WSJ. Magazine

Supermodel Stephanie Seymour on Her Career and Overcoming Loss

For her first photo shoot and interview since her son Harry’s death, Seymour opens up about her family’s tragedy

By Derek Blasberg | Photography by Dan Jackson for WSJ. Magazine | Styling by Clare Richardson
Feb. 24, 2023
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For more than 40 years, Stephanie Seymour has relished being in front of a camera. Having worked with the biggest names in photography, including Richard Avedon, Herb Ritts and Peter Lindbergh, Seymour has built her career by happily submitting to the gods of the photo shoot.

Until now.

The reason for her hesitation to be in front of the camera again?

In January 2021, her 24-year-old son, Harry Brant, a model and beloved fashion-industry habitué, died of an accidental prescription drug overdose in New York City. Suddenly the flashbulbs stopped.

 Seymour on loss

Seymour, 54, married paper-mill magnate and art collector Peter Brant in 1995. Brant had five children with his first wife, and Seymour had one son, Dylan, from her first marriage to Tommy Andrews. Together, Seymour and Brant had three more children: Peter Jr., Harry and Lily.

Seymour with her husband, Peter Brant, and their children, including, from left, Peter Jr., Harry, Lily and Dylan, in 2013. Courtesy of Laura Wilson

When they were tweens, the Brant brothers became fashion and society darlings for their detailed knowledge of fine art, haute couture and fine jewelry.

In a 2012 article called “Little Lord Flauntleroys,” Vanity Fair declared: “Peter and Harry Brant have emerged as the dandy teenage boulevardiers of New York society.”

Seymour took her boys shopping—a lot—and she remembers a specific Saint Laurent by Hedi Slimane suit that Harry just had to have. “It’s a suit that I keep hanging in my dressing room, which is this big room where I keep all my stuff,” she says. “I looked at that suit one night and I said, ‘I’m going to put it on.’ It fit me.”

It was Seymour’s idea to wear Harry’s suit for this shoot and to have her son’s name painted on her bare back. “If I think that Harry would love something, I do it, and it does help me with my grief,” she says.

She continues to find herself mourning in Harry’s closet. “It still feels so good to put his clothes on,” Seymour says. “I packed up these huge trunks with all his things, and I have this idea that I want to keep photographing his clothes because I think he would love it.”

Seymour says she was born to be in front of a camera. “I wanted to be a model since I was probably 5 years old,” says Seymour, who was raised in Poway, California. In old family photo albums, she is already practicing.

When Seymour started dating Brant, an accomplished art collector, he changed the way she looked at her industry. She says she was insecure about her knowledge of modeling until Brant encouraged her to research its history. Who were the Basquiats and the Warhols of her world? “That really altered my mind,” she says. “That’s when I started collecting vintage couture.”

This past December, Seymour and her brood spent their second holiday season without Harry. “I try to just be present. For me with holidays, and I’m sure a lot of other people can relate, it’s difficult now because I’m always thinking of what’s missing,” she says. “But I’m really lucky. [We] have a lot of grandchildren. And there’s nothing that’s helped me get through all of this more than my grandchildren."

Seymour’s eldest son, Dylan, had his first son in October. “He had a little boy,” Seymour says. “And they named him Harry.”

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Directed and edited by Barbara Anastacio

Produced by: Shay D. Cohen

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