood playboy in Southwest London. My grandfather, who considered himself a fine upstanding man, was furious. The prospect of his daughter becoming a single mother was shameful and with the two families at loggerheads and no suggestion of my mum marrying Graham, her family moved a few miles away to Crystal Palace.

The first six months of my life were spent in hospital with little expectation that I would live; my mother suffered a haemorrhage during the birth and I weighed just 1lb 6oz, but we were both survivors even then. 

My early years were happy and secure. Mum and I lived with my grandparents and she had a job working on the cheese counter of my grandfather’s supermarket.

But when I was five, my grandmother died and it transpired my grandfather had been having an affair with his bookkeeper, Marcia. 

Just days after my grandmother passed away he moved Marcia into the family home, told Mum and me we had to leave and pushed Mum out of her job, too.

Overnight, we went from a warm, secure home to a damp, miserable bedsit in a squalid block of flats where all the tenants, including us, were on the breadline. 

Hurt and distraught, Mum sought solace with the wrong kind of people, and started hanging out with a heavy-drinking crowd. 

Grown up and working at Clinique; Mother with Tracy's daughter (right)

They introduced her to drugs, and she became totally unreliable; she would tell me that she was just nipping out for cigarettes and not return for two days having met some bloke. I felt abandoned, and never knew where the next meal would come from. 

A Chinese family across the hallway would sometimes look after me but I was mostly on my own. Looking back, it’s a miracle I didn’t come to any harm. Every time Mum came back I would have to take care of her and myself. The next day we would have a good day together because she would be so racked with guilt about leaving me alone. But it wouldn’t be long before it happened again.

Mum was never addicted to any substance, she just took things to extremes. I recognise now that her life had spiralled out of control. 

She was frightened and no doubt seeking comfort and oblivion, but for a little girl, seeing her in that state was extremely upsetting. As a result, I have never smoked or taken drugs, and drink only moderately.

Over the following year we led a hand-to-mouth existence with Mum picking up occasional jobs such as cleaning. 

She took a number of different aliases in order to claim benefits while she worked; if she thought she was close to getting caught, she would change her alias again. 

She didn’t seem to think it was important for me to go to nursery so stopped taking me after we left my granddad’s house.

Things changed for the better when I was six and Mum married Chris, who had his own haulage company, and we moved to a house in Camden. There was stability in my life again and in photos from that time I look happy. I started attending primary school and at last we had some money, but Mum couldn’t cope with a man being nice to her and took up with Neil, a schizophrenic alcoholic, the man who I later thought was capable of killing her.

I was terrified of Neil; he was jealous and violent and involved in criminal activity. There would always be guns lying around the house. 

One day, when I came into the lounge, there were bags of stolen money everywhere. Although I never actually witnessed them using drugs, Mum and Neil were without doubt taking cocaine and speed on top of their constant drinking.

My mother became pregnant, and when I was eight Little Neil was born. Sadly, his arrival didn’t change my mother and Neil’s behaviour; they would still go out all night and leave me to look after the baby. Neil was a known criminal on the run and the day after he smashed up our home, Mum turned him in to the police. I still remember the feeling of relief when he went to jail.

Tracey with younger brother Little Neil; her mother with Little Neil

But without his ill-gotten money, Mum couldn’t pay the rent and we moved into a squat with no furniture or carpets on a terrifying estate in Stockwell. 

Between the ages of 11 and 15 I received only intermittent education. As for social workers, where were they? It was only when I was 14 and got a Saturday job in a chemist’s that I started to learn to read. Instead of firing me when he discovered I was illiterate, the pharmacist taught me with Janet and John books, encouraging me to practise my writing and learn a new word every day.

At home things had taken another bad turn. After Neil was sent to prison, Mum – who was 30 by then – met Gary, 18, who quickly moved in. 

Gary was a nasty piece of work who encouraged Mum to go shoplifting in a gang. Occasionally they would take me with them and my job would be to guard the bags of loot while they went back to steal more. My mother got caught stealing once but was let off with a suspended sentence. 

She was always well dressed and used to tell me, ‘If you look the part, no one will question why you’re there.’ There were no security tags back then, so we would come home with piles of cashmere, perfume and even fur coats that mum and Gary would sell on for cash.

