paulina
porizkova
is
owning
it
all
The supermodel and author opens up about how her relationship with money has changed through an intensely personal — and public — evolution.
by erika janes
photographs by george chinsee
resh from a vacation in Tulum, Paulina Porizkova is recharged and ready to work. It’s February, and the supermodel, author, and infamous “crying lady on Instagram” just spent time in Mexico with a friend, relaxing and reading; now life is back to podcasts and interviews and book events and photoshoots, like the one she’s about to do for SheKnows.
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We’re talking about the trip, and the books she read, as she sits in the green room getting her hair and makeup done. Porizkova’s recently loved list includes current literary fiction favorites like Shrines of Gaiety, Horse, and Demon Copperhead, which also happens to be an Oprah favorite. “I loved it so much,” she says, explaining that Charles Dickens, whose David Copperfield was the inspiration for Demon, is her favorite author. “It’s eye-opening — one of those things where you gain empathy for a life that is not your own, and that’s what I love about novels.”
Her vacation reading also included The Widow’s Guide to Sex and Dating (“I was hoping to get some pointers,” Porizkova says jokingly of the 2013 book by Carole Radziwill that is not, in fact, a self-help book but a novel) and half of another novel that “was crap.” At 57, Paulina Porizkova no longer feels compelled to finish bad books. It’s a freeing new habit that completely jibes with her DGAF attitude about a lot of what we “should” do and what society considers acceptable, especially for a woman of a certain age.
If you’re one of Porizkova’s 1 million followers on Instagram — a mark she joyfully celebrated earlier this year — you know what we’re talking about. You’ve likely seen the photos and video clips from that trip; seen Porizkova looking like the supermodel she is as she walks out of the Caribbean waves in a bikini. But beyond the visual, Porizkova’s caption is a thoughtful reflection on aging and gratitude — two topics she touches on frequently — and just a bit playful. The bikini photos, the artful nudes, the makeup-free selfies she proudly posts? They’re all invitations to join a conversation, one she leads with openness, vulnerability, and introspection. It’s not, ‘look at me’ narcissism, as the frequent trolls in her comments insist, it’s ‘Go ahead, look at me — but now look deeper.’”
“I was trying to walk out of the water all swinging hips and sexy, but was undercut by the currents, waves, and dips in the sand. Oh, and my hip arthritis,” she writes in one caption, before offering up an honest assessment of the work she puts into her body these days. “Staying in shape takes much more time and effort, but it allows me to fully inhabit this shell I was given at birth, something I took for granted most of my life. But not anymore. Now it’s a deliberate decision to allow it to work as best as it can, being grateful for its ability to
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move me through the world to keep harvesting the beauty of it all. Pain included.”
Porizkova has certainly endured her share of pain. In 2019, her husband of nearly 30 years, the Cars frontman Ric Ocasek, died unexpectedly in his sleep. Porizkova found him in the home they shared, although they were separated and in the process of divorcing. The shock and grief of that experience were compounded days later when she discovered her husband had disinherited her in his will, citing abandonment.
In the years since, Porizkova, who describes herself on Instagram as an “accidental former supermodel, occasional actress, [and] current writer,” has undergone an evolution that’s both intensely personal and overtly public. She’s gained influencer status (if not lucrative business deals) with that growing Instagram following. She’s written a soul-baring collection of personal essays called No Filter. And she’s been searingly honest about one of the great taboo topics of our time: money.
Porizkova learned the importance of money at an early age. As she recounts in her book, when she was 9 years old, living in Sweden, her father left her and her younger brother alone for two weeks with the equivalent of just $20. She resorted to shoplifting bread and cheese to feed herself and her sibling. At 10, she got a job selling newspapers. At 13, she felt the familiar teen angst of not fitting in and determined that it was because she couldn’t afford designer clothes. And when she finally did get the cool jeans, thanks to yet another job, she still didn’t fit in. The bullying she endured on the first day of ninth grade, wearing her new clothes, was a “shattering” moment, she writes in No Filter, and the loss of her belief in the hope that having money offered.
So important, yes — but not everything. “I think the good thing that I learned is that money does not have magical properties,” she says as we talk over Zoom. It’s early January; her book has been out just shy of two months, and Porizkova has no qualms about excavating the painful moments she wrote about for this interview. It’s not that she has no filter, actually, it’s that she’s done with shame — shame about not having money, and then having so much of it, and then very publicly not having so much.
In No Filter, Porizkova writes that the very public accusation of abandonment in her husband’s will was worse than what it actually meant for her financially, which was that she wouldn’t receive her full share of her husband’s estate. But in the immediate aftermath, it meant money problems. Suddenly, she was a very specific type of broke. “I was a woman with assets — I had two mortgaged houses and a pension plan that I can access in 10 years — and zero cash and no way to pay for anything,” she told Red Table Talk host Jada Pinkett Smith.
