Resplendent in a figure-hugging Alaïa dress, former supermodel Stephanie Seymour slipped perfectly into the role of chatelaine as her billionaire husband, Peter Brant, hosted an art opening and al fresco lunch at their 53-acre estate in Greenwich, Conn.
Their dashing son Peter Brant Jr., wearing a cream linen suit, chatted with writer Derek Blasberg as actress Chloë Sevigny and model Jessica Hart sipped Champagne close by.
The elegant spring 2014 affair bolstered the Brants’ preferred image of a wealthy household at ease with itself — a clan of beautiful people immersed in the glamorous world of contemporary art, business, polo and philanthropy.
But not all that glitters is gold. As a source tells The Post, the family is “one hot mess” — and their behind-the-scenes drama is becoming harder and harder to hide.
Last Monday, 47-year-old Seymour faced the humiliating experience of apologizing at a Connecticut court hearing over DUI charges from January, when she reversed her Range Rover on a highway ramp and later hit a road sign. To get the charges dropped, she committed to regular AA meetings and a stint in a state alcohol-treatment program.
“Her story demonstrates that sometimes, things that look really chic and enviable from the outside are maybe not so great after all,” says writer Michael Gross, whose book “Focus: The Secret, Sexy, Sometimes Sordid World of Fashion Photographers” is out in July.
Meanwhile, Peter Jr., 22, is free on $5,000 bail after felony charges last month over a fracas with JFK Airport cops. According to Page Six, a source said he was acting “drunk and belligerent,” got into a fight with a JetBlue staffer, assaulted a Port Authority police officer, and set off an emergency-exit alarm. Peter Jr. insisted he’d only had three drinks, but was reportedly taken to Jamaica Hospital to be treated for severe intoxication.
Even his own lawyer, Philip Russell, told the media his client “acted like an idiot.”
It’s not the first — or, presumably, the last — time.
In 2014, Peter Jr. was ticketed for marijuana possession in Red Hook, Brooklyn. Two years before, he Instagrammed a text exchange with a pal in which he joked about killing President Obama. (He later issued a public apology.) Last Sunday, Page Six reported how the designer-clad millennial skipped out on a bill at Nobu and argued with the restaurant staff, sticking his “horrified” socialite pals Kyra Kennedy and Gaïa Matisse with the $2,000 tab.
A source tells The Post that Peter Sr. has cut off his troubled son’s credit cards — and notes that he was absent at Seymour’s last court appearance. Mother and son have brought shame on the 69-year-old Interview magazine owner and art collector, who is desperate to rein in his family.
“Peter doesn’t quite know what to do,” says a source close to the Queens-born tycoon. “It’s all very embarrassing for him.”
It’s a case of the apple not falling far from the wild-child tree.
Born in San Diego to a real estate-developer father and hairstylist mother, Seymour hit it big at 15 when she went from modeling for local department stores to the runways of Paris. Signed to Elite Model Management, by age 16 she was having an affair with the agency’s founder, John Casablancas.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, she was part of that era’s legendary supermodel pack, alongside Claudia Schiffer, Christy Turlington and Cindy Crawford. With her bee-stung pout and bodacious curves — an insider tells The Post Seymour had breast-enhancement surgery — she became a favorite of top photographers like Mario Testino and Patrick Demarchelier, appearing in Vogue as well as the Victoria’s Secret catalog and Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue.
Creative consultant Olga Liriano, who booked Seymour for modeling jobs in the ’90s, tells The Post that the model was “ambitious, disciplined and professional. She had no problems taking off her clothes and doing what had to be done.”
But her personal life almost overshadowed her work.
As Gross told The Post in 2009, Seymour — who has admitted to drug use — had a reputation as a man-eater, “working her way through a string of very handsome, very high-profile men.” Among them were Charlie Sheen and Warren Beatty, whom the beauty was dating when she was cast in the 1991 music video for Guns N’ Roses’ “November Rain.” Singer Axl Rose reportedly told a colleague, “I’ve been hit by a Mack truck, and the license plate said ‘Seymour,’ ” and suddenly, Beatty was out of the picture. (Seymour also had a short-lived marriage to a guitarist named Tommy Andrews, from 1989 to 1990, with whom she had son Dylan.)
