an exotic tale; From the land of Genghis Khan to a favored perch in Irving Penn's studio, Siberian model Irina Pantaeva tells her story.

I was born and raised in Communist Russia, in Ulan- Ude, Siberia. I come from an ancient tribe, the Buryat; we are descendants of Genghis Khan, who, like me, was born beside Lake Baikal, the deepest lake in the world. During Soviet times, our culture was suppressed. I wasn't allowed to speak my language in school or learn the history of my people.

My parents met in the theater. My father was a composer and my mother a seamstress, and since we didn't have anywhere else to live, we lived in the theater, too. I developed a love of fabrics and colors and shapes as a child, sleeping among the costumes. I still miss that smell.

I dreamed of becoming an actress and a clothing designer. In our culture, every little girl is expected to learn how to sew. (My mother always told me, "No matter what you do in your life, if you learn how to make clothes, you will always have bread on the table.") Just to survive the winter is a big challenge in Siberia. We had to be creative about how to preserve food and keep warm. My uncle and grandfather would shoot ducks and hunt for bears, whose skins we would work to soften.

My grandmother had an old wooden spindle she would use to make yarn. She taught me how to knit, and the first thing I made was a pair of red-and-blue striped leg warmers. I was so proud of them, but when I wore them to school I got into huge trouble because we weren't supposed to wear anything besides our uniform, which was an ugly dark-brown dress, worn with a white collar and a Young Communist League red scarf.

When I was fourteen, I met a local fashion designer, Larisa Dagdanova, who became my idol and dear friend. She introduced me to magazines, including Vogue, that were smuggled in from abroad. The pictures were just unreal; it was another world. She invited me to model in one of her fashion shows, but modeling was frowned upon as little better than prostitution, and I was nearly kicked out of school and sent to reform camp.

By the time I was nineteen, perestroika had started to loosen things up in Russia, and my cousin sent in my photograph for a Pierre Cardin show that was to be held in Moscow's Red Square. I was invited to be seen-even though the plane ticket cost my parents two months' salary. When I got there, what seemed like a million girls were standing in line and fighting to get noticed.

In the end I was chosen for the show, which became a historic event in Russia. After that, I knew I wanted to go to Paris, but getting a visa was another story. One day, I met a girl from St. Petersburg who asked me, "Do you want to go to Paris?" I thought she was kidding, but she said she had friends who could get us visas. And she did. Before I knew it, we were on the plane.