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“Don’t call me Top Model” by Leticia García.

interview translated by me, so please give me credits if you share. 

 

It’s the first time I exchange whatsapp messages with someone whose amount of followers in instagram is higher than 600k. It’s also the first time I interview a top model without any press agent or representatives sneaking into the conversation. And, of course, it’s the first time that the famous person offers to pay the journalist and not the other way around.

 

When I arrive to the hotel where this interview is taking place, I find Monika Jac Jagaciak quickly amount the people that populates the bar counter. She is wearing thighs and a shirt, but her height is 1.80m. She is one of those genetics prodigious (her parents are professional athletes) that, in puberty, already had a height that exceeded the average. “That’s why my sister encouraged me to go to a casting that was taking place in the mall”, Jac tells. What nobody was expecting was that, few months later, this 13 years old would become the protagonist of the campaign that Hermés launched that autumn of 2007. Jac didn’t even know the brand or the photographer in charge of shooting it, Peter Lindbergh. “For me it was all like a game”, she says in between laughter. In these latest ten years, Jac has become older opening Chanel or Gucci shows, starring magazine covers, and in recent years walking that planetary show that is the Victoria’s Secret runway.

 

You could think that, having meeting success and luxury since her teenage years, Jac would have that fashion star uppity that some of her fellow models have. Nothing’s further from reality. “I continued going to school in my town. My parents only allowed me to skip classes in exceptional moments and my mother always accompanied me everywhere. Now I live in Williamsburg (New York) but until very recently I was still in the family home”, she tells. In this industry she is valued as much as Shayk, Lima, Kloss or the Hadids. The general public, nevertheless, doesn’t know her that much: her Instagram is full with everyday scenes and personal achievements, no glamorous outfits or exclusive galas. Moreover, she recently wrote in this same social network under one of her no-makeup selfies “watching my followers’ number drop when I post things I actually care about”. Fashion is just a job “that has taught me to mature and to react quickly to any unforeseen event. When I travel with friends and there is some problem they get hysterical. I let myself go: everything has happened to me”, she jokes. But her real life is somewhere else: “A few months ago I was diagnosed with Crohn's disease. I will not be able to eat normally again. I have joined an association and recently ran my first half marathon with them. I thought I would not be able to, and finally, I crossed the finish line”, she says.

 

Now she is focused on the project she has produced with her husband (yes, Jac is already married: it is precocious for everything), the artist Branislav Jankic. It's called 'Letter to my Mother' and arises of Jankic's relationship with his mother, an ex-drug addict who recently died of cancer. With that premise, the model and the photographer contacted with addicts and their families to get to know their stories “and, especially, try to take away the issue of addiction from prejudice and stigmas”, Jac sentences. The initiative that until now has been materialized in a book and a short film is still on. “Besides of my professional commitments, this is the main reason I’ve been traveling lately”, Jac says, who has been going around several rehab centers in the latest months.

 

She is only 23 years old and it looks like she has done everything, although she still has a long road as a model. Jac sees herself in a near future producing projects to help others. “But nothing like doing philanthropy in the broadest sense. I don’t want encompass everything, I prefer to find small initiatives and focus on them. Only in that way I can see the results”, she says. “In this aspect, my idol has always been Christy Turlington. Through her foundation and her most recent work she is doing really important things for women’s health”, she explains. There are very few models that could tell that their faces were in the billboards when they were 13 years old. And, if so, none of them would be as grounded after that. Except Jac Jagaciak.