“I went to my first psychic reading the other night,” says the model Stella Maxwell. “But it was all wrong. She said I was unsuccessful, that I’m unhappy with my career,” she laughs. “I was like, ‘No!’”
Why should she be? Maxwell, 25, is that “triple threat” breed of model: bombshell pin-up, designer muse and social-media star all rolled into one. A Victoria’s Secret Angel proclaimed the world’s sexiest woman by Maxim, she has walked for, among others, Chanel, Marc Jacobs, Giles Deacon and Versace, and rumours of romances with Miley Cyrus and Kristen Stewart keep her a tabloid magnet. So, back to that storefront mystic — seems an odd outlet for validation, no? Call it a whim.
This is, after all, the kind of girl who high-fives by way of greeting, who lives — she says, half-joking — by the motto “Stay chill and you’re cool.” On set in New York, not far from her SoHo apartment, she flops onto a sofa armed with Marlboro Lights and an extra-large iPhone, with headphones at her feet — she’s been listening to a lot of Rihanna (she was cast by the singer for her Fenty x Puma fashion show back in February).
When she tells me she likes the white dress I’m wearing and says, “You look like an Angel right now,” she pairs it with a stare so convincing, I start to understand why she’s an object of lust for men and women alike.
Perhaps that’s what Victoria’s Secret saw in her as well — she was granted wings last November. Questions as to whether the annual catwalk show remains relevant to enlightened audiences in 2016 rage on, so I ask if she considers herself a feminist. “I think I do,” she says, tilting her head. Does she find being a sex object empowering? “I’m just a very open person. I’m really open to experiences, and I think it’s important not to be closed-minded. Especially these days … ”
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Still, Angel status remains the first step to becoming a household name: 10 of the 11 highest-paid models in the world — among them Gisele Bündchen, Cara Delevingne and Adriana Lima — have walked the sequined catwalk at some point in their careers. Maxwell swears she actually hangs out with class of 2015 models such as Martha Hunt and Lily Aldridge. They have a group text, but she won’t show it to me. “It’s just, like, ‘Hey, I’m doing a ballet class on Sunday, do you guys want to come?’” she giggles. They all go to karaoke together — she sings Britney Spears.
Despite a friendship with the squeaky-clean Angels, which seems genuine, there’s something cooler and edgier about Maxwell. I can’t picture her baking cookies or whizzing up green juices. She is clearly aware of the Instagirl set of models. When I ask how she fits into that, she raises an eyebrow: “You mean #squadgoals?”
Instead she’s hanging out in Paris with Lily-Rose Depp, reading James Frey in her spare time, posting screenshots of rappers she’s listening to and going to basketball games with the Red Hot Chili Peppers front man Anthony Kiedis (they’re just friends). The man who jump-started her career, the Moschino designer Jeremy Scott, sums her up in an email to me: “Stella is both sexy and feminine, but with a balance of strength and a coolness that is usually found in men — she’s like a female James Dean.”
When we meet, she has just arrived from Milan, where she was one of four girls who walked with the boys in the Versace menswear show. It was an apt casting — Maxwell joins a chorus of young models talking about gender fluidity (Ruby Rose, Andreja Pejic, Hari Nef). “Donatella’s dope,” she says. “It was nice she put girls in her men’s show. I love the fact that fashion is promoting different types of women, different types of men. It’s looking past the boundaries that everyone used to be restricted by. Even trans models are becoming so much more noticed.”
Her dating life, if the rumours and pictures on social media are to be believed, show a woman who is as open-minded as she says she is. Last spring she was posting photos on Instagram going to Las Vegas with Miley Cyrus (self-described “pansexual”), who runs in some of the same fashion circles and who in 2014 collaborated on a line with Scott. Maxwell and Cyrus went to Disneyland together last summer and were photographed kissing in an LA car park. Neither one of them has ever confirmed a relationship, and Maxwell remains tight-lipped about her love life.
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Because her alleged relationships have all been tabloid fodder, she and her handlers — she and her agent talk and text constantly, she says — have come up with a strategy to simply refuse all discussion of her dating life. For this story, they wanted her to be interviewed via email and we were asked not to include personal questions. I tried to ignore all that, albeit in a polite way. “Um, do you ever write bad things about people?” she asks me. I tell her I don’t get off on confrontation, but I just want a picture of what her life is really like. When I ask her uncomfortable questions, she tucks her knees into her chest and folds her head over them as if she’s trying to disappear.
Many people think of sexuality as a spectrum. I ask her if she does, too. “Yeah, definitely, I do,” she says. So is she straight? Gay? Bi? “I mean, I’m just open-minded. I’m not hiding anything, I’m pretty open about how I am and who I am. I’m interested in people.” As for tabloid speculation about who she’s dating: “That part of life I try to keep to myself. I think it’s nice to have that level of respect. I’m big on privacy, for sure.” Back in May, she was briefly linked to Stewart after they were seen leaving a Met Gala afterparty together. I press her, asking if she’s dating anyone now. “Private,” she sings back to me.
This ability to be self-contained probably came in handy during her nomadic childhood. Though her accent reads as mostly American, she was born in Belgium, the youngest of three, to Northern Irish parents. Her father was a diplomat based at the European Union headquarters in Brussels. She says she was “really sad” about the terrorist attack in March and “Instagrammed straightaway when I saw it.
“The world is becoming so unsafe, everyone should be able to live and, like, not worry about going to an airport especially. I travel all the time, so… ” she trails off.
The family moved to Australia for a year when she was 10, then New Zealand, where she lived until moving to New York at 19 to pursue modelling. The family are still close — she says she FaceTimes her parents in Belfast, her brother in Dublin and her sister in London every day.
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Nearly a year on from her big break with Victoria’s Secret, she seems to be at a crossroads. She clearly takes her career seriously and is starting to audition for acting jobs. We talk about role models and whether she is one. “You can see that I’m working hard. Obviously, everyone likes to have fun on their downtime and I think that’s perfectly fine and OK,” she says. But it’s clearly something she wrestles with.
Perhaps she doesn’t want to be a pioneer, or have her sexuality be all she’s known for. “With every job, you’ve got to give a piece of yourself, everyone wants stuff from you. But at the same time, you’ve got to be careful and have your head on your shoulders and not, you know, get tricked into anything,” she says, dancing around the topic. “We’re not all perfect and that’s what’s beautiful about people. And everyone’s learning. Better just to focus on all the good stuff, you know?”
The fashion shoot
Fashion: Lucy Ewing. Hair: Halley Brisker at Jed Root using System Professional. Make-up: Mayia Alleaume at Calliste Agency using Marc Jacobs Beauty. Nails: Geraldine Holford at The Wall Group using Chanel. Junior fashion editor: Sally Anne Bolton. Photographer’s assistants: Mario Zanaria and Alexander Ryerson. Hair assistant: Ashley Lambe. Model: Stella Maxwell at The Lions. Digital: Gregory Wikstrom