Model Gabbriette Bechtel is drinking a green juice when we speak over Zoom. It’s a choice typical of a Cali native, but Gabbriette isn’t your average Cali girl. With her shock of raven hair, pencil-thin brows and almost all leather wardrobe, the 25-year-old is more high gothic priestess than Lycra-clad granola queen. It’s giving Angelina Jolie in her brother-kissing, blood-drinking era, and the internet can’t get enough.
Born in Orange County, Gabbriette never really felt like she fit in. “The majority of students at my high school were beautiful, strictly white blonde girls, and my sister and I were Hispanic. I was called some pretty awful things. But then I just learned to laugh at it.” Instead of playing volleyball at the beach with her classmates, Gabbriette hung out in the dance theatre. “I was convinced I was going to be a professional ballerina and I still am.”
Gabbriette moved to LA to pursue her dreams but instead of ballet, found herself dancing in music videos for Blood Orange (Dev Hynes) on MTV. From there she found her way into modelling. “I was an unpaid, hard-working model for a very long time,” she says. Now, she’s starting to get the recognition she deserves, having walked Diesel’s autumn/winter 2023 runway in February and starred in campaigns for Skims, Bottega Veneta and Heaven By Marc Jacobs.
But modelling isn’t the only thing behind Gabbriette’s current success. Her ’90s goth girl aesthetic is key to her appeal. “Now I know exactly what I want, I can do my make-up in five minutes,” she says. “It’s eyeliner, eyeshadow, and then I put my eyebrows on. I have this little eyebrow pencil that I bought at CVS.” As for fashion, her references range from dominatrixes to ’50s pin-up stars. “I have a tonne of leather jackets and leather pants – I’ve been trying to find the perfect pair. I’ve finally just learned to dress for myself. I used to really dress up for other people but now I just wear what I feel comfortable in.”
Image aside, her skill in the kitchen – something she credits her parents with – is creating a buzz too. “Growing up, my family was always cooking. My mum is Mexican and my dad is German so there were all these different cultures colliding in our house. They were really experimental and would always have copies of Bon Appétit laid out. My mum would always be putting a twist on a recipe and my dad would be grilling something or making sauerkraut. Family meals were a big part of our life, we’d sit down together after school without our phones and talk about our day, and the cooking process was always a big part of that.” It wasn’t until lockdown, however, that Gabbriette started experimenting with food on her own terms. She began filming herself cooking to stave off boredom, and posting the results online.
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Two years later her videos frequently blow up online – a recent clip in which she recreated upscale LA health food spot Erewhon’s famous grain-free vegan blackout cake racked up over 50,000 likes. “I don’t know what will happen with these videos,” Gabbriette shrugs. “Social media is always changing. It’s so unpredictable. But for now it’s working.” As for the future, she’s currently working on a cookbook and one day dreams of opening a café. “Not many people know this, but I’m really into interior design. So I’d love to open a space so people can have the full experience.”