For my 100th Instagram post, I’d like to go back to the beginning — to this photo. And how it changed my life. 🌸 I was 13 and living with my mother and brother in Sweden after leaving communist Czechoslovakia. Kids at my new school were awful to me because I was a refugee. I was spit on and hit and called a ‘dirty communist’ and worse. Thankfully, I made a group of friends who were as unpopular as myself (albeit for different reasons): Petra, Charlotte and Christine. These girls, now women, are all still important to me and I’m so incredibly grateful for them.  Christine, who took this picture, wanted to be a makeup artist and so one day we all got together and she painted our faces. The plan was to send photos of her artistry to modeling agencies in Paris. When the photos were developed everyone looked lovely, but my friends were shocked by the ones of me. No one had thought of me as pretty, but in the photos something magical happened.  It was as if there was an entirely new person captured by the lens. 🌸Christine sent off this photo (along with others in the series). Soon after, a modeling agent called inviting me to Copenhagen to meet the famed model scout John Casablancas. John was busy with a model competition in a mall; I met him for all of 15 seconds. He took one look at me and asked: want to go to Paris? As if I’d say no! The rest, as they say, is history. ⭐️⭐️⭐️ P.S. Christine did not pursue a career as a makeup artist, though when I began working fulltime in Paris I tried to convince her to join me...💕 #faceofarefugee #Paulina4Decades