Early on Wednesday night, Amelia Gray was stationed inside H&M’s SoHo boutique, getting ready to host her first block party. The brand had closed down the stretch of Mercer Street behind its store in preparation for the two-hour outdoor event, which featured performances by Kitty Ca$h, Channel Tres and Kaytranada.
“It’s really fun and it feels really exciting — and so many people are coming, and that’s so scary,” said Gray of taking on hosting duties, a few weeks after she attended H&M’s London fashion week kickoff party with fall campaign star Charli XCX. In New York, guests included Damson Idris, Evan Mock, Emily Ratajkowski, Lucky Blue Smith, Nara Smith and Mona Tougaard.
“H&M was one of my first big jobs when I started modeling a couple years ago,” said Gray, a few minutes before guests began congregating in front of the outdoor DJ stage. “They flew me to the Canary Islands — it was my first location shoot. And it was kind of a rite of passage: to do an H&M job on an island.”
The evening marked another rite of passage, also via H&M, for Gray: hosting her first party for a brand. The model was on hand to help H&M celebrate the link between fashion and music, and specifically the brand’s latest H2 release in collaboration with Heron Preston. The designer was closing out the in-store “listening session” portion of the event, a low-key opportunity for DJs to converse with an intimate crowd about their process and inspirations. “A lot of my favorite producers and DJs are from Detroit,” Preston said, queuing up his next vinyl record on the DJ deck as he nodded along to the track.
“Music is a really important part of my job,” said Gray, dressed in several pieces from the H2 collection as she reflected on the relationship between modeling and music. “Whatever music is playing is what I’m going to portray. So every time I’m on set with a photographer, there’s not just one playlist that I prefer to listen to. Yes, I love listening to Lana Del Rey, because I know that she’s gonna get the vulnerability out of me. But I’ve been on shoots where the vibe needs to be more of an Elvis Presley era, so we’re playing Elvis, and I love those songs to bring that emotion out of my eyes,” she added. “It’s made my exploration of music a lot deeper, and I’ve learned so much about music through modeling.”
As for who’s currently on her personal playlist? “My universal people that I love are Lana Del Rey, Charli, Billie — you know, all the girls,” she said. “I just love to support my girls.”
Amelia Gray
Marsha Bernstein for WWD
