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SHLEY GRAHAM ENTERS Zoom looking photo-shoot
ready. The 33-year-old supermodel, mother, pod-
cast host, activist and businesswoman is in her
Brooklyn rental’s second bedroom, which doubles
as an office for her and her husband, the cinema-
tographer Justin Ervin. “It is a disaster,” she says
of the current space they’re using while their nearby loft is in its
third year of renovations. Graham, on the other hand, appears
pulled together, wearing subtle makeup and an oatmeal-colored
cardigan from Khaite.
Then she tilts her screen down to reveal she doesn’t have on any
pants. “I’m wearing underwear that I wore when I was pregnant,”
she says of the black, full-coverage briefs.
Navigating the line between glamour and accessibility has
become Graham’s hallmark. Her 21-year career as a model has
included a great deal of firsts. She was the first size 14 model fea-
tured on the cover of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issue, in 2016;
the first plus-size model to appear on the cover of Vog ue, in 2017;
and the first curvy model of her generation to receive a major
beauty contract in the United States, as a Revlon ambassador in
- “My brand is about confidence and owning who you are and
being honest with who you are,” she says. “I think that’s incredibly
reflective of my Instagram, my YouTube, my podcast. I just wish
that I had someone that was as real and honest and open when I
was in middle school, high school, moving to New York.”
Her mother, Linda Graham, enjoyed sports in college, and
Graham was an athletic kid too. “Nothing fit in the kids sec-
tion where all my girlfriends were shopping, so I had to go to the
mature woman section,” she says. “Even that stuff was either too
big or so matronly. So I would cut up really small clothes and then
wear very provocative outfits.” Graham grew up moving between
Texas, Georgia, Arkansas and New Hampshire before settling in
Lincoln, Nebraska, where her mother is still based part-time, in
junior high. (Her parents divorced in 2013.) She was discovered at
a mall and started modeling at 12. In an industry where plus size
can mean wearing a size 8, she did a lot of catalog work and was
told she would never do editorial.
In 2005, when she was 17 years old, Graham moved to New York.
“I didn’t know how to cook for myself; I didn’t know how to take
care of myself. That’s when I got my freshman 30, and my weight
skyrocketed,” she says. “My self-esteem plummeted, and I had my
agents telling me if you don’t lose weight, then you’re not going to
work. The lowest part of realizing that I didn’t get a job because I
was ‘too fat’ actually gave me the courage and the ambition to go
and fill a void in an industry.”
Graham wore around a size 14 in an era in fashion when lithe
models like Gisele Bündchen dominated the runways. Plus-size
models made up less than 1 percent of runway models, and they
were mostly absent from fashion magazines, let alone having any
sort of household name recognition. Her agency, Ford Models,
dropped its curvy division in 2013. Graham organized a group
of other curvy models and approached a rival agency, IMG, pro-
posing they be added to the roster, and it worked. Culturally, the
idea of body positivity—that diets don’t work and that we should
stop hating our bodies and learn to appreciate them as they are—
was percolating into the mainstream, thanks, at least in part, to
images shared on social media of Graham.
She was suddenly everywhere: smiling in a bikini on the cover
of Elle Québec, her first magazine cover, in 2014; walking the run-
ways for Michael Kors, Prabal Gurung and Dolce & Gabbana; and
wearing a form-fitting blue dress while giving her 2015 TEDx
Talk, “Plus-Size? More Like My Size,” on how she learned to stop
devaluing her body. “Back fat, I see you popping over my bra today.
But that’s all right. I’m gonna choose to love you,” she says in
the video.
Graham branched out beyond modeling in 2013, designing a lin-
gerie line with the brand Addition Elle. “I never had another older,
more experienced model come say like, ‘Hey, this is how you should
be doing this,’” she says. “I decided to build out my business within
lingerie [because] if you’re not going to make me a sexy, support-
ive bra that I want to wear constantly—then I’m going to make
it.” She began designing a swimwear line with the size-inclusive
brand Swimsuits for All. Graham modeled in an ad for the brand
that was featured in the 2015 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issue,
and the magazine put her on the cover the following year. “Then it
was just like, we’re building a business,” she says.
When she starred in a lingerie commercial for a body positivity
campaign for the clothing chain Lane Bryant in 2016, some net-
works rejected it for reportedly being too risqué. And when she
appeared solo on the January 2017 cover of British Vog ue, then
editor Alexandra Shulman wrote in her editor’s letter that Coach
had dressed Graham, but that other fashion brands had refused
to send over clothes. “I was used to it,” says Graham, who didn’t
know about that detail until the magazine was published. “At this
point, my skin is so thick, and I have dealt with...so many people
just basically saying, ‘We don’t have that for her.’ All of that has
been a building block. We need to be told no, in order to get to the
next step.... I really feel like in so many ways my career and what
I’m doing is to change an industry forever.”G
RAHAM AND ERVIN, both devout Christians, met
at church in 2009 and married the following year,
when she was 22. “You can’t go to church really
anymore,” she says, referring to the pandemic. “I
do virtual Bible studies with family members or my
husband, and we do prayer nights together.”
While she acknowledges that 2020 was a tough year for every-
one, she says it did not make her question her faith: “I have my
full-on journey with the church and God, and it’s been a roller
coaster. Now I have a partner who also believes what I believe, so if
one of us is down, the other one can pull them back up. But the big-
gest thing for us is that we keep saying we don’t live in fear.... That’s
been our motto in this house.”
Graham gave birth to their first child, Isaac, at home in a birth-
ing pool in January 2020. She was planning on taking two to three
months of maternity leave in Brooklyn, but, as news of the pan-
demic picked up, she didn’t want to be stuck in an apartment with
a newborn. So she, Ervin, Isaac and her mother drove to Graham’s
childhood home in Nebraska. They ended up staying for six months.
Now she wants an equally long maternity leave for her next baby,
which may happen sooner rather than later. “I would get pregnant
yesterday if I could,” she says. “I’ve ‘accidentally’ had unprotected
sex while I’m ovulating just to see if I can while I’m breastfeeding.”
What she’s been thinking about lately is identity. “There’s
Ashley the brand and then there’s Ashley the mom, wife—and
we’re all stuck under one roof together. Who is she? I’ve been talk-
ing to a therapist about it now, too. I’ve always morphed,” says
Graham, who began therapy last May. “It’s been to my advantage
because that’s the industry [I am] in. But in morphing, I’ve also
kind of lost the core, and I feel like 2020 has enhanced the losing
of the core, of who she is because of the pandemic and the baby. So
what I’m working on is the core of Ashley right now and also herVISION BOARD
“I really feel like in
so many ways my career
and what I’m doing
is to change an industry
forever,” says Graham.
Opposite: Fendi dress,
Louis Vuitton coat,
Oscar de la Renta cuff,
Ben-Amun by Isaac
Manevitz necklace and
earrings and hair-
stylist’s own hair clip.
Previous spread:
Balenciaga hoodie and
sweatpants (worn as
skirt), Jimmy Choo heels
and Ben-Amun by Isaac
Manevitz earrings,
bracelet and necklace
(worn around wrist).