Natalia Vodianova | Emma Tempest | ES Magazine June 2011

 Emma Tempest lights up the studio with colorful portraits of Natalia Vodianova in the most recent issue of London Standard’s ES Magazine. Styled by Nicky Yates in minimal looks from the spring collections, Natalia radiates the strong beauty she’s known for.

Natalia’s interview is as strong as her images. The big news is that she admits finally her separation and divorce proceedings with Justin Portman. Yes, she is in love with a new man.

Ask what she is most proud of and she says the trust she has built up over the past six years. ‘In Russia this is not a common strength. Trust is something that is really hard to obtain and very easy to lose.’ Natalia speaks with the natural cadence of a seasoned speech maker, light years away from the ‘erming’ inarticulacy of your average model. Fiercely intelligent, her responses are considered and genuine: transcribing our interview I cringe at my blundering questions and woeful knowledge of Russian history and politics. She’s telling me about her traumatic childhood (her sister, Oksana, now 22, has cerebral palsy, and as a child Natalia helped bring her up) and I’m thinking, ‘Oh-my-God-she is-so-beautiful-look-at-her-legs-in-those-tiny-shorts.’

via fgr