“Armani was always the most feared.” Eugenia Silva (Madrid, 46 years old) is not referring to the Italian creator named Giorgio, but to the casting to which so many models appeared in the nineties as soon as they landed in Milan. In 1992, the model had been installed there for a few months, in an apartment shared with fellow model Karen Elson, when she launched into this test with the power to change lives: “Giorgio had a reputation that, if he liked you, he used to fuck you continuously ”. Silva prepared everything conscientiously, except for the unpredictable: her maternal grandfather died just a few days before and she had to return. She took two months to return to Milan: “There I planted myself, at 18 years old and determined that the second, by no means, would be the charm.”
This time he arrived in time to don a flesh-colored jumpsuit and hear the teacher murmur: “beautiful face” (pretty face). “I learned Italian in record time, by memorizing songs by Claudio Baglioni or Francesco de Gregori”, she recalls today with a wink. In the three decades that have passed since then, Silva has starred for Armani in dozens of parades, fashion campaigns and accessories. She is also an ambassador for her cosmetic line. “He believed in me and never doubted again,” she says.
Today, the model poses for ICON dressed in men’s pieces brought from the Giorgio Armani archive in Milan. Museum clothing that sums up the contribution of this Italian to fashion: he founded his company in 1975, initially only for men, and it did not take long to revolutionize the panorama with its fluid, unstructured elegance indebted to the cinema of the 1930s. His suits were powerful but not rigid, and the coloring ranged from a thousand shades of gray to jewel tones. A cross between aristocratic coldness and Hollywood brilliance: the perfect mix for the Spanish model, raised in the Palacio de la Cava in Toledo and with a cinema-screen-proof photogenicity, although her parents, in principle, recommended that she become a lawyer.
It was a friend of his mother’s – current political news photographer – who told him about a contest to appear in the magazine Ragazza. “There I met future friends like Esther Cañadas or Laura Ponte,” recalls Silva. She went on to graduate with a law degree, but she enjoyed the golden age of top models: “I was a teenager playing to travel around the world, meeting great people and being quite happy,” she says.
Along with Armani, Óscar de la Renta, Carolina Herrera and Victoria’s Secret arrived: Silva was the third Spaniard to wear the wings of the now controversial underwear firm, behind Cañadas and Helena Barquilla. Between final exams and parades, Silva built one of the strongest careers of her generation. She even traded Paris for New York, the ultimate measure of success then. Silva kept a cool head: “I haven’t had bad luck or experienced extreme situations, also because I knew what I wanted and how far I wanted to go,” she says. “I have had good allies, but I have always been my best therapist.” And she seems to be good: she has been a mother and has founded a fashion production company that allows her to “understand this world from within”. She laces up her shoes and throws one last thought: “That carom with Armani has always helped me to think that one can be what her attitude reflects.” A toast to the transforming power of fashion with capital letters.
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