But soon enough the money would be spent on drink, drugs or food for Gary. While Little Neil and I subsisted on chips and baked beans, Gary demanded expensive food such as steak that we weren’t allowed to touch. 

Even now I have to keep my fridge stocked up with nourishing food; it’s a big control issue for me that my children don’t open the door and find it empty.

I was 15 when Mum had Alexis, my sister. As a first-time father, Gary tried to go back to steady work as a roofer but it didn’t last; he and mum were soon out stealing again. 

By now I was 17 and with five of us – including a man I loathed – living in a dingy two-bedroom flat, I was desperate to get out. I would go to the phone box every day with a handful of coins and call the council’s housing department to beg for a flat. 

I didn’t stop until they gave me one. In the end Gary left Mum for somebody else and she was never herself again. She tried to commit suicide twice, overdosing on prescription medication. Both times she refused to get into an ambulance but she somehow survived.

I knew very strongly by then that I wasn’t going to have the life that Mum had. I was ambitious and fortunate that Mum’s friend, also called Tracy, wanted to help me. When I saw in the paper that Debenhams in Croydon was looking to hire Clinique counter consultants, she encouraged me to apply and I was called for an interview. 

I had no suitable clothes so I borrowed Tracy’s smart navy dress and shoes that were too small for me and I could barely walk. But I got the job. Eighteen months later I met Dave in a club, and two years after that, when I was 20, we got married.

Through hard work and determination I eventually became Estée Lauder counter manager at Allders in Bromley and was then promoted to department manager. I always made sure that I was well turned out and immaculately groomed for work. 

My mother’s words rang in my ears: ‘If you look the part, no one will question why you’re there.’ 

Indeed, no one ever guessed that at night in the early days I returned to a council flat; I was secretive about my past and where I lived. I was extremely organised and good at selling, though I struggled with maths and my writing was practically illegible.

In 1991, when I was 25, I had my son Josh. By this time, my relationship with my mother had changed for the better. 

She didn’t have a boyfriend and had stopped drinking and drug using, and I trusted her enough to look after Josh while I was at work, but only – and strictly – on my conditions: she had to take him to school every day and collect him, feed him the correct food and do everything she hadn’t done for me. I bought her a car and paid her a wage, and although it was a practical arrangement, for me it was like therapy.

By this time, my career was soaring. I became head of beauty in the gleaming Duty Free department at Heathrow Terminal One where I took annual sales from £18 million to £21 million. 

I was headhunted to work for Donna Karan Cosmetics and given responsibility for the entire UK business, frequently flying to New York and staying in five-star hotels. Strange to think now, but I felt so out of my depth I cried every single day. However, the brand flourished and from there I went to Aveda as director of sales, reporting to beauty entrepreneur George Hammer.

Meanwhile, after seven years, my marriage to Dave ended in divorce. Looking back, I married him because I craved security and the kind of family life I’d never had. But just a few months later I went to view a property to rent owned by a man called Tony Zoccola, who turned out to be my future husband.

Tony and I had our daughter Ava in 2001 and got married in 2004. Wanting to spend more time with the children, I took a break from my career and Tony and I opened a successful delicatessen and bakery business in Dulwich, Southeast London.

But then George Hammer approached me to turn around Urban Retreat, Harrods’ luxurious beauty destination. It was an offer I couldn’t refuse, and for the next eight years I held the position of commercial director there.

By now Mum and I had become close, and when she was diagnosed with incurable cancer at 66 in June 2012, I was devastated. In the hours before her death, I asked her if she had any regrets. ‘My only regret is that I wasn’t the mother to you that I should have been,’ came her reply. I’d waited 47 years to hear her say those words. She died just two months after her diagnosis.

Shortly after Mum died, I left the Urban Retreat to focus on my charity and mentoring work with CEW (Cosmetic Executive Women), the Prince’s Trust and Action for Children. I am driven by a desire to help other children and young people from a similar background to mine, and I mentor several of them a year. I try to instil in these young people my belief that anyone can turn their life around, but you have to be prepared to work relentlessly hard, and explore every option available. I also advise Marks & Spencer on its beauty departments and guide venture capitalists on purchasing cosmetic brands.

Despite my difficult childhood, I miss Mum much more than I ever thought I would. Underneath it all, she did have admirable qualities as a person but it’s fair to say that nearly all of her lifestyle choices were woefully