Arizona Muse wears Chanel in ‘Taking a stand’
Beautiful, bohemian and a bold proponent of biodynamic farming – Arizona Muse has leapt from the red carpets and runways to embark on a new role as an environmental advocate. By Lydia Slater
Craning its head through the fence, the calf extends a rough, pale tongue and curls it inquisitively around Arizona Muse’s wrist. ‘Oh, hello! You’re so sweet!’ she enthuses, snapping away with her camera phone. ‘And you haven’t got any teeth yet, just like my baby!’ A farm in Sussex is not an obvious location for a summit with a supermodel. No wonder I notice the odd double take from the other visitors, as Muse and I wander around, peering into the polytunnels to admire the neat rows of spinach and lettuce.
That we are here at all is down to Muse’s admirable determination that our interview should focus on more than her own glamorous career. A model since her teenage years, she has recently made a name for herself as a vocal proponent of eco-fashion. She sits on the board of the industry resource the Sustainable Angle, regularly participates in the Green Carpet Challenge and has worked with numerous individual brands to help them create environmentally friendly clothes and accessories. Today, for instance, she is wearing an elegant olive blazer from a capsule collection she designed with Blazé Milano using organic wool.
Now it seems that her focus has shifted to encompass farming – hence our trip to the country. ‘We can tone down some of the negative effects fashion is having on the environment,’ she explains, as we trundle on the train to East Grinstead. ‘It’s really important that the whole industry tries to lower its impact and to take up less space and fewer resources. But biodynamic farming can have a hugely positive effect, both on the climate and on the environment.’
This alternative form of organic agriculture, developed from the ideas of the philosopher and social reformer Rudolf Steiner, views a farm as a single, interdependent organism in which the crops, soil and livestock all play a part, with the crops feeding the animals, and the animal manure fertilising the crops. Sowing and planting may be carried out using an astrological calendar, and there are special recipes for herbal and mineral sprays to enhance the soil. Some of these (such as stuffing quartz into a cow’s horn and burying it to harness
cosmic forces in the earth) may sound eccentric, but biodynamic farming has a number of high-profile advocates including Prince Charles. And Muse’s own earnest belief is that the wholesale adoption of this alternative form of agriculture will not only save the planet and provide humanity with sufficient food, but also offer fulfilling employment for the urban unemployed – biodynamic farming being more labour-intensive than the conventional variety, as it precludes the use of chemical weedkillers. ‘People want to move out of cities, but they often can’t, or don’t, because they can’t find work out of a city,’ she explains.
Whatever the plausibility of this scenario, Tablehurst Farm on this sunny spring day certainly seems a positive Utopia compared to the grimy metropolis we have left behind. The sun shines from a cerulean sky as we push the pram containing Muse’s rosy baby daughter Cy through fields dotted with dandelions and daisies. An exuberant gaggle of sturdy lambs are playing tag with each other in a fragrant barn, leaping over the feeding troughs with trademark joie de vivre, and several families of saddleback pigs, striped black and white like mint humbugs, rootle contentedly in their sties.
Over lunch (sausage rolls) we chat to the farm’s commercial director Chris Marshall, who tells us that as well as sheep, pigs, cows and chickens, vegetables and a little grain, Tablehurst seasonally raises turkeys, ducks and geese. ‘Are the turkeys, ducks and geese seasonal because they fly out?’ Muse asks, innocently. ‘No,’ says Marshall, laughing, ‘they’re seasonal because we sell them at Christmas.’
Muse laughs too. She freely admits that she has much more to learn; nevertheless, her optimism and enthusiasm are irresistibly infectious, even for this sceptical city dweller. She is especially keen to commune with the cows, which she says are the cornerstone of biodynamic agriculture. This is because, as they graze, they apparently adjust their manure to compensate for any mineral deficiencies in the soil. ‘Literally, everything on a biodynamic farm is magic,’ she tells me.
Her open-minded approach is doubtless a result of her ‘new-agey’ (her own description) upbringing in Arizona, where she was born – hence her unusual name. Her English mother Davina was a textile restorer who had been
employed by Hampton Court Palace before setting up her own business; she met Garry Muse, an American art dealer, when he commissioned her to work on his Anatolian kilims. The transatlantic couple shuttled with their daughter between Kensal Rise and Tucson, before the birth of Muse’s younger brother, Theo (now a film director and professional snowboarder) saw them settle permanently in the US.
