In an industry full of models with surnames such as Jagger and Jenner, it’s little wonder why fashion fell in love so quickly with Dree Hemingway. Check out the 27-year-old model and actress’s antecedents: her mother is Mariel Hemingway, the Oscar-nominated actress and one-time muse of Woody Allen; her aunt is the late Margaux Hemingway, one of the industry’s first supermodels, who earned million-dollar pay packets and graced a slew of magazines from French Vogue to Playboy. And, oh yeah, her maternal great-grandfather is Ernest, one of the 20th century’s most influential writers.
As a kid growing up in Ketchum, Idaho, she attended Ernest Hemingway Elementary School, soon realising the impact of her surname (she was actually born Dree Louise Hemingway Crisman, but later took the famous family name). “People always expect me to tell them something new about Ernest, but I never met the guy. I can only read the same books and biographies that you do,” she says, smiling.
Today, Hemingway lives in East Village, New York. “I’m a home body. I wake up every morning and I get coffee and read a book or write in my journal. Preferably both.” Her apartment is typically bohemian, but gives a hint at her lofty heritage; framed and propped against a wall is a 1961 cover of Life magazine featuring her great-grandfather and hanging on the fridge is the cover of an April 1982 issue of Andy Warhol’s Interview, featuring an illustration of her mother. And what of a strand of beads hanging above the doorway to her bedroom? “They were blessed by the Dalai Lama,” she says. Turns out, when she was 16 and her father, the film-maker Stephen Crisman (her parents amicably divorced in 2008), was making a documentary about the holy one, she met him in India. “I knew about him, but I didn’t know what it meant to meet him. When he walked in, his energy was so intense and beautiful that I burst into tears. He made a beeline for me, grabbed my face and patted my head. And then it was waterworks for the next two weeks, crying every night. I wanted to know the meaning of life and the purpose of why I was here.”
My name may have opened doors for me, but I had to prove myself
Advertisement
Growing up, Hemingway “was always going at the beat of my own drum and trying to find myself in different ways”. She admits that her teens weren’t ordinary, but seems blasé about exactly how extraordinary — when she was 15, she attended Le Bal des Débutantes in Paris with her mother. “I got to wear a Christian Dior gown that John Galliano designed.
It was flamenco-inspired, with ruffles everywhere, and the front was a metal cage. I couldn’t lift my arms and by the end of the night I had bruises everywhere, like the top half of me was one giant hickey.”
As a teenager, she was enrolled in a “very boring, very Christian” high school in Los Angeles; she dropped out in her junior year and moved to New York to study ballet. By 19, she was back in California and interning at the fashion and society magazine LA Confidential. “They basically had me doing layouts, and I got sick of sitting in front of the computer for hours and hours and then being the door girl at their parties.” So she did what any self-respecting young woman would do: she moved to Paris. “I wanted to be an actress, but thought I needed more life experience before I went into that.”
The fashion industry welcomed her: first, she met the star-making stylist Katie Grand, who dyed her hair platinum and shot her. (The two are close friends.) The rest of the industry soon followed. The cult photographers Inez & Vinoodh shot her for W magazine and, soon after, she made her catwalk debut in 2009 when Riccardo Tisci cast her exclusively to appear in one of his Givenchy shows. Then came campaigns for Gucci and Valentino. Now she is following in the footsteps of Chloë Sevigny and Anja Rubik as the face and brand ambassador of Chloé Eau de Parfum. “That was a dream come true, because I’ve always thought of the Chloé woman as a self-assured bohemian.”
Hemingway, whose style is very fairy child (think worn-in jeans and fluffy peasant blouses), has created her own community in the industry. In addition to Grand, the photographer Angelo Pennetta and stylist Francesca Burns are close pals, and she is godmother to the photographer Sean Thomas’s little boy, Huck. “My last name may have opened a few doors for me, but I’ve had to prove myself to stay in the room,” she says. It’s a difficult tightrope to walk — appreciating the opportunities her family name has offered her, but not being limited by it. (When we first met in 2009, she told me her favourite writer was F Scott Fitzgerald, which she says now was youthful rebellion.) “I am so honoured to be a part of this bloodline, and when I read Ernest Hemingway’s literature, I do feel like there is connection — the love of travel and adventure, and his love of the sea.”
Advertisement
In 2013, her mother featured in the documentary Running from Crazy, which charted the family’s history of mental illness. Not only did Ernest kill himself (in 1961), so did his father, Clarence, as well as his siblings Ursula and Leicester. Margaux killed herself in 1996, on the day before the anniversary of Ernest’s suicide. Although the film was well received — “I’ve seen people come up to my mother and say it changed their lives, or that it helped other families who have dealt with suicide” — Hemingway herself has never seen it and says she has no plans to do so. One of the topics it covers is the sibling rivalry between Mariel and Margaux; Dree thinks her aunt grew jealous of how her mother’s career seemingly plopped into her lap while her own languished. Hemingway has a close relationship with her own sister, Langley Fox, an illustrator two years her junior, who is also on the way to becoming a top model. “I really held onto the fact that she was a child for a very long time, and recently it dawned on me: ‘She’s not a child, she’s actually my best friend.’ She is an amazing woman.”
As Hemingway continues on the path of model-turned-actress — her debut was the lead role in Starlet (2012), and she has three films scheduled for release this year — what advice does her mother have? “I can see both my mother and my aunt Margaux in me, and my mother has never been anything but supportive. She has always pushed me to be the best version of my own person.”
Fashion: Lucy Ewing. Photographs: Emma Tempest. Hair: Bianca Tuovi at CLM Hair and Make-up using Bumble and Bumble. Make-up: Sandra Cooke using Chanel Le Lift and Le Volume Ultra Noir. Nails: Pebbles Aikens at Streeters using YSL Beauté. Fashion assistants: Sally Anne Bolton and Harriet Elton. Photographer’s assistants: Kieren Perry and Jori Komulainen. Digi tech: Joe Murphy. Model: Dree Hemingway at Models One