Remy Holwick: November begs for commitment here in the Catskills
By Sara Mae Zandi
Photography by Adrianna Newell
Stylist Stacy Cunningham
Beauty Kate BestAbove: NVLT coat over Merlette dress
In its breeze, crisp maple leaves fall from quivering branches, and if you’re lucky, the warmth of a noonday sun coaxes out the heady scent of hay and cow manure — the last of summer’s bounty, asking you to let go. As it snakes through the rolling foothills, which are spread thick with fertile farmland and dotted with ponds abuzz with migratory birds, who will soon escape into the sky, colder that air becomes. Soon, rumblings of geese and tractors slow while snow blankets the valley, and newness gives way to stillness. What will grow from a rocky earth and a desire for closeness is our need for each other, to come back to the land, to honor the cycle of things.
These musings played in my mind as I meandered from Bovina, where I call home, to Stamford, where Remy Holwick has made hers. A quietly inspiring morning that pulled us closer to winter also brought me into conversation with Holwick, a multi-disciplinary artist, activist, and mother who has made a home here in the Catskills since 2022. We talked about her nomadic upbringing, the ways in which this town of 2,000 has inspired her career, and what it means to contribute to community in a meaningful way.
Above: Madeline Marie dress, Rag & Bone boots
Right: Eleven Six Cardigan, Ivy Kirk skirt
I am so glad to be here. I love seeing how and where people have made a home. Can you tell me about how this one came to be yours?
My friends Cay Sophie and Christian, the creators of Osmos (who also have Osmos Station, their gallery here in Stamford), bought this house as their COVID project. (I’ve been coming upstate to their place for almost eight years.) It was funny because, in my head, I kept thinking, ‘Put in a fireplace. My house needs a fireplace,’ and yet it wasn’t mine. When they finished this house [to sell], built in 1891, I was in contract to buy another one and dropped out.
You spent a lot of time here, visiting, but did you always feel that you’d set roots down permanently?
I never really saw myself as a property owner. We were very nomadic. My family moved a lot growing up, from California to Hawaii, when I was six. Then, all over the world, as a young adult, and nobody owned property. We had a very rich upbringing, but it was not rich in money. I was not thinking in terms of what kind of assets I could compile. It was more about what’s the next adventure? What are we creating? Or how can I finish what I’m doing? This idea of owning something and having roots was so baffling and appealing at the same time. I think that the flip side of being nomadic is we’re always kind of looking for a home.
“This idea of owning something and having roots was so baffling and appealing at the same time. I think that the flip side of being nomadic is we’re always kind of looking for a home.”
I first thought Hawaii couldn’t be more different than Stamford. But you’ve hinted at their similarities, especially concerning living and working as a newcomer to your community — the challenges and how to thoughtfully be a part of it.
Upcountry Maui is ranch land, which is where I grew up. Our town was smaller than [Stamford], so this setting makes sense. It feels like home.
When you come to Hawaii as a young kid to a native-centric state, I think it makes you see the world differently. It wasn’t friendly; You learned what Haole meant really fast and it was that you are an outsider, particularly a white outsider, which was confusing because I’m Native American and White, so not White-White, but I’m not the right native. Because of that experience — having a culture welcome me in, and not wanting anything to do with what I was bringing with me — you learn really fast that what you bring with you is the least interesting thing about the place that you’re entering.
Above: Merlette cardigan and dress, Hunter boots
Right: Ivy Kirk dress, Alexander McQueen boots
You have a fifteen-year-old son who goes to school in Maui, where your mother still lives. When he returns here next year to possibly finish high school, what will he be most excited about?
He is stoked that we’re in the village because teenagers love autonomy. All you want when you’re a teenager is to try things and not have your parents necessarily have their hands in it. He knows he doesn’t have to be back until sundown, and I don’t know what he’s doing. I want him to be a teenager. His passion is computer hardware, so he builds motherboards out of discarded parts. That room right there, there’s a Tandy in there in the original boxes. Sometimes, I’ll find him at the IT shop, just sitting with the IT guy because he takes computers apart, too.
It seems you both have found community here. There’s a trust and respect for your neighbors, which is so important and often overlooked as someone moving into an established rural town.
We have our people. I’m friends with the grandmother of the people he hangs out with. I really believe in community. It’s been super central to me forever. A lot of the activism I did in the city is centered around building and protecting community; that’s what keeps coming back to me. The thread always comes back to community. To be able to be in a place where you have a tangible community, where conflict resolution isn’t a concept that certain people talk about. It’s a real thing. It’s a real place. You have one life. This is it. These are the people you’re with. How are you going to make it meaningful?
“The thread always comes back to community. To be able to be in a place where you have a tangible community, where conflict resolution isn’t a concept that certain people talk about. ”
You mentioned that you’re working on a clothing line, Baby le Bébé, named after your Dalmation, Baby Balthazar, which seems very community-centric, too.
When I first went to school, I was in theater design and costume design specifically because I didn’t really come from a place that had fashion. I thought costumes were so cool. I got dressed at thrift stores, and the idea of the bigger fashion industry felt so disconnected to me, but when I got scouted to model, I learned all of that pretty much off the bat. That was 20 years ago. I got kind of sucked out of the world of costume design, where I was classically trained, where I had taken pattern drafting, and worked in a costume shop. Then, suddenly, I saw all these skills applied to these impossibly expensive situations, and after thinking about it for a couple of years, I just started collecting textiles and concepts. I’m looking at this nomadic culture we have both in Stamford and as young people... how we establish home, what we see as generational and important, what we carry with us. I found lots of travel patches and vintage quilts, things that both represent the nomadic ideal and that represent that generational concept of home.
Right: Ivy Kirk dress, Alexander McQueen boots
Baby le Bébé sounds very much influenced by your living and working upstate. What has it been like creating upstate?
Stamford is such a creative place. I couldn’t have done this anywhere else. Everything’s going to be done in Stamford. Everyone is so like-minded. If I had been trying to do something like this in the city, I would be hauling my ideas over to Midtown for production to Brooklyn for silk screening. Here, I have my sewing machines on my third floor. Sal [Fabbella] is a screen printer — his spot, Catskills Outpost, is around the corner. When I decided to screen print items, I walked over and knocked on the window and was like, ‘Hey, can I send you a file? Do you mind printing this? I’ll trade you some design work.’ And that’s how it went.
You find the energy, time, and passion for whatever is thrown your way. Your time here feels like an honest commitment.
All the things that have been given to me are my favorite. We don’t always know what’s best for us. They are the things that unexpectedly find me and fall in my lap. Since when is what I want better than what’s happening? That’s what it comes down to. I wanted Great Danes, but my partner, Matthieu, wanted a Dalmatian. Now, I have a Dalmatian who needs to run every day; I’m getting a second one, so she has a friend to run with. The way I feel is... I can fight every day for the next fifteen years with you, or I can see you for who you are and fall absolutely in love with how perfect you are, and who you’re meant to be. Which is it going to be? So now we have Dalmatians.