Muse recalls a free-range childhood in the desert – ‘very dry and prickly’ – involving much building of forts, and few rules, apart from the strict boundaries her parents placed around television viewing. ‘We didn’t get any TV channels, but we had a subscription to National Geographic, and they would send us a VHS tape every month,’ she says. While this left her with an abiding love of the natural world, ‘culturally, I felt like I was not from America because I didn’t watch TV, which was hard. Even now, I still just don’t understand a lot of cultural references’.
At 5’10”, with an Amazonian frame and a tawny, leonine beauty, it is little surprise that Muse was signed to Next Models when she was still at school. (While she would never forbid Cy to follow in her footsteps, Muse hopes her daughter will be too short. ‘I regret not going to university because you form some of your strongest friendship bonds,’ she says. ‘There are obviously great benefits that come with modelling, but you miss out on other parts of life.’)
Her career had barely taken off when she found herself pregnant after a short-lived relationship with a stylist. It must have been hard, being a single working mother at 20?
She shrugs. ‘I don’t know what it’s like to be a 20-year-old who didn’t have a child,’ she points out. ‘I loved having Nikko. He was like a doll. I was a child myself and it was an “ignorance is bliss” situation. I wasn’t worried about the future, and I took him with me everywhere.’
The cracks began to develop as Muse’s career took off. She was chosen to open and close Prada’s S/S 11 catwalk show in Milan, and the following year, was signed as face of the brand, alongside that of Yves Saint Laurent. Then, in 2012, she fronted Estée Lauder’s campaign for its fragrance Modern Muse, as well as walking in presentations for major fashion houses. ‘By the time Nikko was three, I was totally exhausted,’ she says. ‘I probably needed to take some time off, but I was stuck in this fear cycle. I thought that everything was going to be over tomorrow, and no one would book me again – that was the stress I was under, every single day, for years. And Nikko got really clingy because I was going away a lot, and he wasn’t travelling with me any more. Now, we’re fine, but I wouldn’t do that again with any child,’ she says, gazing fondly at the sleeping Cy. ‘Luckily, in the nick of time, my husband arrived on the scene.’
Actually, luck seems to have had less to do with it than Muse’s own decision that she wanted to be in a lasting relationship. ‘I sat down and daydreamed about what it would feel like when I was with “the one”,’ she tells me. ‘Not, “What does he look like?”, or “What does he do?” but “How do I feel in his presence?” I wanted someone that I felt really confident and enthusiastic with, and I knew I didn’t want my parents’ relationship. As lovely as my parents are, they weren’t in love with each other. There was no passion. I wanted to be in a marriage that was passionate, and for us to be really in love with each other, and to feel it, and show it all the time. And then when I met him, I think I recognised that feeling.’
Inconveniently, the person she fell for was the French osteopath treating Nikko, then five, to stop him grinding his teeth at night. Embarking on any relationship seemed inappropriate, so it was only after a year of dreaming about the dashing Boniface Verney-carron that Muse finally plucked up the courage to send him an email.
They married in June 2017, following Verney-carron’s intensely romantic proposal, which took him months to prepare, in which he sent Muse on a treasure hunt around Florence before guiding her to a rooftop above the Ponte Vecchio where he had organised roses, champagne and an engagement ring set with stones belonging to his grandmother.
‘It meant a lot to me to get married,’ says Muse. ‘Especially because I already had a child who doesn’t have a relationship with his dad.’ She tells me how, shortly after Nikko started school, he came home asking why he didn’t have a mother and a father like his friends. ‘I said, “You’re really lucky, because you have two dads – one dad who will always love you, but can’t look after you, and eventually you’ll get a second dad, who raises you, but didn’t know you when you were born.” So, getting married was the biggest deal for us, Nikko and me.’ I meet Nikko, an articulate and confident child, on another day, when I visit Muse in the family’s eighth-floor flat in Hyde Park. It is furnished in an elegantly pared-down mid-century style, but it’s utterly urban. I can’t even see a window box for Muse to indulge in her biodynamic dreams.
Would she like to live in the country one day? ‘I would, but my husband wouldn’t,’ she says. ‘He’s been very clear about that – he didn’t know he’d married a farmer.’ Instead, she and Nikko get their hands dirty every summer on a farm in Massachusetts near where her mother now lives.
‘When I was a kid, I wanted to be an explorer,’ says Muse. ‘I thought it was so annoying that the whole Earth had been explored and there was nothing left for me to discover. Well, this is me, being an explorer, and finding new ways to do things that will save the world.’ And at that moment, I really feel she might.
‘I SAT DOWN AND DAYDREAMED ABOUT WHAT IT WOULD BE LIKE TO BE WITH “THE ONE”. I WANTED SOMEONE THAT I FELT CONFIDENT AND ENTHUSIASTIC WITH’