From Autumn Issue 59
Glass talks to Devon Ross, once described as the coolest model in fashion and now, at only 24, creating a similar buzz as an actor and musician
WHEN showbiz notoriously rewards a polished veneer of perfection and curated cool, shreds of unguarded honesty tend to be few and far between. But there’s not a shred of pretence about Canada-born multi-hyphenate Devon Ross, whose perky demeanour had me in stitches while chronicling how her past year has been. “Oh, my days, I’m so jet lagged,” giggles Ross, just back from London the previous afternoon.
Photographer and direction: Sam Spence
For better or for worse, youngsters are not the most foresighted thinkers. But when it comes to grappling with the increasingly changing landscape of today’s world they somehow straighten up in their chair and become thoughtful. So, even though her energy levels may be waning, Ross certainly knows how to turn them up when she needs to – hardly surprising, really, given she grew up between the Bahamas, Woodstock and LA as the daughter of Craig Ross, Lenny Kravitz’s lead guitarist, and Anna Bauer, a 1990s model.
“I’m kind of more based in LA these days, but I just spent a few months in London,” the actress enthuses as we begin to settle into our conversation. “The past year, I mean, has been amazing, and I feel like I’ve gone through a lot of change,” she says in a nod to her burgeoning music career. “So it’s been weirdly transitional, but also comfortable. It’s a little bit of both: I mean, venturing into music was kind of an adventure as I’ve just recently moved houses after living in London for three years. But I’m practically starting again.”
Photographer and direction: Sam Spence
Aside from her jaunty attitude, which shows no signs of peacocking braggadocio, Ross is a woman of great poise, no mean feat in a world of stilted Zoom conversations – although “poised” isn’t the word I would use to describe Ross. “Last year, someone … interviewed Alexa Chung and asked her who the coolest girl in London was. She replied with my name, and to me that felt so cool because while growing up every girl was obsessed with her.”
Trend-setting, yes, with a streak cool: back in 2019, when Ross was just 19 years old and the word “influential” was hugely part of our collective lexicon, she was hired by Gucci for a runway show in Rome before being recruited for the launch of the Gucci Disney Collection shot at Disneyland. “Everything is pinch-me these days!” she squeals gently. “I mean, the fact that my first show was Gucci was insane to me.”
At the time, the Italian house was helmed by visionary creative director Alessandro Michele, so casting Ross was perhaps an effortless choice. With impossibly goth-chic, sharply-edged features that recalled those of models from another era, she managed to pull off an impressive start to her modelling trajectory.
It seems apt, then, to ask how it all started? “I mean, I always wanted to be a model for as long as I can remember,” she replies, beaming. “I think a lot of little girls would say the same thing, but my mother was a model, a working one of the 1990s.” As she grew up, Ross studied her mother’s path in fashion – most importantly, her portfolios.
“I grew up flicking through them. Since that very moment, I knew I wanted to be a model: I wasn’t even worried about it because I wasn’t scouted, and I’ve definitely worked hard to find an agency that believed in me. When I was 15, I started working in LA and that’s where it all began.” Relatable? Not quite. Admirable? Very.
“I feel like I’ll have nothing left to do if I manage to climb Mount Everest anytime soon! But on a serious note, I’m happy and my path definitely exceeded my expectations of what would happen in my career as a model as I did so many bucket-list things and worked with so many amazing old-fashioned houses like Gucci and Valentino.”
No matter that she’s just 5ft 7 inches – by industry standards, much too short for the runway – the biggest breaks started to pour in that saw Ross going on to walk for Erdem, Gauchere, Sies Marjan and Simone Rocha, as well as lead campaigns for Vivienne Westwood and Mulberry.
Photographer and direction: Sam Spence
But she’s more than just a catwalk fixture and, as a singer-songwriter on the rise, she unfolds a moment that stuck with her: “My first show opening for Thurston Moore – who’s one of my favourite musicians and a really good friend of mine – was pretty crazy, which happened at … a legendary punk club.”
Meanwhile, it was the 2022 HBO and A24 limited series, Irma Vep, that thrust Ross into the film industry, leading her to work alongside a star-studded cast that included Academy Award winner Alicia Vikander, Adria Arjona, Carrie Brownstein and Byron Bowers, to name a few. But her cinema-awakening came as a youngster.
“I’ve wanted to act since forever,” she says. “I was totally one of those loud kids who was keen to put on shows all the time and liked to make movies. I always wanted to be an actor, but it’s such a hard industry to break into and I really hadn’t acquired, you know, the best skills to go about it. It really just came to me at the best time: I got an audition for Irma Vep through my modelling agency and got booked. At the time I was, like, great, I can now transition. It really just happened. Like, perfectly. It was fate.”
Photographer and direction: Sam Spence
She admits that although big productions will continue to be the long-term goal (likewise rubbing shoulders with visionary directors), her penchant for smaller-scale films with profound storytelling is more in keeping with her stride. “I love indie films because they aren’t being run by a big money machine,” she states.
“Everyone is super passionate and wants to be there. I’m not saying that a big film set is less passionate, but in an indie set everyone needs to have so much drive to make things work as there aren’t billions of dollars involved, so I love that feeling of community that gushes through the set.” It’s clear that Ross is relishing the process. “Everything I’ve done so far in the film industry has been indie, but I’m still learning so much about cinema every day because I’m still relatively new in my path.”
Photographer and direction: Sam Spence
And talk about path: the actress stars in Zia Anger’s 2024 movie, My First Film, which investigates a young director’s emotive responses to creation, growth, loneliness and the parallels in the film industry, taking complex turns that involve climaxes, fragmented images and multi-layered storytelling, blending fiction and reality.
