Inés Sastre turns 50 and does not hide. “I have a lot of desire. My friends are a little older than me and they tell me: ‘Inés, it’s okay to go through life in your forties.’ “They are desperate.” For several generations on planet Earth, Inés’s face will continue, fresh and beautiful, facing Lancôme, but she, with an easy laugh and hasty speech, warns that they will not find her in euphemisms of consolation such as that 50 is the new 30. “Well look, no, 50 is 50.”
The face of luxury at the end of the 20th century was a face with a dark complexion, a wide smile and black eyes that had come into the world one autumn day in 1973 in Valladolid. The life of that girl whom they called Inés, surnamed Tailor, seems like a succession of juggles to always fall with grace and ease in the exact place. At the age of 12, while devouring a hamburger in a McDonald’s advertisement, she conquered Carlos Saura, who signed her for his film El Dorado (1988). After two more exhausting shoots, she took a break and tried her luck in a modeling contest – no less. than the one from the Elite agency in 1989 with costumes by Azzedine Alaïa -, won it. They offered her a contract that she did not sign in order to continue studying, so she was a Lettres Modernes student who skipped classes to make films or to parade in Milan and New York, and then returned anxiously to sink her elbows into books and notes to be at the height.
“I was at a crossroads, I made films, I worked in fashion but I wasn’t an actress, I wasn’t a model and I wasn’t quite a student either. I have always been very intuitive with my decisions. They told me: if you start studying they will forget you. Well, they didn’t forget me, on the contrary, since I had to be very selective with my projects, I became an object of desire.” Inés finished the race, but it was hard. “I remember Madame Leroy, my Linguistics teacher, she was wonderful, but she gave me a zero. She had never happened to me, she wanted me to be swallowed by El Sena.” Inés stops her story to report: “Once in a while I get dramatic, I’m a bit Sarah Bernard.” Some of the guests at her 50th birthday celebration are friends from those difficult college years.
At the age of 20, she was the first Spanish model to walk for Chanel. In 1996 she succeeded Isabella Rosellini as the image of Lancôme’s Trésor perfume with a million-dollar contract that lasted 16 years, and which she calls “with the utmost respect” but laughing, “my rich husband.” That contract not only cleaned up her economy, but made her a global face in the prehistory of the Internet. In 2000 she presented the San Remo Festival and dared to sing in front of Luciano Pavarotti. Nothing seemed to stop her, although she now says that it was her Italian agent who “messed her up” and then told her: “Well, you already have the bicycle, now let’s pedal.” In 2011 Frédéric Mitterand, then France’s minister of culture, awarded her the Chevalier d l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres and she was later named Caballiere della Repubblica Italiana. Inés speaks Spanish, French, English and Italian, in that order.
In 2020, after living 30 years in Paris, the actress and model returned to Madrid. The reason was her son Diego, who is now 17 years old. She “wanted him to have the experience of living in a place where you can run down the street.” Three years later, Diego is perfectly adjusted and she continues to miss Paris. During this photo session, a friend of hers was giving her instructions to get to Casa Mira, an emblematic nougat house in the center of the city. “People ask me for tips about Madrid but I don’t know the city anymore. It is true that life is very easy, I had gotten used to my traffic jams in Paris, I laugh when they warn me that there is one here,” says Inés, who does not have a driving license. These days she has started running very early in the morning through El Retiro with her dog Zou, a 6-year-old Labrador who belonged to the national police of Valladolid. Inés adopted him into the Héroes de Cuatro Patas association, which is responsible for finding a good retirement for dogs that have provided a service to society.
“What do I miss about Paris? Well, the cheese,” she says emphatically. Also, to her friends and the discretion of the French. “It’s very nice because anonymity is respected, the law protects you and the French character is less gossipy. “The attention that people dedicate here to other people’s lives makes me very lazy.” Inés confirms that she should no longer be of great interest. “At the moment they are leaving me alone. I was never a night owl, I don’t like parties. I’m a total bore. They must not find anything interesting in my way of life.”
She is now dedicated to “other things.” With the proviso that nothing is very long term. “I prefer to focus on the here and now.” For example, helping her son decide where he is going to spend his college years and what career she is going to study. She “she leans more towards letters, and that makes me proud. I see many parents putting pressure on their children to study what, according to them, is useful, and I believe in vocation. “We must stop projecting our aspirations and frustrations onto our children.” Her great friend, Princess Beatrice of Orleans, assures that Inés is “a magnificent mother.” Beatriz says: “She is very strict, I have never seen a child as well-behaved as Diego, much more so than my grandchildren. And I say this because I have said it many times to them.”
Inés thinks that sometimes being a mother is “paranoid.” “Now everyone talks to me about empty nest syndrome, and I am very happy that Diego is flying. “This way I can travel again,” she says, rubbing her hands.
Now she is dedicated to organizing her 50th birthday party. I am one of those who celebrate on the same day – Tuesday, November 21 – in Paris because it is my city and my friends who are family are there. There will be people from all periods and from all worlds, I am very eclectic and I like to mix people: ages, nationalities, cultures… something that is not done much in Spain.” In the coming weeks he will dedicate himself to organizing a sitting that seems complicated. “It will be a dinner that will start at 8:15 p.m. because I find it more civilized to have dinner early,” she details.
His third project is to manage his “very high stress levels.” “I am a perfectionist and that can be very frustrating. I am also very cruel to myself and those around me when it comes to fashion. I give them faces that they know how to interpret… and then they tell me: okay, I’ll change. Don’t tell me more, there’s no need,” she says between laughs, smiling.
Inés has gone back to therapy: “And I’m HAPPY.” She says it like this, emphasizing each syllable. “I think it should be done at each change in the life cycle. It is a structural therapy that gives me tools to control my levels of anxiety and impatience. There is still a certain taboo… people may think I’m terrible. Well no, I’m great but I still want to be better.”
He lights his second cigarette. She looks at him and says, “I have to leave him, but it’s very difficult. I’m drawing up small strategies, gaining space. For example, no smoking in the room. I got it for ten days and the doctor himself asked me to come back. Let’s say there are times to quit smoking and this is not one of them.”
Do you feel like a fashion history? “It may be, when they tell me: your colleagues, the influencers… No, look, I come from another era – and I’m not ashamed to say it – I’m from a generation of models that needed to know about lighting, that studied to learn how to pose, that He was preparing for the shootings. Something I continue to do because this is a job and not a hobby. Sometimes when I look at everything I’ve done, where I’ve been, or the people I’ve met in life I think I should get to work. I have sometimes been asked to write my memoirs, and I would like to do so, but I think it is a bit early. So many things have happened to me that sometimes I talk and people look at me as if I were 300 years old, and I feel very young, really, like a girl.”
