“The ultimate goal is to have as much fun as possible in any given situation”: Anna Delvey on reinvention & resilience

PHOTOGRAPHY Jasper Soloff
STYLIST & PRODUCER Heidi Cannon
MUA Cassandra Lee
HAIR Dan Williams
BTS VIDEO Jesse Mico
PHOTO ASSISTANT Luke Tava
STYLING ASSISTANT Joyce Mitrani
INTERVIEW Kelly Cutrone
INTRODUCTION Chiara Maculan

COVER IMAGE Anna Wears Dress: BAD BINCH TONG TONG, Necklace & Ring ALEXIS BITTAR, Earrings LADY GREY JEWELRY, Shoes STYLIST’S OWN

Few figures have embodied the term ‘reinvention’ quite like Anna Delvey. Once the ultimate enigmatic NYC socialite – albeit a self-made one with a flair for creative financing – Delvey (née Anna Sorokin) became infamous for her high-society scam that landed her in prison for grand larceny and theft of services in 2019. But if there’s one thing Anna Delvey does well, it’s a comeback.

Born in the former Soviet Union and educated in Germany, Delvey developed a notable obsession with Vogue, fashion blogs and Flickr, which later prompted her to move to London to study at Central Saint Martins – so far, a familiar life journey for art school survivors. After dropping out of university she procured herself an internship at Paris-based fashion publication Purple, leading her to discover the glitz and glamour of New York Fashion Week, where she decided to permanently relocate. 

In 2013, Delvey quit the magazine, armed with an impressive array of designer looks, her trusted Celine frames, and the faux identity of an ultra-wealthy German heiress to help her gain access to the Manhattan upper-class art social and art scene. She quickly began shaping the idea of an art foundation-member’s club alloy for the elite, and realised she could exploit her new-found connections to seek funding for its development, epitomising a somewhat classic social climber tale. When this failed, however, the now dubbed “Soho Grifter” started to scam her way into maintaining her lavish lifestyle, swindling friends, luxury hotels, and falsifying bank statements to obtain sizable loans. This was until, in 2017, the truth unraveled. Glamorous? Yes. Criminal? Absolutely. Netflix-worthy? You bet. 

Despite her felonies, Delvey really did gain her moment under the spotlight, with her cut-throat diva-ish personality carving her a place as a modern anti-hero, amassing a devoted fanbase that continues to revel in her audacious rise and fall. Following her arrest, Delvey spent her trial period on Rikers Island where, true to her sophisticated taste, she arranged for a stylist to procure her Saint Laurent, Victoria Beckham, and Michael Kors pieces for her courtroom hearings, which even prompted a viral Instagram account (@annadelveycourtlooks) spotlighting her outfits. After being sentenced to 4 to twelve years, she served 2 in New York’s Albion Correctional Facility and was released on good behaviour. She was able to pay restitution to the targets of her elaborate felonies thanks to the Shonda Rhimes-produced TV show about her life and fraudulent activities, and was released on parole in 2021. 

Now, free from house arrest and very much back on the scene, Delvey has traded five-star hotels for front-row seats at NYFW – when she’s not on the runway herself. In between fighting deportation and appearing on season 33 of Dancing With the Stars sporting a bejewelled ankle bracelet, she started fashion focused public relations firm OutLaw Agency with renowned PR powerhouse, TV personality and now trusted friend Kelly Cutrone. 

A perfect match for Delvey’s chaotic persona, Cutrone showed up slightly late for their interview as a client’s pup chewed up her Jacques Marie Mage shades: “I had to spend seven minutes of my meeting time getting those $800 fucking sunglasses out of some two-year-old dog’s mouth,” she says logging onto the call. Known to champion anti-establishment action and female empowerment in business, Cutrone saw right through Delvey and helped her reconstruct her public identity with the same sharp wit and brutal honesty that made her a legend in fashion PR.

No stranger to public scrutiny, Delvey’s polarising yet undeniably resilient attitude refuses to let her past define her, repositioning herself as a cultural disruptor in the fashion scene, whose rise unfolds in a world that increasingly debates who truly earns their place. Could Delvey’s true resilience now lie in living unapologetically as a self-made working personality in the fashion industry? Below, she speaks to Cutrone about persistence, funeral fits, and making the best out of bad situations.

