Daria Werbowy sees the big picture when it comes to modeling

NEW YORK -- It's nice to be wanted -- and even better to be missed. That's because you get to have a "comeback."

Granted, model Daria Werbowy is only 22, but her "comeback" infused the catwalks with energy and sizzle during the most recent New York Fashion Week. She hit the big runways: Ralph Lauren, Oscar de la Renta, Carolina Herrera, Michael Kors, Proenza Schouler and Karl Lagerfeld, among them, often opening and closing the shows.

Last season she was absent from the runways because she was shooting the ads for Lancome's new Hypnose perfume and The Enchantress color collection.

They're the ads that will put Werbowy's face everywhere this spring.

That face is beautiful, felinelike -- and approachable. There's no pretense to Werbowy, not when one sees her walking out of a fashion show in jeans and a puffy winter coat, and not when she does a telephone interview.

"I think you should try everything once," Werbowy says. "The great thing about modeling is you get to have experiences you wouldn't normally have the opportunities to have."

Travel is the No. 1 perk, she says. Werbowy was born in Poland and raised in Canada, and she says she would have found a way to see the rest of the world somehow, some way, but "now I'm traveling in luxury."

She's an avid snowboarder and recently returned from an annual retreat with her friends at Whistler, British Columbia. "I have to have something to do in the winter to counteract sailing in the summer," she says with a laugh.

Of course, life can't always be fun and games. Models do indeed work, and one of the hardest parts of the business can be the emotional toll.

Werbowy won a modeling contest at 14, but her parents wanted her to finish high school -- one that specialized in art -- before she could move to New York or Europe. So she worked locally until 2001, when she moved to Paris and London. She lasted eight months and then quit.

"I was struggling in the sense of being away from home, trying to figure a way of making it in the business, especially a business that's so personal. It is really all about what you look like," she says.

"But I decided to come back a year later. I had a different attitude. I needed to make money to go to art school. I started fresh. When I met (modeling agency) IMG a second time, I laid down the law in those terms, and there was a good understanding between us. And then it just kind of happened."

Once her modeling career is over, or at least winds down, Werbowy plans to pursue art again. "I need it in my life -- I want to take everything that's happened over the last two years and put it on paper."