Stephanie Cavalli: Trading the spotlight for stillness
By Alexandria Haechler
Photography by Harold Julian
Styling Ise White
Beauty Rebecca Alexander
Creative Direction Nhi Mundy
To cross paths with Stephanie Cavalli is a precious thing. She is one of those rare people who emanate the kind of lived-in beauty that instantly makes you feel as though she has a story to tell. There is an enviable self-assuredness to her— a comfort in her own skin that somehow manages to strike just the right balance of wise and carefree. Perhaps, it is her Italian Caribbean roots at play, or, maybe, she has just done enough to recognize the beauty that resides in the un-doneness.
For most of her twenties, Cavalli traveled the globe as a fashion model. Today, she is a mother to two boys and a shopkeeper of a vintage clothing boutique in Callicoon. Though at first, these two lives seem in total opposition, it’s precisely in this ability to walk the line between the exotic and the familiar where Cavalli’s magic lies. She’s statuesque but warm, seasoned, but grounded, and she believes that there is just as much beauty to be had in a simpler life as in any other.
Now, you and your family have planted roots upstate, but before settling here, you grew up in an Italian Caribbean family in Italy. As an international fashion model, you traveled all over the world.
Yes, I was born right outside of Rome in a small town on the beachside, and I lived in Italy until I graduated college. I started modeling at 22 years old, which was considered kind of late back then, but I didn’t mean to become a model. I had a friend who was working in Milan as a fashion photographer, and he asked me to be a part of one of his photoshoots. I went, and later, he called me again, and I went again. Then, he introduced me to what became my modeling agency for a very long time, and I traveled a lot. I was all over the place, and I loved it. It was tiring at times, but I always appreciated being in a new place, even when alone. I learned to love being by myself because I had to, and I cherish that.
Jet-setting from place to place sounds like a twenty-something-year old’s dream, but did the lifestyle ever catch up to you in an appreciable way?
There were pressures because you are scrutinized every single day. You’re either too thin or too fat, or your hair is too white, or you aren’t dressed the right way. At first, I didn’t care, but it changed me over time. Eventually, I had to take a break from modeling for a few years because I realized that it got to my head, and I started to get critical of myself. I’m not criticizing the business. I just needed to mature and let go of certain points of view that I subconsciously absorbed without even knowing it. I felt my own self-judgment, and it was too heavy.
“I just needed to mature and let go of certain points of view that I subconsciously absorbed without even knowing it. I felt my own self-judgment, and it was too heavy.”
Was it this realization that turned you towards a quieter life upstate?
No, actually, but it is how I got into selling vintage clothing. I was looking to reconnect with what I’d always loved, which was antiques and vintage, so I focused on how I could turn my love for these things into my job. I started selling pieces in New York City, but my family grew tired of New York. It was a stressful life. We lived in a one-bedroom apartment that was cute, but then we had a baby, and I already had a son, so we were four in a little, one bedroom. We went to look for another place, but the prices were so high. We had to ask ourselves if we wanted to keep going like this—living with all of the traffic, and the stress, and the constant running after money to pay for everything—or if we wanted to make a change to our life. We chose to make our life simpler. Now, I’ll go to the city for business for a day, and I feel like I need to get out of there. If I were younger and without kids, maybe the city would still feel like it did to me when I was 25, but I don’t have the energy for that now, and I don’t want that kind of energy anyways.
City life, with its constant pulse of “go, go, go,” can be exciting, but there is a subtler magnetism that comes with a life in the country.
Yes. The magic in a simpler life is that you realize how much beauty is around you without struggling for it. Everything you get is amazing in the city, but you struggle and you sweat for —because everything is expensive and complicated. Up here, there are things that are beautiful and that we can experience without having to give anything up, like nature. There is a calm that comes from living here because you feel the constant beauty of every day. Even a grey day can be beautiful because it’s so filled with details. I find it so quiet and peaceful. It is beauty without the struggle.
“We had to ask ourselves if we wanted to keep going like this—living with all of the traffic, and the stress, and the constant running after money to pay for everything—or if we wanted to make a change to our life. We chose to make our life simpler.”
What else has letting go of the struggle allowed for you?
I have a room that is my room. A place where I work and sew and take pictures for my online store. It’s a nook that I’ve created for myself that I couldn’t have in the city. When your mind is free of the stress of finding money for rent and for all of the things you have to pay for in the city, there is much more room for creativity and a free and happy mind.
I imagine that your kids must feel that freedom on some level, too.
Well, the kind of freedom that they have here is not comparable. There is even freedom from judgment and not having to compete with others as you do in the city. I am happy that they have the opportunity to live in nature. It’s great to be in a city like New York, but many people who live there never get the chance to live in nature fully. When you live in the forest, you learn that Mother Nature is so beautiful and unpredictable that you have to adapt to it because it doesn’t adapt to you. Learning to adapt is a great lesson.
Speaking of adapting, in an era increasingly dominated by fast fashion and digital shopping, you decided to open a vintage clothing boutique in Callicoon last year. What inspired you to go against the grain and return to a slower, more connected way of selling things?
It was on a whim. I walked by the space one day, and it was inundated with sunlight, and, at that moment, I saw my little shop. I thought to myself, “This is it!” I love old clothing because it has so much history—each piece carries a story with it. It’s a witness to the times it originally lived in. I try to choose pieces that tell stories that appeal to me, which will also appeal to other people. I want the store to feel like a little capsule of things that still have life decades later. I have this romantic idea that all these pieces hang on the racks just waiting for their owner. I am as attached to the stories that the pieces already have as I am to the ones they’re going to have with their new owners someday.
“When you live in the forest, you learn that Mother Nature is so beautiful and unpredictable that you have to adapt to it because it doesn’t adapt to you. Learning to adapt is a great lesson.”
In the face of a very challenging year, we could all use a connection to times passed, when life was richer and more familiar. How has 2020 been for you and your family?
It’s felt like we live in this incredible bubble because we didn’t have to go through the lockdown in a small apartment, and that makes a huge difference. We could still walk outside. The kids could run around. I think being able to be out in nature during these times was extremely important for my family. COVID-19 has given us a different way of looking at things, too. Usually, my family goes to Italy for the summer, but this year, the pandemic forced us to stay here, which turned out to be kind of great because we’d never really lived in this place when it is at its most extraordinary. I could close the shop at five o’clock, walk over to the river and go for a dip with my family, and then have a little bit of wine. It was not a bad life, but we didn’t know it existed before because we were always in Italy. So, yes, the pandemic is a disruptive experience, but we’re learning something from it too.
It’s strange because, in some ways, COVID-19 has made life feel as though it’s come to a standstill, and yet, there is also this pervasive pressure in the air for evolution and change.
Well, it is forcing us to live completely in the present. The future is so uncertain, and so we have to live in the moment. It’s shifting us to do what we need to do right now and for today.
“The future is so uncertain, and so we have to live in the moment. It’s shifting us to do what we need to do right now and for today.”