Kelly Cutrone: As you know, we’ve been summoned by the Gods of pop culture and curiosity and haters and lovers to do this interview today about resilience, which is a word I think maybe we both know a lot about. Yay! [laughs] So everyone knows, when Anna says ‘yay’, it’s a bit of a neurodivergent cheerleading that happens, loaded with a tad dash of sarcasm. So the topic today is resilience. Resilience is different for everyone, but you’ve had a lot of opportunities to become a master of resilience. What is your secret power that’s allowed you to do that? And what has resilience taught you?

Anna Delvey: I think it’s the way you become resilient, and that happens differently for everyone. I think resilience is trying to make the best out of a bad situation and not giving up. It’s about reinvention, persistence and your ability to navigate adversity. I think it’s also the ability to adapt to circumstances outside of your control, defiance, and shaping your own narrative.

I think resilience is trying to make the best out of a bad situation and not giving up. It’s about reinvention, persistence and your ability to navigate adversity. I think it’s also the ability to adapt to circumstances outside of your control, defiance, and shaping your own narrative.

Kelly: I know for me, when I got on TV, a lot of people were like, “You need to comb your hair”, “You need to wear makeup”, or “You’re a witch”, or “You’re too old”, or whatever. It does send you searching because you do have to look at it at a certain point right and say “There’s 80% that are saying yay, and there’s 20% that have swords and daggers and laptops in their hands.” Sometimes, like in tarot decks, they say that the devil is good because he always comes with a bunch of lessons for you. So how did the haters make you a stronger spiritual warrior?

Anna: Everybody always says, “don’t read the comments” or “don’t read the negative stuff”, but you have to be a complete sociopath to completely disregard every single negative thing that people have to say about you. I think the trick lies in discerning what’s constructive and valuable criticism, as opposed to just people reflecting their own misery on you. To me, it’s so wild. I have never once in my life – and I grew up on the internet – I’ve never created a fake account just to say something shitty to somebody in the public domain, so it’s so foreign to me. If you hate something, just look away and move on, because there’s so many annoying and bad things out there in the world, you’d be doing nothing else but commenting something negative, if that was what you were after. I don’t know if you can understand people’s motives when they say this to you.

Kelly: Right? I think what’s great is after you’ve been called something for so long, it loses its power. I read this thing on Instagram the other day that said: “If you’re following the herd, you’re just looking at assholes all day.” One of the things that I’ve noticed is how driven you are. I have known a lot of people who have been through similar things, and different things but with similar results, and something that I know and I love about them is that they’re incredibly strong and have the ability to not create just one persona in a lifetime but many, and take that spiritual journey. What’s it been like for you since you’ve come out of confinement, and how are you rebuilding everything? I don’t even want to say rebuilding, because I think you are building something new.

Anna: I take it day by day, and I’m trying to keep my bigger goals in mind. I think I’ve been lucky, I have a lot of supporters and people who like me. I’m trying to focus on projects that I think are a good fit so I’m not being torn in millions of different directions. You know it, too – if you don’t say no, you could just spend all day going to drinks and dinners and doing meetings and interviews and podcasts that don’t make any sense.

Kelly: I’d like to interrupt this interview. This is Anna dissing me that we’re not getting enough done because a lot of my job is going to dinners and doing free things because I can’t say no. This is Anna Delvey telling you to just say no!

Anna: I think it’s scary when you’re a little bit famous, if you don’t really make an agenda and don’t take control of what you want to do, it’s so easy to be pushed into other people’s narratives. You have all these, lawyers and agents and managers, and people offer you some wild stuff. It seems like everybody is trying to see how much they can get away with.

Kelly: How do you relax and really take time for yourself?

Anna: Well, I like to sleep and I like to do my skincare.

Kelly: She is a skincare expert, just so you know. She’s an expert on snail mucus.

Anna: I think it’s just something that makes me feel like I’m in control, and you can take time for yourself. I like mud masks and LED masks, although I’m not sure if they’re helping.

