Teen Vogue September Cover featuring Natalia Bryant
We are so honored to be included in the @teenvogue September cover story featuring the lovliest @nataliabryant. It is an honor to dress this kind American Beauty. A huge thank you to @solangefranklin for including VOZ and to the incredible team behind this shoot. Enjoy these snippets from the feature about Natalia's life, hobbies and family:
"Natalia Bryant, Daughter & Dreamer, Is Ready to Take on the World"
By Danyel Smith. Teen Vogue, September 8, 2021
You see her. You cannot miss her. Natalia Bryant is near six feet tall and moves with the certainty of a born and bred California girl who came thissssss close to pursuing college volleyball. She’s used to sunny days, and sand between her toes.
The eldest child of Vanessa and Kobe Bryant is self-possessed and long-limbed and jet-haired and we are all here for her. This bright July morning we’re on set at a Brentwood Spanish-style villa on a lot perfect for pool parties and high-society hijinks. Natalia’s grin is uncoded. She smiles with the baked-in confidence of one who is profoundly sure of her family’s love.
Eighteen is an obsessive, dreamy age, and the mood in Brentwood is blue butterflies and pure possibility. Natalia is center stage in a fuschia Alejandra Alonso Rojas sheath and flat black faux-leather Proenza Schouler boots, the ones that ease softly as lambskin, just over the knee. Creating Natalia’s portraits is the Bronx’s own Raven B. Varona aka RavieB — meticulous, charismatic — famous for the illuminating shots of Beyoncé and Jay Z on their 2018 On The Run II world tour. Natalia’s mother, Vanessa Bryant, low-key and alert, watches her oldest being watched. Bianka Bella, 4, and Capri Kobe, 2, Natalia’s baby sisters, zigzag the terrace in jelly ballet flats. The girls are thrilled about the Ring Pops on set, and the hummingbirds, which are everywhere.
This is Natalia’s first major photo shoot and profile — she’s fully aware that she has been more seen than heard. “One time this person was TikToking me or something,” she tells me. “I was talking. And [after], I was going through comments, which everyone does. Someone commented, ‘this is the first time I ever heard your voice.’ I never even realized that. You always see a face, but it’s hard to … think of a voice behind that face.'
My niece Parker, 19, follows Natalia. Parker attended a well-known and arty independent high school in California. Natalia and Parker, both speak about themselves with ease. They both have deeply attentive, stylish mothers.
“I love her style,” is what Parker says about Natalia. “It’s classy and chic, and modern.” And in fact, when I meet Natalia at a café in Newport Beach a couple of weeks after the Brentwood shoot, her grey smock maxi dress is perfectly yet offhandedly on-trend. “She’s not just jeans and sneaks,” Parker tells me candidly, “It’s not her at-ing sponsors. Natalia has followers because she’s pretty and because of nepotism … I like her because I don’t feel like she’s fake.”
While Natalia’s life is undoubtedly NBA-offspring posh — from the beaches of Bora Bora to the ski resorts of Utah, to Manhattan for Bergdorf Goodman and Chanel — she also rolled with her fam to strip mall spots and Disneyland. Natalia’s mother and maternal grandmother definitely hablan Español. Kobe, already a speaker of Italian, became fluent in Spanish by watching telenovelas like La Madrastra and Soñadoras. “I’m biracial,” says Natalia. “When I was younger, I didn’t really understand … how I’m both. As I got older, I was able to understand.
Modeling is something Natalia has wanted to do for a while. She showed interest during one of those trips with her mom to New York’s Bergdorf Goodman store. Natalia saw a Chanel runway show on a screen and said, “I want to do that.” Her mother, supportive but practical, advised her to take her time. “For my mom, it was really important for me to go through high school and get my education. Especially complete college too.”
It’s not just the sunbeams and gleaming lights: Natalia is lit from within. She knows her mind, and in a way that comes to her via nature and nurture, she is comfortable in her body. She is as protected as possible. She is confident, already, in her intuition. These things contribute to her privilege as much as the wealth. Natalia the Diamond is 18, and the image of her father."
- Smith, Danyel. “Natalia Bryant, Daughter & Dreamer, Is Ready to Take on the World.” Teen Vogue, 8 Sept. 2021, https://www.teenvogue.com/story/natalia-bryant-september-2021-cover.
- Photos featuring Aisling Camps knit hoodie and Panconesi earrings and ring.
To read more about Natalia in the Teen Vogue September cover story.
Credits
Photo Assistant: @willazcona
Photo Assistant: @___angelcastro
Retouching: @jinx_studios
Stylist: @solangefranklin
Stylist Assistant: @car0linian
Fashion Market Editor: @alistkariss
Tailor: Irina Tyan
Hair Stylist: @alexander_armand
Make Up Artist: @alanawrightmakeup
Manicurist: @merricures
Videographer: @skylerbocciolatt
Video Editor: @mdotsparks
Production: @hyperion.la
Art Director: @emilyzirimis
Fashion Director: @tahairy
Casting Manager: @morgansensei
Social Media Manager: @yseniavaldez
Visual Editor: @anameizing
Designer: @lizcoulbourn
Solid Crop Top in Alpaca
Chunky Flamme Textured Organic Short Duster