Current Biography October 2002

The supermodel Stephanie Seymour is perhaps best known from her work during the 1990s as the principal model and spokesperson for Victoria's Secret, a retail and mail-order women's-fashions company that specializes in sexy lingerie. Her image has also appeared in high-profile ads for such upscale clothing/accessory/fragrance firms as Versace, Ralph Lauren, Yves Saint Laurent and Chanel as well as on dozens of magazine covers, for such publications as Cosmopolitan, Vogue, Self, GQ, W and Allure. Since she first signed with a modeling agency, in 1985, she has appeared in prestigious fashion shows in New York, London, Paris and other haute-couture capitals of the world. The renowned photographer Richard Avedon, whose images of Seymour appeared in a series of Versace ads, characterized her as "combin[ing] a perfect body with a dynamite brain and a heart that's always in the right place," as People (May 9, 1994) quoted him as saying. Allure magazine described Seymour as the epitome of physical perfection for the 1990s; speaking of her at about the time she turned 32, Max Pinnell, a New York City hairstylist who has worked with her for many years, told a writer for People (July 31, 2000) that Seymour "can still stand in a line-up of models who are 17 years old and blow them out of the water." In 1994 People listed her among the "50 Most Beautiful People in the World," and Paris Match named her the world's most beautiful model. Her how-to guide, Stephanie Seymour's Beauty Secrets for Dummies, was published in 1998. Regarding the future of fashion, Seymour told Charles Gibson for the ABC News Program Good Morning America (September 13, 1999), "There are no more rules in fashion … Just anything goes and designers are taking from all periods of fashion … I think that will be the beauty of this new century."

The second of three children, Stephanie Seymour was born on July 23, 1968 (some sources say 1969) in San Diego, California. Her father was a real-estate developer; her mother worked as a hairstylist. At the age of 14, she began to model for San Diego department stores and ads for local newspapers. The next year, as a "skinny and gawky" teenager, in her words, she competed unsuccessfully in the "Elite Look of the Year" contest, held by the Elite modeling agency (now called Elite Model Management). That disappointing outcome notwithstanding, the experience gave her the confidence to move, within a year or two, to New York City, where she further developed her modeling career. In 1985 she signed with Elite, one of the world's biggest modeling agencies. At 16 she became romantically involved with Elite's founder and head, John Casablancas, who was then about 40. During the next few years, she continued to model but received little attention. In 1989 she married Tommy Andrews, a rock musician, with whom she had a son, Dylan. The couple broke up in 1990.

Also in 1990 Seymour signed a contract with Victoria's Secret to model lingerie for the company's catalogue and ads. In time she became known as "the face and the figure" of Victoria's Secret. Seymour attracted a great deal of notice in 1991, when she appeared nude in a Playboy photo spread. "For me the feeling in [nude] pictures is freedom and strength," Hilary Rowland quoted her saying on SupermodelGuide.com (2000, online). "Put clothes on me and I wouldn't look pretty anymore." Soon after her Playboy shoot, she appeared on the cover of the British edition of Vogue, and before long she was regularly winning assignments of modeling catwalks and in department-store ready-to-wear presentations in Europe and United States.

In 1991 Seymour began dating Axl Rose, the lead singer of the hardrock band Guns N' Roses. With Rose and the other members of the group, she appeared in the videos for the Guns N' Roses' songs "Don't Cry" and "November Rain". Accounts of Seymour and Rose's allegedly frequent and immoderate partying were a tabloid stable until the couple split up, in early 1993. Later that year Rose sued Seymour for assault and battery and also sought the return of jewellery reportedly worth over $100,000. He eventually dropped the suit, and Seymour sold the jewellery, giving the proceeds to charity.

Seymour's visibility got another big boots in 1994, thanks to her featured roles in popular ad campaign for Versace jeans and Chanel's Egoiste cologne for men. That same year she gave birth to her second son. In mid-1995 she married the father of the child, Peter Brant, the publisher of the magazines Interview and Art in America. Her how-to book, Stephanie Seymour's Beauty Secrets for Dummies, was published in 1998. The book is written in down-to-earth language and contains a foreword by Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York. It offers Seymour's advice and a description of her "home spa" beauty regimen and includes tips from well-known beauty artists in sections on skin, hair and makeup. The book also includes information about beauty products and a list of useful Websites and toll-free phone numbers.

Seymour did not renew her Victoria's Secret contract when it expired, in 2000, because she wanted to avoid embarrassing her son Dylan, who was then 10 years old. "His friends at school used to tease him," she told the writer for People. "It was only going to get worse. What would his friends say when he's 14?" In 2001, in a $10 million campaign launched by the clothing designer Ellen Tracy, Seymour appeared in several ads along with the supermodel Cindy Crawford. Images of the two women appeared on a 4,500-square-foot, three-panel billboard in New York City's Times Square.

Still considered one of the top models in the world, Seymour continues to represent such firms as Chanel, Versace and L'Oreal. Having given birth to three children (the third, a boy, in about 1997), Seymour told the writer for People, "I prefer my body after I've had kids to before. I like a womanly, shapely figure." She added, "I'm more secure as a woman. I know who I am." Seymour currently lives with Brant, who is 22 years her senior, and her three sons —  Dylan, Peter Jr. an Harry — in Greenwich, Connecticut and New York City; the family, which also includes Brant's children from an earlier marriage, spends a great deal of time in the summer in the Hamptons on Long Island, New York. As quoted by SupermodelGuide.com (on-line), Seymour identifies herself as "a model, a mother, but mainly just a normal girl." She has appeared in small roles in the films Sunny Side Up (1994) and Pollock (2000), and she lent her image and voice to the video game Hell: A Cyberpunk Thriller. In her spare time Seymour enjoys playing polo, riding horses, and collecting art. She also likes to take long walks and works out by swimming and doing yoga. According to People (May 9, 1994), she owns a collection of dresses from the 1950s, which she regards as a time "when women were really women."
— G.O.