For about three years now, a model has been revolutionizing the catwalks of Madrid and Gran Canaria. The Navarrese Guiomar Alfaro parades confidently and backstage it is difficult not to see her chatting with someone, whether with a designer, with the dressing room or with production, makeup or hairdressing. She is an excited woman and the reason is her age: 54 years old.
“Fashion has saved me. I have had a terrible time with menopause. I spent days crying. But now I’m happy. I have found something that I am truly passionate about,” Guiomar explains to this newspaper shortly before entering class to teach English at the Official Language School of Alcorcón.
The sadness she felt due to the hormonal changes of menopause was added to the departure of her two children, Alexandra (26) and Rubén (25), which “affected me a lot. She hurt me,” she remembers. It was precisely thanks to her son Ben (that’s what she calls him) that she found how to get excited again. “A talent scout from a modeling agency discovered him in a nightclub, about three years ago. He accepted because he has always been interested in fashion and one day he told me ‘Mom, they have noticed me, but you are the one who has to return to the catwalks.’ And here I am, enjoying it in a very different way than when he was parading when he was 20 years old.”
Their story begins in Corella (Navarra) where Guiomar and his twin sister Judith were born (September 27, 1969). “Our father was a notary officer in Corella, his hometown, and our mother was a French professor and taught at a high school in Tudela,” she explains. From a very young age we spent the three summer months in England to learn English, with different families. My mother traveled with us but my father stayed in Navarra working, because he was very expensive. And from the age of 14 we changed to France.” Those cries for spending summers away from Spain are now tears of gratitude towards her parents: “My mother was a visionary, because she was determined that her daughters would be trilingual,” defends Guiomar.
Then the two sisters moved to Madrid to study English Philology and that was when they started as models. “In Tudela we had done some little things, because Judith loved fashion, but in Madrid was where we really succeeded: twins, blondes, smart and with languages. Imagine,” she recalls.
Judith and Guiomar made catwalks, advertisements and fashion editorials. “I wasn’t into fashion, but I followed my sister. And now I was the one who wanted to come back and she didn’t.” After finishing their degree, in less time than expected due to their mastery of languages, they won the examinations at the Official Language School, where both continue to work in adjacent classes.
They married very young, and after motherhood they said goodbye to their modeling careers in the mid-nineties. “My last job was Nutribén baby food and I was with nine-month-old Alexandra.” It was then that she threw herself into her work and her children. “It was ma petite vie (my little life) as my daughter says.” Throughout that time, Guiomar fought to ensure that her children were also trilingual and to overcome two failed marriages. “I consider myself a feisty woman, I couldn’t understand how I had sunk with menopause. That is why I would like to advise women to look for an illusion, as I have found in fashion.” And she adds: “You have to enjoy the sun because it gives life. I walk a lot, I go to outdoor gym machines in Alcorcón and I walk up nine floors to my attic.”
Currently, her daily life passes between teaching (in the afternoons) and fashion (mornings and weekends). “I had to say no to a Balenciaga show in Paris, because it coincided with a competition table.”
After her time at the last Fashion Week in Madrid, the media’s interest in her has skyrocketed. “I am in a very media moment, but I live day to day and now I think about 080 and Bridal, where I would like to be and the Louis Vuitton cruise show would be a dream, which has announced that it will also be in Barcelona.”
For five years now, Guiomar has shared his life with the traumatologist Alfonso Palacios, “who supports me in everything.” The model’s overwhelming personality sometimes causes some resentment, but she tries not to let it affect her: “It’s okay to be different.”
