Natalia Vodianova on philanthropy and marrying into one of the world’s richest fashion dynasties

There can be few sayings quite so outdatedly sexist as “she’s not just a pretty face”, and yet if anyone embodies the cliché it’s Natalia Vodianova. In the pantheon of Models Who Use Their Beauty and Celebrity for the Greater Good, Vodianova, 36, is a colossus whose tireless charity work puts lifelong philanthropists to shame.

While most 22-year-olds were experimenting with a contour brush, Vodianova was launching the Naked Heart Foundation, an ambitious undertaking which, since its inception in 2004, has helped more than 10,000 children with mental, sensory and physical disabilities, while thousands more have benefited from inclusive play facilities in more than 150 Russian towns.

The foundation has also financed 200 playgrounds, a series of summer camps, seven occupational therapy rooms, a book about autism and 10 Russian NGOs that provide support to hundreds of families of children with special needs. Everything is free of charge, providing a much-needed service in a country whose attitude to children with special needs isn’t exactly exemplary.

That this is a cause close to Vodianova’s heart is due to her younger sister Oksana. “They told my mother she would never live past 10 years old,” Vodianova says. “She’s 30 and going strong. She’s as healthy physically as anyone else but has slight cerebral palsy and very severe autism. As a child I had never seen anyone with special needs other than my sister, because most families abandoned their children in a state institution, where they don’t really live long. Mortality rates for children such as Oksana in closed institutions are really high. Nothing can replace a family.”

Vodianova’s own family is a thoroughly modern one. Her mother and sister still live in Nizhny Novgorod, where Vodianova was talent-scouted at the age of 17. She herself is based mainly in Paris, where she lives with Antoine Arnault (yes, that Arnault, the fashion CEO) and their two sons, Maxim, four, and two-year-old Roman, as well as Lucas, 17, Neva, 12, and Viktor, 11 — her children by ex-husband Justin Portman, whom she divorced in 2011.

Antoine is the eldest son of Bernard Arnault, chairman and CEO of LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton and the fourth-richest person in the world, according to Forbes, and this helps explain the gilded life Vodianova leads. “I remember seeing her and my jaw sort of dropped internally,” Arnault — boss of LVMH brand Berluti — said of their first meeting. “I mean, of course she’s beautiful, but she has something undefinable. There’s an aura about her.”

Indeed there is; an ethereal one that belies the steely determination running through her. Today she looks particularly otherworldly, dressed in a silver Dior suit and scrubbed of make-up, every inch the businesswoman planning her charity’s next big event. For if the Naked Heart Foundation has so far raised £41 million, that figure is set to rise considerably after proceeds from its latest fundraising initiative have been banked. Arguably the starriest party of London Fashion Week, tonight’s Fabulous Fund Fair promises to be the most lavish yet and will see the Roundhouse in Chalk Farm transformed into an Italian cinematic funfair complete with a Givenchy hoopla garden, a Céline alley and a Louis Vuitton football club manned by Italian goalkeeping legend Gianluigi Buffon. And let’s not forget the Dior bowling lanes featuring what Vodianova excitedly describes as “a giant Parmigiano which you will roll to knock down the pins”. An actual cheese? I enquire, drooling. “Well, not an actual cheese,” she says. “But it’s the idea.”

Tickets start at £1,000 but what price rubbernecking top models and celebrities as you annihilate nine skittles with a fake Parmesan wheel? If past photographs of Taylor Swift, Cara Delevingne, Stella McCartney, Karlie Kloss and Hailey Bieber née Baldwin are anything to go by, those wealthy enough to snap up a spot are in for a fun, Access All Areas night. “We always try to give our guests the best experience possible,” smiles Vodianova. “This year’s theme is La Dolce Vita, because our partner is LuisaViaRoma, a retail platform that comes, very famously, from Florence. We wanted to celebrate Italy, which is an endless source of inspiration with its food, style, art and wonderful architecture.”

Has she decided what she’s wearing? “Not yet. It’s going to be a difficult decision, but something, of course, immensely glamorous and probably with a lot of skin. But not legs.”

Vodianova recently co-hosted a summit in Turkey on female reproductive health, another cause close to her heart, through her digital fundraising platform Elbi. “It’s the elephant in the room — we don’t talk about it, we suffer in silence, whether it’s from issues like pain during sex or painful periods. There is so much shame and stigma when it comes to anything to do with our life-producing organs, our vagina. Even that word, I still feel uncomfortable saying it because I was born in a country where there is no sex. Gynaecologists were not something you talked about. Sex is not something you talk about. And as a result you have to discover it like a blind person walking through the fog. It’s really unhealthy. So now I want to be very vocal about sexual education for children. It’s paramount.”

Her drive and determination might have earned her the nickname Supernova, but I wonder whether she ever feels burdened by this idea of having to be a “superwoman”. She smiles. “Yes. But I am, so I accept it. I embrace it.”

Would that more women accepted such compliments, instead of self-deprecatingly muttering about how they’re useless losers spreading themselves too thin. I don’t even know why I bother asking whether she suffers from working-mother guilt. “Well, you work. I work,” she says brusquely. “I think it’s about getting your priorities right and setting boundaries for yourself and your work. We will always feel guilty. No matter what you do, you’ll feel guilty. It’s pre-set. You just have to notice it and say, ‘That’s not me.’ That’s years of prejudice speaking in you and trying to bring you back to those times when women were just baby-making machines.”

Does she have to be militant to make Arnault does his share of family chores? “I don’t have to be because he’s so proactive. I’m lucky. It doesn’t make him a feminist, I’m afraid but he’s very, very supportive of my ideas, my lifestyle, and of course my work, the children and the house.”

In her downtime, such as it is, she prefers baking to cooking. Her speciality is pelmeni, a Russian dumpling. “I try to make them eat weird stuff — it’s important to educate, to introduce those things early enough, because then their palate develops.” She has recently invested in Little Tummy, a London-based start-up selling preservative-free baby food. “I’ve been obsessed with baby food since I was a young mum because I never wanted to feed my children the manufactured purée, so I always cooked myself. It’s so interesting to see a child discovering the taste of cauliflower, or even celery. They’re not going to love it but they will taste it, because it’s new.”

She speaks touchingly of her only daughter, Neva. “She’s very dreamy and she likes to read. She loves Galileo, her cat. Her cat is her boyfriend. She’s obsessed, in love. Neva is very tall, and I think she’s immensely beautiful and a sweetheart. I still have to prepare all her clothes because if I didn’t dress her every morning she would always be in leggings and a T-shirt. It’s painful for me, because I love fashion and I love to dress up and I have this beautiful doll, my only girl, so every morning I pick clothes for her. If I travel I leave her sets of clothing. Only for her.”

I imagine my 12-year-old giving the stink eye to any outfits I had the temerity to lay out for her. Does Neva deign to wear them? “Oh yes. She certainly relies on her stylist.” If Vodianova was your mother, I guess you would.

Tickets to tonight’s Fabulous Fund Fair are available for a suggested donation of £1,000; nakedheart.org/fundfair