‘Being heard is better than being seen’: supermodel Paulina Porizkova on living ‘unfiltered’

‘I’m not precious about my secrets. I guard other people’s, but you can have all of mine’: Paulina Porizkova, at home in New York City. Photograph: Ali Smith/The Observer

Moving through a room as a teenage supermodel when she first came to New York, mouths would drop, drinks would appear, eyes would spring out of sockets as if from a cartoon cat. In one chatshow appearance I watched on YouTube, from 1994, the radio personality Howard Stern spontaneously undressed in front of her. Trousers, shirt, everything.

But at 57, the experience is quite different for Paulina Porizkova. One night earlier this year, she was at a party in Manhattan. Pushing her way through the crowd, she felt out of place, and invisible, and old. Then a young woman sitting at the bar grabbed her arm. “Aren’t you…?” the woman yelled over the music. “Yes,” said Porizkova quickly.