An excerpt from our cover story featuring the legendary Isabella Rossellini, in Issue 7 of Corduroy:

These days, Rossellini lives on Long Island (which she refers to several times to as “the country”). When she’s not busy working, she takes long walks in the forest, goes fishing, trains dogs for the blind and even raises chickens. “You don’t need a farm to have a couple of chickens,” she says, with a straight face.

It’s odd to picture a supermodel roughing it in a barn, but then again, Rossellini has managed to shock our expectations of how models should be after they voluntarily (or involuntarily) retire from the modeling world.

“The image of a supermodel is that you’re beautiful,” she says. “You wear Dior, Chanel, and Armani and that’s it. You’re made up and that’s all. Anything beyond that surprises people.”

Rossellini says she’s always looking for new projects, and that she gets bored whenever she’s not working. Still, she feels nostalgic about her old career from time to time.

“I do miss modeling. I miss the life and going to beautiful photographic studios,” she says. “I miss the friendships. When you’re not always traveling with the same people and working with them, you just naturally lose touch.”

“But,” Rossellini says with guided wisdom seeping through her words, “life moves on.”

– To read the full story, pick up Issue 7 of Corduroy, due out next month.

(photographs by Peter Ash Lee)