The solution was to sell one of the houses, but then COVID hit and the New York housing market took a dive. Porizkova found herself relying on friends for groceries. Asking for that kind of help “felt humiliating,” she admits, “and I didn't really want to ask.” She’s grateful that her friends, who were quarantined with her in her country house, “are the kind of dear friends that said, ‘You know what? We'll get this one. We'll get this week's groceries.’”
Still, there was the situation of the other house, the one she needed to sell and couldn’t. “It was such a ridiculous situation to be in,” she says. “In fact, all that kept going through my brain at that time was, ‘I need to write a scripted TV series about a woman who this happens to and she has a fabulous, beautiful house, but she has zero money to pay for it. And she can't tell anybody that she has zero money to
early lessons
money problems
In those heavy, grief-blurred months, Porizkova had to make hard decisions that seemed impossible. “I was completely and utterly unable to understand human language,” she says of her state of mind. “I was so devastated and so crushed, I couldn't make myself a sandwich or take a shower, never mind go to a business manager or an accountant and try to figure out what the hell I'm supposed to be doing with my finances.”
Porizkova’s girlfriends were a lifeline, taking her to meetings with business managers and lawyers and taking notes. “I literally have no memory of what was said, like zero memory,” she admits. “It was like a year later when I could finally start processing that.”
She’s come a long way. In 2021, Porizkova did a paid partnership with UBS in which she opened up about much of her financial story and lessons learned, but even now she admits that her financial education has only gone so far.
“I don't feel confident,” she says. “I've spent 57 years of not knowing shit about finances, stuffing it into teddy bears and giving it to business managers. I didn't suddenly wake up one day and become financially savvy. I still feel like I'm learning this in little bits.”
I've spent 57 years of not knowing shit about finances, stuffing it into teddy bears and giving it to business managers, and I didn't suddenly wake up one day and become financially savvy. I still feel like I'm learning this in little bits.
pay for it because then she won't be able to sell it at its proper price. So she's trying to act rich, but she really can't afford to do it.’ Like, I had the most nonsensical and useless ideas.”
Indeed, Porizkova felt burdened by the necessity of keeping that housing dilemma as under the radar as it could possibly be — not an easy task for someone who titled her book No Filter and who was making a new name for herself by being forthcoming on social media.
“I had to set boundaries on what I would reveal,” she says. “I wish I could have just given it up on Instagram and [said], ‘I'm so fucked right now. Like, I don't have money for groceries, and my friends are buying all the food, and I’m freaking out about trying to sell my house.’ But that would have been sawing off my legs at the knee. It would have made me feel better, but it would have screwed me.”
When she finally did sell the property, in September 2020, she says, “I lost quite a good amount of money having to sell it at that point.”
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paulina porizkova
After doing the initial work of picking the right pros, Porizkova isn’t picking her own stocks. Her financial advisor keeps her involved, and the author is fine with that. “It's her area of expertise,” she says. “I feel like I just needed to learn enough to understand how good [someone is] in their respective work, and do I trust them?
“When my brain finally started functioning again, and I sat down and I started to really check into, ‘finances, stocks, options, this is where this money needs to go . . . ’ it's really not that interesting to me, and I'm not that good at it. So what's the next step? Find a person who understands this and can translate it for me.”
It’s a study in self-awareness that Porizkova didn’t completely course correct. Having put her trust completely in others for so many years, she’s now learned to trust herself.
Today, Porizkova recognizes that she traversed a path that’s familiar for many women: Putting her own earning potential on the back burner and letting someone else handle the important money decisions.
It makes sense, to an extent. Porizkova says she’s part of a generation “stuck on the idea that the mother is supposed to run the household.” It takes a ton of energy to be a mom, a housekeeper, a cook. . . “and if you have a job on top of that, there's so little time left over to also be your own business manager and financier, and accountant,” she says. As women, we may make sure the bills get paid on time, but actively thinking about big-picture investments and our financial future? It’s one part of the mental load that we happily offload.
“In my case, I was stupid, because I just kind of left it to my husband,” she says. “I figured I was doing everything else, so he was going to do that part.”
the biggest mistake
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paulina porizkova
Her advice for women today? Don’t put up with it. Don't let anyone diminish your money, or the work you put in. If you’re a stay-at-home-mom, “make sure that you get paid for your work for by your husband. That's your money for the work that you're doing that he doesn't have to pay somebody else to do.”
“Handing over the responsibility of my autonomy to somebody else — what a terrible mistake that was,” she says. “It's not that I made a mistake in trusting [my husband]; the mistake was in handing myself over to him like, ‘Here. You take care of me.’ That was a tremendous lesson, and that one I've learned well. I'm never handing myself over to anybody ever again.”
It's not that I made a mistake in trusting [my husband]; the mistake was in handing myself over to him like, ‘Here. You take care of me.’ That was a tremendous lesson, and one I've learned well. I'm never handing myself over to anybody ever again.
