There’s a fundamental truth about human nature: Often, people want you the most when you don’t want or need them. And that’s something that can be used to sell clothes. Canadian-Ukrainian model Daria Werbowy’s incredible career has exemplified this concept: since she was “discovered” at age 14, Werbowy has been thought of as “the reluctant model,” as Vogue recently described her, “exclusive and elusive.”
Werbowy “retired” from the fashion business in 2016 and returned to her very private life: by some accounts living in rural Ireland, by others sailing around the world. But this fall marks a major comeback for the 39-year-old.
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For one thing, she stars in the fall Gucci campaign, which will reveal the house’s new direction courtesy of creative director Sabato di Sarno, taking over from noted maximalist Alessandro Michele. Teasers for it dropped last week, to much fanfare. But even more excitingly, Werbowy is set to be the face of beloved designer Phoebe Philo’s eponymous new label, due to launch in September; a long-anticipated re-pairing of artist and muse.
Of all her work over the years, it is Werbowy’s campaigns for Philo at Céline (when it still had an accent) that are most revered by fashion editors and hard-core fans. Over seven seasons in the early 2010s, Werbowy worked with photographer Juergen Teller to embody the elegant minimalism that made “old Céline” so loved—“quiet luxury” before that was a buzzword. Werbowy and Philo look astonishingly alike, and the return of both together this fall will be the biggest splash in fashion’s pond.
Werbowy came of age as a model in the early 2000s, alongside bombshells like Brazilian star Gisele Bundchen and Russian model Natalia Vodianova. Gisele is the household name, but among fashion folk, Daria is the superstar, serving as a thoughtful and serene counterpoint to the Victoria’s Secret va-va-voom of her early aughts peers.
Hers is the story of a hometown girl, born in Krakow and raised in Mississauga, who cut her own swath through a notorious meat-grinder of a business. Fashion usually eats its young with no conscience, but Werbowy rose above the fray and made the industry work with her on her own terms.
She had a few false starts on the international circuit: first 9/11 shuttered the fashion weeks; then she tried a season in Europe without booking any runways. But in Fall 2003, Werbowy was cast in the highly coveted Prada show, then went on to set a record for opening and closing the most shows that year. But it is her editorial and advertising work that has stood the test of time: the Teller campaigns are timeless classics. Werbowy was the face of Gucci when Tom Ford was creative director circa 2004, developed a body of work with top photographers Helmut Newton and Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin, and signed a lucrative contract with cosmetics giant Lancôme.
By 2008, her star had risen to the point where she was inducted into Canada’s Walk of Fame; the second supermodel after Linda Evangelista to do so.
The Europeans may like to think they discovered Werbowy, but Toronto modelling agent Elmer Olsen points out that she already had a full book of tear sheets before she ever left Mississauga. “Daria was a very unusual girl when I look back,” says Olsen, who worked with Werbowy in her early career in Canada. “She walked to the beat of her own drum, and sailing was her life. That energy attracted fashion people, because she was so aloof.” She was artsy, says Olsen, “fashion wasn’t her thing. We had a hard time encouraging her to do bookings; she would always rather be sailing.”
I remember that poised young woman who showed up for castings, effortlessly cool in ripped jeans and a hoodie. Daria would have been about 17, in high school, when she first was cast at FASHION Magazine in the summer of 2001; I was editor-in-chief at the time. On the day of her first big shoot for the magazine, on a rooftop near the Front Street office, the atmosphere was electric. We all knew this young woman was going to be a star. We put her on the cover four times in short order, and those covers sold very well indeed, even at the dawn of the newsstand war era of celebrity fashion covers. Sure, Canada can boast the incomparable Evangelista, Coco Rocha and Jessica Stam. But Daria felt different.
“She had a gaze that was very mature for someone so young, and she didn’t need direction; everything she projected came from somewhere within,” says Susie Sheffman, the magazine’s fashion director at that time, who styled that shoot with photographer Alvaro Goveia. “She was exceptionally comfortable in her skin.”
That generation of models was big into “posing” for the camera. Daria was not. Her strong sense of family and her life outside the photo studio is what grounded her, Sheffman says, as well as what made her stand out. “It gave her a stillness, which is so appealing.”
Werbowy was unfailingly polite and drama-free on set, but she kept to herself. “She hated the model scene,” Olsen says of the high-flying high-fashion lifestyle. “In Paris, the big editors and clients would want to take her out to the chi-chi places. She would insist they go to a hole in the wall.”
Werbowy has always projected substance, the antithesis of flash, what Sheffman describes as “the woman that you want to be: quietly intelligent, confident, which is the basis of quiet luxury.” After a year consumed by Succession-propelled analysis of what constitutes this deeply appealing concept, Philo and Werbowy are coming back to show everyone how it’s really done.
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