Ambitious, hardworking, certainly no wallflower: Magdalena Frackowiak walked away from an architecture degree to pursue modeling. She tells Emma Sells why you have to follow your dreams.
It’s hard to know what to expect when you interview a model. Some are funny and smart; some only want to talk about their various side-projects; and some are sweet but – how to say this politely? – so young they don’t have much to say yet.
Polish model Magdalena Frackowiak (pronounced frans-co-vi-ak) turns out to be one of the good ones. She’s happy to drink tea, vape (strictly nicotine-free) and rattle away in near-perfect English about her work, family and two beloved cats, Arturo and Greta, well past our allotted time. And, once the dictaphone is turned off, we talk for even longer, discussing the joys of Tuscany and her boyfriend of three years, Italian designer Daniele Cavalli (the pair met backstage at one of his father’s fashion shows), who lives there. She’s as captivating in the flesh as she is on the countless magazine covers that she’s racked up, too; on the tall side, even for a model, at 5’11”, and all long blond hair, feline eyes and flawless skin.
“I look exactly like my father, it’s crazy,” says Frackowiak. “The same skin tone, the same kind of fingers, the same kind of teeth, everything. It’s incredible.” Today, she’s dressed in her go-to uniform of uncomplicated head-to-toe black, wearing a silk slip – one of five that she recently made for herself – sheer black tights, mules and an oversized Cavalli sweater.
The 31-year-old has been in the business for nearly 15 years, ever since her mother – a dental nurse and fierce champion of her offspring – entered pictures of 16-year-old Magdalena into a Polish modeling competition, which she duly won. But the beginning of her career was a slow burn, with jobs slotted around finishing high school. She spent two years studying architecture at university before she decided, aged 19, to make the move to New York. Since then, she’s walked for every major fashion house from Dior to Givenchy, fronted campaigns for Prada, Lanvin and Louis Vuitton, donned wings for four Victoria’s Secret shows and earned a place on Models.com’s list of Industry Icons. She also found the time last year to launch an eponymous line of jewelry, co-founded with her best friend in Warsaw, as an outlet for her creative ambitions.
“I took my route, I took what life gave me and I’m really glad that I did,” she says. “But once I turned 30, I wanted to go back to my dreams; to do something that I had always wanted to do.”
So what’s the secret to her longevity? A mix of ambition and appreciation, an ability to make the most of every opportunity that comes her way while maintaining a relaxed, take-it-or-leave-it approach. It probably helps that, as she says, “Modeling came into my life very unexpectedly.” Growing up in Gdansk, Poland, at the tail end of the communist era, Frackowiak admired the likes of Natalia Vodianova, Isabeli Fontana and Adriana Lima from afar, but had no real expectation of following in their footsteps.
“I grew up in a very gray kind of world, wearing clothes from kids in older classes. Everything was very simple and there was no money,” she says, “so seeing those girls in magazines and on television, it was impossible for me to imagine myself there.”
Far-flung vacations were a pipe dream – the furthest Frackowiak had traveled before she started modeling was on a bus to visit her aunt in Germany – so her first big working trips to Paris, London and Tokyo were a real eye-opener. Not that the model was remotely fazed; she is self-confident and scrappy in the best possible way and, judging by the tales of her childhood, always has been. “I was a wild child, always in trouble at school,” she laughs. “I always had to answer, to be loud. I couldn’t just sit there. There was a girl at primary school who I would have arguments with until the teacher said one of us had to leave [the school]. So my mother – who always thought I was the best, I could never do anything wrong – took me out.”
Frackowiak loves every aspect of her job and she’s a self-confessed workaholic. “I’m very ambitious – I don’t want to lose any time. And it feels good to work hard; it gives me satisfaction and it makes me stronger,” she says. “But I’m very chilled, too; I think it’s important that you don’t take things too seriously, that you have fun and don’t torture yourself. You have to let the criticisms go in your left ear and out your right.”
While Frackowiak’s career may have come as a surprise, it certainly suits her – more than a decade in the fickle modeling industry, especially in this ‘here today, gone tomorrow’ era, is not to be sniffed at – and she has no intention of walking away from it any time soon.
“It hasn’t always been easy, but when I look back at my memories, there are so many of them that I’m grateful for,” she says. “I opened Alexander McQueen’s last show [before the founding designer died] and when I went to the exhibition of his work in London there were two outfits that I had worn. It was an amazing feeling. You don’t realize when you do these things; it’s only years later that you look back and think, wow, I am part of the history of fashion.”
Kidding, kidding. 
