The Ukrainian Next Top Model who fled to Athlone

Somebody once said that good models are like silent movie stars — knowing how to convey narrative and emotion visually on camera without words. One of Ukrainian model Tatyana Bryk’s particular skills is just that, an ability to use strong facial expression and gesture in different ways to display energy and vivacity. It has made her one of her country’s top models, and the winner in October 2020 of its Next Top Model reality TV series.

Born in 1997 in the southern Ukrainian city of Mykolaiv on the Black Sea, the only daughter of a bus driver and a hospital worker, Bryk, an athletic child, began her modelling career at the age of 14 due to the encouragement of her parents. Since then she has worked all over the world in campaigns for Yohji Yamamoto, Pepe Jeans and Charlotte Tilbury among others, and appeared in magazines that include L’Officiel, Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar.

She has lived in places as far apart as Paris, Tel Aviv, Singapore, Barcelona, Dubai, Istanbul, London and has now landed — as a refugee — in Athlone, Co Westmeath, one of many Ukrainians forced to flee due to the Russian invasion. Her first big assignment in Ireland, not a country she had ever associated with fashion, is modelling the latest collection from Knight & Day jewellery.

She gives a harrowing account of her escape from Ukraine. “When the war started I wanted to stay home with my parents, but they urged me to leave so I decided to go as the city was under attack and I was scared — every day there were some 15-30 missile strikes. So they drove me to Odesa to catch an evacuation train to Lviv and there were so many people, crowds running for the train. I remember one girl fell in the crush and her whole face was covered in blood.

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“On one seat were four people, some standing. I couldn’t sleep the whole night and when we got to Lviv there were even bigger crowds, and I spent the whole day waiting to get on the train to Poland — again there was not enough space. A desperate mother with a child she wanted to take to Poland to his grandparents couldn’t get a place. So she begged me to take him which I did. After I’d left him safely with his grandparents, I took a bus to Warsaw, met my friend and we bought tickets to Ireland.”

All she knew about Ireland were scenes from Lord of the Rings inspired by the Irish landscape, and that English was spoken here. “I didn’t want to have to learn another language”, she explains. “I wanted to be productive.”

Now, she says, she lives from day to day. She starts every morning checking the news and that her parents are safe. To earn enough money to help them and the war effort, she works for the Bluebird Care company looking after the sick and elderly in Athlone. Her Instagram account, where she had 219,000 followers, was deleted due to one political post on the war, but she has started a second @by_tatti_ to create awareness of Ukraine and help other refugees around the world.

“She is a really good networker,” says Rebecca Morgan of Morgan the Agency who represents her in Ireland. “She has good people skills, an amazing face which is really strong, and even better, she knows how to use it.” Since her arrival in March, Bryk has learned a lot about Irish history. She is thankful to be here, and now reckons that “Ireland understands Ukraine better than anyone else”.

Photography by Alex Sheridan, stylist Fiona Fagan, hair and make-up Billy Orr, jewellery Knight & Day