Kelly: Your skin is amazing. 

As a public figure and among all the outside noise, how do you connect or reconnect with your most authentic self?

Anna: By doing face masks.

Kelly: How has fashion supported your kind of personal evolution, and how has your style, intensive style kind of evolved in recent years?

Anna: I was on house arrest so it has evolved, or devolved, so it’s only now coming back.

Kelly: You’re a pretty monochromatic, classic dresser. Do you want to tell them what happened when you were mistaken for being a nun at a funeral? I brought Anna to her first American funeral, for somebody we didn’t know.

Anna: Yeah, it was an old friend of our friend who had passed away, and I guess he wanted us to come with him to support. Kelly and I wore these matching looks – I wore a Rick Owens coat, a black head band, like this hooded cashmere scarf, and one of the older guests at the funeral home asked me how I knew the deceased and he was wondering when somebody was going to say a prayer, and he assumed I was a nun, so asked if I could do it. He was not joking.

Kelly: We should have gone with it. But what would you have said? 

Anna: I should have Googled one really quick. That was a miss.

Kelly: Do you want to talk about what it’s been like to become, in addition to all of your other titles, a runway model in the last two seasons of our antics here in New York?

Anna: That came against my will too.

Kelly: I know. I’m the one who made you do it, but look how great it turned out.

Anna: It was fun. It’s not something that I am looking to do with my life permanently, but it was a great experience. 

Kelly: That’s because you don’t like being told what to do or what to wear. Other than that you’re an amazing model. Your walk is fantastic. 

Anna: Thank you.

Kelly: I think one of the things that people don’t really know about you is that you really do put yourself out there no matter what it is, whether it’s a trip to the grocery store or hitting a runway. Also like playing darts. Should we talk about your obsession with playing darts? 

Anna: Yeah, you never know how these things happen.

Kelly: How does it feel to be the Dart champion of Cold Spring New York, after overtaking a 15 year old in a bar who was playing darts with his mother when he should have been in bed? The only thing I could think about is that he could learn math by counting how many points he was hitting. So how does it feel to be the reigning Dart champion of Cold Spring, New York’s J Murphy bar? 

Anna: I’m considering darts as my next ‘thing’. I purchased my own darts board which just arrived yesterday, so let’s see.

Kelly: You don’t need others to play, which is why you love this game so much.

Anna: The ultimate goal is to have as much fun as possible in any given situation. 

The ultimate goal is to have as much fun as possible in any given situation.

Kelly: I do think that your ability to have fun in the middle of very heavy topics is one of the things that I admire most about you, like how when we took over Manhattan this summer and you designed your courtroom looks so we could get look book images from the paparazzi for free on the street.

Anna: I think they were from the Department of Homeland Security, and they had been informed by somebody at Page Six that we were throwing an illegal fashion show – back then I was on house arrest – so they came to prevent the tragedy.

Kelly: Yeah. They were pretty hot. They looked like the Italian police in Milan.

Anna: They were pretty incredulous. I’m not sure how seriously they took us.

Kelly: We’ve decided we’re going to do a series of ‘LOL’s – “lunch on the lawn”s – this summer. Our table only seats six, but if you could invite three people to dine with us that haven’t already, who would you invite?

Anna: Martha Stewart.

Kelly: I would never cook for Martha Stewart. 

Anna: Alexander McQueen or Azzedine Alaïa, designers that I really admire, and maybe Carine Roitfield, that would be a good table. Or Karl Lagerfeld.

Kelly: I wouldn’t want to have lunch with him. I’m still mad at him for what he said to Adele back in the day. Looking ahead, what else are you up to? 

Anna: We are working on this exciting project with the Outlaw Agency, and hopefully we’ll become a whole media empire with different arms – we’re thinking about a TV show, a fashion brand, maybe an alcohol brand. 

Kelly: I think that would be best for us. I mean, we would just have to drive around and drink wine which I think, based on our experience of the last year, I think I definitely would benefit from having an alcohol brand. 

Anna: It can be like self-sponsorship. We can write off so many costs.

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