Diamonds were everywhere: Dasha Astafieva spoke frankly about shooting for Playboy and admitted how she got there

Dasha Astafieva, a Ukrainian model known for her Playboy covers, recalls her photo shoot that led to her subsequent appearance in the magazine. Against the background of the rich models who were shooting for Hugh Hefner's product, the girl was poor and had a poor command of a foreign language, but this did not prevent her from "accidentally" saving up part of the money to buy an apartment and moving from the town of Pokrov in the Dnipro region to the capital.

In an interview with Emma Antoniuk in No One Will Watch This, Astafieva said that her very first photo shoot, which later appeared in a Playboy issue, was exhausting and boring. To appear stylish, the woman took a fashionable Sinslay handbag along with her second-hand clothes, but it did not save the day, as the organizers did not recognize the young girl as a model at first.

"I didn't even think I'd make it to Playboy, and my first photo shoot was the most uninteresting, 'passable' photo shoot. I had a guy who I worked with as my agent, and he set a task. He said: "You're so cool, you've already taken pictures with everyone, now you need to earn a lot of money. You need a photographer not who is paid, but who pays you." I find such a photographer, arrive in Kyiv, walk from the train station and ask everyone where Pushkinska Street is. I find this studio all dressed up in second-hand clothes: a shawl, a velvet coat, and a bag I bought on purpose to make them think I was a cool model, a Sislay bag on wheels... I walk in and they say: "Girl, come out, we're having a photo shoot here". And I said: "So you're the ones waiting for me," she recalled.

Due to the delay on the set, Astafieva missed her train and so, in order not to miss the chance, she was photographed all night.

"I was published in Playboy under the name Letafieva, and I realize now that either they didn't want me to be found or they didn't want them to know who I was. And my mom calls Playboy and says: "I'm going to f*cking burn down your publishing house if you don't reprint." And they said: "We're not going to reprint it," the model said about her first appearance in the magazine.

Later, she was invited to the magazine's 55th Anniversary Playmate award, which helped her save up some of the money to pay for an apartment in the capital.

"When I arrived at Playboy, it was like a punishment, I found diamonds everywhere. I went into the locker room and found a small earring with diamonds. I dove into Playboy in the pool and found the ring. I went to the cleaning lady and told her what I found. She said, "Everything you find belongs to you. I came back with a handful of everything I found and my prize for doing the shoot, my award for winning the 55th Anniversary Playmate contest, which I couldn't even pronounce at the time. And with this handful of diamonds, I paid a deposit for an apartment, which I later bought in Kyiv," the woman recalled.

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