Its plot, about a 25-year-old going through an abortion and directing her first movie, is raw, as are its ideas about being a woman in a spiteful industry. But as the film unfolds, it evolves into a moving meditation on what it means to make something (from barely nothing) that never comes into being.
“I got an audition around 2021 through my agent and it was for a scene where I didn’t have the script yet, and had no idea what the film was about, which is kind of how it is sometimes,” Ross remembers. “All I knew was that it was a film about ‘making a film’, so I got fascinated by the odds of the entire process. I did a tape and then got on a Zoom with the director, which led to a chem read with Odessa [Young, co-star]; then, we went and filmed it.”
Photographer and direction: Sam Spence
Poignant but weirdly relatable, the film is bewildering with each unpredictable turn. Especially memorable is Ross’ character, Dina, whose fierce, no-fucks attitude was the perfect embodiment of a troubled youth aching to make the cut in an industry that can be merciless.
“I think the fact that it’s a story that’s close to Zia – it’s practically her life – weaving such a vulnerable process like making something so close to you, like a baby that is hard to let go, is fascinating,” she says. “Just like the hybrid between documentary and film that this movie represents is something I’ve never seen before. And when I watched it, I thought that was very, you know, interesting and new. I think it’ll be exciting for people to see a new format of filmmaking, which I haven’t seen before.”
Her naturally sensitive disposition saw her preparation for the role “a smooth process”, and, from then on, she dedicated herself to bringing out the best for the character. “I feel like hanging out with the cast for that film was the key prep for the role,” she continues.
“We went out to upstate New York for a few weeks, had barbecues, hung out, did rehearsals, and I feel like falling in love with that group of people was kind of the preparation for the role because it was like summer camp with everyone being the same age. Being in that environment, around Zia and around the people that were actually there for what this film was about, was incredibly important.”
Photographer and direction: Sam Spence
Turning the attention inwards has seen Ross reflecting on the power of community to better understand her acting practice and the beauty of storytelling. “Every film I do, I learn so much more,” she admits. “And I learned so much from Odessa [Young], who’s the lead in My First Film. She’s been doing this for a long time. I think I gained so much more appreciation for the work that goes into it. I got a real sense of community from everyone there, which is something people talk about with acting. I was so sad when I left the set, which I never fully understood until I filmed that movie.”
She adds, “It was really special because it was a woman’s story. A woman directed it, a woman wrote it, a woman shot it. When you’re young it’s so hard, especially when you’re trying to do something on a bigger scale and nobody trusts you or believes in you, and I think every young woman has probably experienced that in one way or another. So, I could totally relate to the movie.”
Photographer and direction: Sam Spence
Moving onto music territory, we talk at length about her debut EP, Oxford Gardens. In its lyricism, there’s a punk feel that runs throughout, with a subtly brooding undertone to match. “That EP was literally about expressing my feelings as I went through a terrible breakup, and I was writing that album that made me feel a million pounds lighter after I said what I needed to say,” she reveals.
“I think that’s art in general, that of expressing yourself. But my intention was just to get all my feelings out: It was totally inspired by all the music I’ve listened to my whole life, such as old punk, because I was really influenced by 1990s grunge, shoegaze and Sonic Youth. It was a hodgepodge of my pivotal references.”
But references, can one ever have enough? “I’m obsessed with Gena Rowlands, who was John Cassavetes’ wife and starred in so many of his films,” she declares. “I think whenever I find a new female actress that I’ve never really experienced before, I really dive in: I watched A Woman Under the Influence by Cassavetes and it’s just insane. It makes me more passionate about this industry because I’m just like, holy fuck, you can do that? Okay, I want to do that too, you know? So, yeah, that’s that with acting. But with music, I love Sonic Youth, the Breeders, Pavement and everything 1990s, just like the Rolling Stones, of course. And I grew up listening to Freddie King, too.”
Photographer and direction: Sam Spence
In fashion, she has strong ties with French house Louis Vuitton. “I met Nicholas [Ghesquière, women’s creative director, Louis Vuitton ] when I went to the Cannes Film Festival, and he invited me to one of their dinners in 2022,” she says.
“Then I met him a year later in LA at the W dinner and he was so sweet; I couldn’t believe how talkative and personable he was, given that sometimes designers are totally unapproachable.” Ross very much respects working with the house. “I love everything they create,” she says, adding that she deems the designer as “one of the most creative people in fashion, able to constantly renew elegance by his decade-long legacy at Louis Vuitton.”
Ross enjoys the escapism of dabbing into the unexpected. Perhaps it’s also part of the reason the actress gets lucky with her downtime. “I’d love to keep making movies and I love music as I grew up around it: it’s like everything to me,” she reflects.
“Acting is kind of my newfound love and you know it takes a lot of time and patience, but I think music and acting are actually really good things to juggle because film is so up in the air: you could do one film a year and then the rest of it you’re less busy, which is great because I can make music on that downtime so it’s really a good balance.”
Photographer and direction: Sam Spence
It’s easy to be entranced, as most clearly are, by Ross’ look, but beneath the beauty it would seem she is undergoing a deeper transformation – from a model to a singer with serious artistic pursuits. She is the ultimate shapeshifter both on and off the screen. A rising movie darling, a producer, a real human who, once she gets home, lets her hair out of all kinds of scrunchies and, like the rest of us, slips into sweats.
by Chidozie Obasi
Photographer and direction: Sam Spence
Stylist: Oretta Corbelli
Makeup: Karolina Bernat using CHANEL BEAUTY
Hair: Bryan Gaw using BALMAIN HAIR
Retoucher: Kosmaksysha
Talent: Devon Ross
All clothing and accessories Fall/Winter 2024 Womenswear LOUIS VUITTON