The romance with Rose ended badly. In 1993, he and Seymour sued each other; the musician alleged that the model punched him in the groin at a Christmas party and she claimed he’d assaulted her. (Both charges were later dropped.)
Shortly after, the Victoria’s Secret Angel was introduced to Brant, who had served 84 days in a Pennsylvania federal penitentiary in 1990 for failing to keep adequate tax records. “I was swept off my feet,” she told Harper’s Bazaar. Though Brant was still married to his first wife, Sandra Simms — with whom he has five children — he and Seymour had Peter Jr. in 1993. They wed two years later, with Naomi Campbell as maid of honor.
Says a Seymour source: “Stephanie was searching for a father figure and Peter was looking for the ultimate trophy wife.”
Son Harry was born in 1997 and daughter Lily in 2004. Brant also adopted Seymour’s son Dylan, now 25.
Still, as a neighbor told The Post in 2009: “Greenwich-housewife material she was not.”
Throughout their marriage — there was no prenup — the Brants have stayed ripe for the gossip mill, with rumors of infidelity on both sides. Most sensationally, there was their putative divorce filings in March 2009, when Brant accused Seymour of being an “unfit mother” because of her pill-popping and alcohol use.
In 2000 she had been treated at a Connecticut rehab clinic for a Vicodin addiction, and Brant alleged that Seymour was taking Subutex, a drug prescribed to treat opioid addictions, but that she “frequently drinks alcohol while on this medication.” Around this time, she also was accused by one of the family’s security guards of slamming a door on his arm (allegedly, after he shoved her) and by another of yanking the keys from his car and throwing them in nearby bushes. No legal actions were pursued.
Brant and Seymour reconciled in 2010, but her alcohol abuse does not seem to have abated.
“Her drinking and pill-popping is straight out of ‘Valley of the Dolls,’ ” says a Brant insider. “This bored, Connecticut housewife is trying to ease the path into motherhood and middle age.”
Along the way she’s coddled and spoiled her brood, who seem to worship their mother. Eyebrows were raised in 2011 when photos surfaced of Peter Jr., then 17, and Stephanie being extremely touchy-feely — kissing on the mouth as his hand grazed her breast. The shots prompted Peter Jr. to announce on Facebook that he is gay.
The children’s lives have been a series of red-carpet appearances, movie premieres and charity balls. Having inherited their mother’s chiseled cheekbones and love of fashion — Peter Jr. told Vanity Fair in 2012, “I’ve worn a lot of Dolce & Gabbana” — the boys have earned a reputation as obnoxious dandies about Manhattan. In the same Vanity Fair profile, they lamented how their plans to arrive at the Met Gala in a gold Rolls-Royce and accompanied by a baby panther wearing a diamond necklace had fallen through.
“You’re nobody until PETA either loves you or hates you,” Harry told the magazine.
“I’ve always felt that both of them want to be a supermodel, just like their mother,” publicist and society columnist R. Couri Hay tells The Post. “In some ways they’re constantly competing for attention — in the same way that Stephanie did — from their father.”
Harry, 19, has since followed his mother into modeling, while Peter Jr., a student at Bard College in upstate New York, has shown interest in designing jewelry. The two launched a short-lived cosmetics line with MAC in 2015.
A family friend believes that the Brants’ overindulgence of their sons has led to Peter Jr.’s problems.
“He is out of control and needs to face the responsibilities [that] come with immense wealth,” adds the friend. “Alcohol and drug addiction is an inheritable disease, and Peter [Jr.] has to be aware of that.”
As for Seymour, sources speculate that it’s been hard for her watching peers like Cindy Crawford and Heidi Klum become successful businesswomen while her career is in a free-fall. In 2011, the model confessed in Town & Country to a midlife crisis brought on by turning 40.
The magazine said that Seymour had felt “caged, captive and ornamental” in her marriage — a feeling symbolized by the possibly satirical statue of her by artist Maurizio Cattelan commissioned by her husband, mounted on the wall, and referred to as Trophy Wife.
As Gross puts it, “Stephanie Seymour is an example of things going wrong. But then, she is married to an incredibly wealthy guy and has an incredibly enviable lifestyle. No one is going to say, ‘Poor Stephanie.’ ”