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This Italian Supermodel’s Advice Will Change How You Think about Aging

Also, what Americans are doing wrong (pretty much everything…).

Models
This Italian Supermodel’s Advice Will Change How You Think about Aging

We’ve heard every French-girl trick there is at this point. The collective “we” are obsessed with French girls, and yes, I totally get it, but what about Italian girls? Italian girls have something French girls do not—and that’s, as supermodel and face of quintessential Roman brand Borghese Beauty Mariacarla Boscono put it, a capacity for “enjoying.” Italians do whatever they want, whenever they want, however they want—and they apply that philosophy to aging.

Where French girls might be mysterious, Italian women lay it all out on the table. And I, personally, aspire to be more like that. Screw being coy, I want to be a Roman!

So when I had the chance to grill Mariacarla on how Italians approach aging and the products she relies on to stay looking young, but naturally young—not too young, if that makes sense—I did. And what she told me is exactly what my over-stressed, over-exercised, over-worried-about-aging American ears needed to hear. Here’s what she had to say.

 

How have you approached aging?

“I think there’s a fine line [between aging and aging gracefully,] because there’s so much technology now that you can erase so much skin damage. And I’m not against [it], I just think it’s very, very much a fine line. You have to be very smart and find the best people if you want to intervene. [My friend says], ‘It took my whole life to get these wrinkles, I’m not going to just erase them.’

“I know it would sound ridiculous, but I find myself the most beautiful when I’m really happy; I’m a little bit more light with myself, and I allow myself to not be perfect—I feel happy, I feel gracefully beautiful in some weird way. It’s difficult to explain in words, but happiness really works as a beauty treatment for me.”

 


What’s the Italian attitude towards aging?

“Italians have one key word for everything, which is ‘enjoying.’ So, you know, we don’t really care [about aging]. We don’t really over-exercise, or overeat, over-not-eat, over-medicate, [we don’t do] over-perfection—we just go along with whatever. You only get one life, you know, and that’s what we think, what we know.”

What do you think Americans get wrong about aging?

“There’s no wrong or right, and I’m not one to speak to that, but from what I see, it doesn’t work for me. American culture is so extreme like, ‘I’m going to be on a diet, but it’s going to be a super strict diet. I’m going to do sports; it’s going to be a lot of sports.’ It doesn’t work for an Italian. We’re more mellow, we’re more mild with our stuff, we’re more gentle.”

What products do you use to keep your skin looking healthy?

“I rely a lot on scrubs. I know it sounds weird, but it’s important to switch around products. The key product I love is the Borghese scrub. I use it daily because it’s very mild. I use it in the shower, before I go to bed, when I wake up, and everything else changes. I use the Borghese Fango Mud, and I love the eye masks—they’re like an addiction, they work so well!”

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