Daria Werbowy: 'I’m still living the dream of backpacks and hostels'

As one of the most sought-after faces in fashion, supermodel Daria Werbowy has travelled the world in style. But she would rather be off-grid and indulging her passion for adventure

'I'm pretty under the radar,' Daria Werbowy says on the phone from New York , despite having appeared on Forbes' list of the highest-paid models in the world and fronted campaigns for most fashion super-brands since being scouted at 14, including this season being an ambassador for Lancôme and the face of campaigns including Céline , Isabel Marant and Lancôme Visionaire cream.
The Kraków-born Canadian-Ukrainian, now 30, splits her time between Ireland and New York.
Cagey about her private life, she has refused to name her boyfriend, a carpenter with whom she lives, until now. 'He's called Tom,' she says.

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Staying under the radar involves going off-grid for months at a time. 'I aim to work in chunks so I also have time to travel for pleasure. I go as far away as possible as often as I can,' Werbowy says, laughing. 'I'm still living the dream of backpacks and hostels. I didn't get to do that when I was 18, so now I'm doing it over and over.' She and Tom recently went on a three-month trip to northern India, touring on motorcycles and 'roughing it'. Bhutan is next. Her travel essentials include trusted beauty products - Sodashi face-compress kits, Lancôme Hydra Zen moisturiser - and her iPod, books and yoga kit.

When Werbowy says she is 'pretty outdoorsy and sporty in general', she is underselling herself. She surfs, sails, skateboards, cycles, hikes, and does ashtanga yoga for two hours every morning. She learnt to sail on Lake Ontario as a child and in 2008 spent 24 days sailing across the Atlantic with her father, sister, brother and three friends. 'It was one of the best experiences of my life. We were in such close quarters - it's amazing that no one was thrown overboard, but we got on really well. We exchanged beer and cigarettes for tuna and mahi mahi with Canadian fishermen who saw our Canadian flag. There was a week of crazy storms when we just drank powdered soups because we couldn't make food, then we had a week when the ocean was like glass. For me sailing is the way to disconnect from the fast-paced world we live in and reconnect with nature in a raw way.'


Daria Werbowy for Lancome. Photo: Alexi Lubomirski for Lancome 
 
Two years ago Werbowy took time out from her intense work schedule. On a plane every four days, she was waking up not knowing where she was and felt 'disconnected from her life'. She began to invest time in relationships, meditation, reading and yoga, and moved to west Cork. 'It's my favourite place on earth, with its Celtic mysticism and rolling landscape,' she says. Her perfect day is aptly understated. 'I get in my piece-of-shit car, a 1979 Vauxhall Viva, with my dog, Strawballz (I know, crazy name - it's a long story, he's a stray), some music, some lunch and a camera and drive around the countryside.'

Photographs of her Irish escapades, interspersed with selfies, have earned her Instagram account, @dotwillow (werbowy means 'willow tree' in Ukrainian), 42,000 followers. 'I used to be freaked out by social media . I saw friends with their phones permanently in front of their faces and thought, "I will never do that." Then a friend persuaded me to do Instagram because they wanted to know where I was in the world. I had nine followers for six months and then it exploded. I check it two or three times a day max, because it's a vortex where I end up losing two hours. I find it interesting from a sociological perspective to see how many likes I get. Something I love gets 45 likes, then, because of what I do, a picture of myself gets 5,000.'