Poppy Delevingne: Blazing a Trail
Model, multi-faceted actor and now award-winning winemaker – luminous cover girl Poppy Delevingne on refusing to be typecast.
‘I’ve always had this weird need to push myself right to the brink of what I can achieve. It’s a Taurus bull mentality – a determination to prove people wrong. I’m very, very driven.’ That Poppy Delevingne is driven is not in question. She’s been modelling since 17, ‘bouncing around the world, working with super-talented designers and artists and really exploring the creative process’. Acting beckoned, but once she had wrapped the ultra-successful Sky TV series Riviera (her character, the privileged and polished Daphne Eltham, was a dream fit for Poppy, who lives her life at the centre of a gilded social vortex that includes film stars, musicians and European royalty) she flatly refused to be typecast. ‘Straight after Riviera I was being offered very similar roles. I had to make a conscious decision to step back and choose not to be pigeonholed.’ Instead, Poppy did the opposite, taking on the lead female role in The Chelsea Cowboy, a London-based gangster biopic set in the 1960s. In autumn she will head to Tennessee to begin shooting the gritty, multifaceted The Gun on Second Street.
Taking the easy route isn’t Delevingne’s modus operandi. Born into the upper echelons of London society – her father Charles Delevingne is a property magnate; her grandfather Sir Jocelyn Stevens was the publisher of Queen magazine (now known as Harper’s Bazaar); and her late grandmother Janie Sheffield was lady-in-waiting to Princess Margaret – there was possibly no pressing need for Delevingne to do a great deal of anything. But instead of settling merely for modelling and acting, she has added world-class winemaker to her resumé, as a result of Della Vite, the award-winning, sustainable and certified vegan prosecco brand created with her sisters, Cara and Chloe. With a tagline of ‘The only prosecco you’ll know by name’, Della Vite’s first two iterations, the Superiore D.O.C.G. and the Treviso D.O.C., took the drinks industry by storm, ruffling a few feathers along the way with the trio’s clear understanding of the winemaking process. ‘We’re all nerds. We love to learn. We created Della Vite with the Valdobbiadene-based Biasiotto family, who have been crafting superior prosecco for over three generations,’ says Delevingne. ‘We weren’t going to put our names to anything we didn’t know inside out.’
A recently launched blush rosé was the natural next step. ‘There aren’t many rosé proseccos on the market – almost none of the highest quality – and we wanted to be pioneers. It’s my favourite of our products. It’s so fresh and nuanced; it brings sunshine into the room.’ In a nod to Delevingne and her sister Cara’s industry connections, the rosé – which has already scooped a prize at the Global Prosecco Masters – made its first appearance in the US this year at Hollywood’s fêted Vanity Fair Oscar Party, where Della Vite had its own back bar. ‘We’re very specific about what we attach ourselves to and the Vanity Fair party felt so organic,’ says Delevingne.
Delevingne’s connection to Los Angeles runs deep – the city has been her home-from-home for many years. ‘I’m a London girl, but I do need the sun. Or else something inside of me switches out like a light. One of the things I always loved about modelling was that it gave me the freedom to hop around the world, chasing the sun and creating all these little friend-families wherever I go.’ Given her modelling success, surely it was a clean hop from fashion to starring in films? ‘Ha! That’s what I thought’, she laughs. ‘I learned the hard way that it’s quite the opposite. All these casting directors were like, “Oh God, not another model/slash who wants to be an actor.” I’ve had to work very hard to earn my roles and I train like crazy. I take masterclasses, I hone my craft. I never stop learning. If there was an easy route, I wouldn’t take it anyway. I need to prove to myself that I’m good enough.’
Hair: Nicole Shenton.
Make-up: Jo Mackay.
Photography assistant: Tiago Mulhmann Dos Santos.
Production: Georgina Scarbrough Penn.
Location: Casa Privada at The Standard Ibiza.
