Evelina Sgarbi: «I mind my own business»

This article is published in issue 47 of Vanity Fair on newsstands until 22 November 2022

Stn her Instagram page, Evelina Sgarbi says that a nice face is not her forte. He’s wrong. When she enters the photographic studio with a pink backpack on her shoulder, her clean face half hidden by unstraightened hair, the tone of voice with which she always seems to ask permission before opening her mouth, she immediately arouses a mixture of sympathy and tenderness.
Evelina, subtle as her name, raised between Turin and Biella, is the third child that the famous art critic had from a fleeting relationship. Imagining her crushed by her father figure, both cumbersome and absent, one is led to interpret her shyness as submissiveness. Wrong again: the young model, who hit the headlines for a recent discussion with her father after his no to the Big Brother VIP, has developed in just 22 years the calm of the wise. The one that allows her to serenely live in a present without a defined career goal (perhaps next year she will enroll in the Faculty of Biology, but she is still not sure). And to shrug in the face of some of his father’s famous shots. You included her reprimands for refusing, last summer, to enter the most spied on house in Italy.

Do you repent?
“No, that program is not for me. I’ve never followed him even as a viewer, but
my friends told me they even film you taking a shower. Unthinkable. Then I already know that, if I had accepted, I would have found my father in the studio, every other night, saying 300 bullshit a minute”.

Why did he get angry?
“He claimed I disparaged his work in television and that I couldn’t afford to spit on money, since I have expensive tastes.”

He was right?
«No: in fact, they have now contacted me Hyenas, I should start a project with them. I feel more comfortable there.”

Did you make peace with your father?
«Yes, but it took a while: we didn’t speak for some time. In the end, however, we are similar: we light up with fury, but we don’t hold a grudge».

It is difficult, seeing her so calm, to imagine her altered like her father.
“Believe me: I swear a lot too. And like him I shun hypocrisy. You can love him or hate him, but you have to recognize his intellectual independence. He is not under anyone and pays for it
the consequences. I respect him for that.”

Does he respect you too?
“I think so, of the three children I am the one who resembles him the most”.

What are his brothers doing?
“Carlo, the eldest, lives in Brussels. Alba graduated from Bocconi and returned to Albania, because her mother is from there. I think they both work, but I’m not sure: we love each other, but we feel little”.

How often does he hear from his dad instead?
“Not every day. I certainly don’t tell him about my daily life or about my boyfriends ».

What are you talking about?
“If I ask him for advice for my future, he’s there.”

Yet he has stated questionable things about authorship in the past. Example: «That of the father
it’s not a category I feel I should belong to. That said, I am also against abortion. There are women who wanted children from me, not me from them because there can’t be an obligation to become a father”.
“This is the character speaking, rather than the person.”

Do you mean that certain statements are made only to provoke?
«But yes. Anything I ask him, maybe he gets a little grumpy, but then he tries to accommodate me. It’s better than many fathers who live in the family and the children don’t even get away with it».

Did you miss him as a child?
“I would not say. My mom made it for two. And then anyway he, in her way, has always been there. It was more me who avoided him ».

Meaning what?
«He came to visit me, I was shy and he was impetuous even in showing affection: he wanted to crush me, kiss me, rub my face. I clung to my mother. Then, however, I also have very beautiful memories ».

Guy?
“When we went out to dinner together, he made me very late. She took me to see churches at night. She called her friends and said: I’m coming with Evelina, can you open me? We went in and she explained everything to me. Whatever she says, he makes it interesting.’

Not even a flaw this dad?
«Well I don’t exclude that some of my insecurities are partially derived from our non-constant relationship».

What insecurities?
«Physical: until the pandemic, when I started training and eating healthy, I always saw myself as too chubby. And intellectuals: if I don’t know everything about a subject, I prefer not to express myself».

Humility seems to me a virtue rather than an insecurity.
“But, sometimes, I would like to throw myself more.”

In this it does not resemble to his father, who once said: «I don’t suffer from delusions of superiority. I’m really superior.”
«How to blame him: leaf through a book and you already know everything. He has more energy than a 30-year-old: he goes to see 800 places a day, sleeps 30 seconds in his car full of books and leaves again. If I spend a week with him, then I have to take a vacation to rest: she lives at 300 an hour and never stops ».

Instead, she stopped: at the moment she is not enrolled in the University and, apart from some services as a model, she is not working.
«Yes, I interrupted my studies twice because neither fashion design nor styling was for me».

What does it do for her?
«My great passion is cosmetics. I dream of opening my own skincare and make-up line, which is free of toxic substances and totally cruelty free: I love animals. Then I’m also interested in nutrition. Maybe next year I’ll enroll in Biology. I still don’t know though, and it’s strange for me: I usually have everything under control».

Even in love?
“Also”.

How do you do?
“Pull the handbrake on.”

What do you mean?
“Love is beautiful, but dangerous. I took a lot of blows and now I struggle to let go ».

But she is engaged.
«Yes, since March of this year, with Leopoldo».

What does he do?
«He works in catering and dreams of opening premises in Vietnam. I’ve known him for seven years, we were friends: she lives 300 meters from my house in Biella ».

Do you plan to move in together?
“Calmly. I told you: I’m a walker with leaden feet. Too many disappointments.”

Can you tell us one?
“In fourth grade, I fell in love with a boy. We’ve been together for a while, I thought it was forever. When he left me, I suffered a lot. And for years I took refuge in relationships with certified assholes. Perhaps, subconsciously, I chose them precisely because they were wrong».

Many will have told him that, often, those who have an unresolved relationship with their father struggle to make married life work.
“Yes, I’m working on it.”

With a therapist?
“No, I don’t feel ready. When I am, I will go.”

While?
«At the same time I work on myself: I have abolished gluten and introduced Pilates. When I don’t come to Milan for a fashion shoot, I stay at home, watch movies, read books. Appearance”.

What are you waiting for?
«To understand which is the right path. I would have liked to have clear ideas at 18 and say, what do I know, now I’m enrolling in medicine. But it wasn’t like that and I don’t blame myself anymore. I understood that I have to calmly find my place in the world».

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