American Beauty

Supermodel Carolyn Murphy goes off the grid in rugged classics

- Stephanie Trong

In the early ’90s, when Carolyn Murphy started modeling, there were two camps: the glamazons (Cindy, Christy, Linda, Naomi), with their minuscule hemlines, and the broody waifs (Kate, Amber, Shalom), all gangly limbs, slip dresses, and Adidas Gazelles.

Blond, blue-eyed, and most at home in Hanes T-shirts, vintage Levi’s, and cowboy boots, she didn’t square neatly with either. “I just remember being like, ‘Where do I fit in?’” she recalls over an almond-milk cappuccino at a West Village café in N.Y.C., where she lives. “I would show up, and my agency would say, ‘Can you put on a black dress and some heels?"

Today, in a white T-shirt and denim cutoffs, Murphy is still the picture of all-American style—only now the country’s idea of cool has come around to meet her. “The look wasn’t stylish then, but it is now,” she says. “It was just so easy and very basic. If you threw in a sterling silver cuff, it was a big deal.”

Her love of hardworking, well-crafted basics and natural, no-fuss beauty couldn’t be more au courant. “I probably could have capitalized on that more in the beginning of my career, but that’s just not the way I thought,” she says. “I was genuinely just trying to pay for college, living with my nana.”