Finding the Way
“Having money does not make you a happier person. It doesn't buy you love, community, connection — it doesn't buy you any of that stuff,” she says. “But it does buy you a ticket out of jail. If you don’t have money and you’re left to steal food, or you don’t have a place to live, obviously you know how very limiting that is. So to me, money always represented freedom, but that did not necessarily equal happiness. And I think a lot of people have that confused.”
Not growing up with money meant that Porizkova didn’t know exactly what to do when she started making lots of it as a young model in Paris. In the early days, she literally stuffed cash in a teddy bear before finally getting a business manager. (“No one told me to open a bank account — I had no idea that I even should,” she writes.) At 22, three years into her relationship with Ocasek, she switched to his business manager and accountant, because he said they were better. Letting someone else think about all of the money she was making suited her just fine. Until it didn’t.
Alice + Olivia Justin Double Breasted Blazer
Deanna Bootcut Slim Pant
Franco Averie Slingback Pump
Freshwater Pearl Drop Earrings
by MY PEARL Jewelry
Link Silver Bracelet by Lutiro
Jewelry courtesy of Wolf & Badger
Rachel Gilbert Lavina Mini and Viola Mini, Franco Sarto Arina Slingback High Heel | Tseat Jewelry Tulum Ring and Capri Hoop Earring, courtesy of Wolf & Badger
Greta Constantine Icola Gown
Oscar de la Renta Cap Sleeve Scoop Neck Pearl Embroidered Dress
Porizkova’s schedule these days is a testament to how in demand she is. She just appeared on the cover of Vogue Scandinavia. Immediately following our cover shoot, she’s headed an engagement with Book the Writer, a pop-up book group, to discuss No Filter. In the weeks that follow, she’ll appear at the Long Island Lit Fest, head to California for a bunch of book events and signings, and speak to the University of Albany’s NYS Writers Institute.
What else is in store? Basically, “what[ever] Paulina wants, because the world is her oyster,” says her modeling agent, Corinne Nicolas, who has worked with Porizkova since 2017 but has known her since her Elite Model Management days. According to Nicolas, what Porizkova brings to the table personally, paired with a changing industry that doesn’t just value 15-year-olds, has made her someone with enviable options. “She's an incredible speaker. She's very genuine. She's very true to herself — Paulina is not going to endorse any brand that she does not believe in — and those are aspects that any brand would want, to have her endorsing them.”
So yes, you can view Porizkova’s story as a cautionary tale — and indeed, she hopes women reading this will learn from her mistakes and have difficult financial conversations with their partners — and she’s still at a crossroads, figuring out this new role of shining a light on grief, raising awareness about her financial missteps, and railing against the invisibility of being an older woman in America.
But ultimately, her story is one of empowerment, of a woman finding her way through the dark depths of grief, anger, and abandonment and finding her worth.
“I would have been fine if you left me uninformed and unempowered, and didn't throw this shit at me,” she says. “But I guess that was not my lot in life. And so what I come away with is the feeling of how much I can take, how strong I really am, how much I can bear, how I can navigate my way through dark times, and how I can be a better friend and a better person to help other people when they are in hard times. Because now I have that empathy that, I must admit, I think I was lacking. To be able to understand somebody else's pain or isolation, or fears — I got all of that out of my experience. So am I the better person for it? Hell, yeah. And now it's up to me how I use it.”
tough decisions
Doing everything else included raising her two sons with Ocasek, Jonathan and Oliver, now, 29, and 24, respectively. Porizkova takes pride in the fact that her sons are not “entitled” trust-fund kids. “They're absolutely money conscious,” she says. “They don't buy things above their means; they don't live above their means. And, technically, they could if they wanted to.”
She also worked much more selectively than she might have, and although Porizkova writes that her income was always considered lesser than her rock star husband’s, diminished to some nice-to-have, “extra” category that helped the family enjoy a certain lifestyle, her earning power as one of the OG supermodels was extraordinary. In 1988, she signed the largest cosmetics contract ever for a model at the time, making $6 million as the face of Esteé Lauder.
“My husband was absolutely not a misogynist,” she says. “He was very respectful towards women. Yet, oddly enough, when it came to money… my money just was diminished. And I think it had to be diminished in order to allow him to feel like he was important.”
credits
My husband was absolutely not a misogynist. He was very respectful towards women. Yet, oddly enough, when it came to money… my money just was diminished. And I think it had to be diminished in order to allow him to feel like he was important.
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Creative Direction
Danielle Giarratano
Photographs
George Chinsee
VP, Video
Reshma Gopaldas
Video Editors
Allie O’Connell,
Jacqueline Soller
Stylists
Danielle Giarratano,
Olivia Marcus
Makeup
Gianpaolo Ceciliato
Hair
Josue Perez