Anja Rubik

Building a raw aesthetic

Anja Rubik is more than just a face on a billboard in Place Vendôme. Her career rests on an analytical ability that few in the fashion and film industries dare to exercise. She was born in Rzeszów in 1983 and spent her childhood between Greece, Canada and South Africa before landing in Paris at just eighteen.

She arrived with no connections but with a determination that bordered on insolence.

In 2011, she founded 25 Magazine. It was a risky move, since print was already on its last legs, and she chose to invest her own money so she could control every frame. She wasn't looking to look pretty in the pictures. She wanted to explore sensuality from an aggressive, uncompromising angle that connected directly with the visual language of directors like Gaspar Noé.

And the experiment worked across several cult editions.

Her relationship with Anthony Vaccarello transformed the image of the Saint Laurent house starting in 2016. Rubik was never just a clothes hanger. She actively took part in conceptualizing the promotional short films and brought a cinematic eye to the campaigns. Her influence on the brand's image design went beyond what is expected of a typical model.

The politics of the body on screen

In 2017, she launched #SEXEDpl to fight the lack of sex education in Poland. The project began as a series of micro-shorts in which actors and public figures spoke to the camera about consent, anatomy and desire. It sparked a political storm in her home country, which she handled with enviable composure.

But she didn't back down in the face of institutional pressure.

The camera has always been her tool of power. In 2024, she worked on the art direction of visual pieces that fuse fashion with experimental video art. Her approach steers clear of linear narrative. She prefers dry visual impact and grainy textures reminiscent of European cinema of the 1970s. Control over her own narrative is what sets her apart from her contemporaries.

Because she understands that image is a technical language before it is an exercise in vanity.

Before taking on a project, she analyzes the lighting and the camera crew that will be used. In 2025, her personal photo archive held more than ten thousand unsorted original negatives stored in a climate-controlled warehouse in Paris. Her contract with the Next agency includes specific clauses on the intellectual property of production outtakes.