In this FRONTPAGE story, we chat to the model of the moment, who actually doesn’t want to be a model at all.
Gabbriette is on the hunt. “Right now I’m reading — actually my favorite author... Where is it?” she asks, more to herself than to me, on the other end of this early morning video call. The rockstar baddie-turned-cooking queen is pacing around her boudoir. The book she’s after, which never materializes, is Courtney Love: The Real Story by William Joseph Martin. Eventually, Gabbriette gives up the hunt and perches on her bed to tell me about her two other faves from the author’s very gothic and very gay ’90s-era oeuvre: Drawing Blood (a gory, sex-stuffed murder mystery) and The Lazarus Heart, a fanfic sequel to the cult film The Crow that centers on a “controversial S&M photographer.”
The throughline of influence between these stories and Gabbriette’s own aesthetic may be as sharp as her signature pencil-thin eyebrows, but she’s more than just the Internet’s favorite “goth girl.” Throughout every twist and turn, she’s moved between worlds with ease. From breaking out as the lead singer of Nasty Cherry — a girl group formed X Factor–style by Charli XCX complete with a Netflix docuseries — through to a pivot to viral cooking video queen when the pandemic broke up the band, she’s kept her more than 700,000 Instagram and 360,000 TikTok followers on lock.
That kind of pull isn’t easy, but it’s befitting her laid-back Los Angeles vibe. It doesn’t take an aura reading to see there’s a cloud of charisma and effortless cool enveloping the 26-year-old musician, model, and chef extraordinaire. None of this — not the rockstar era nor the viral kitchen videos — was even meant to happen. Way back before she even knew what Instagram was, the dream wasn’t social media domination — it was dance school. “I thought I was going to apply to Juilliard. I thought I was going to be on So You Think You Can Dance and be a choreographer and be in music videos.”
Sorry to that school and that dream, but Gabbriette’s magnetism has found other outlets (and bigger audiences). Even now, as the scorching rays of toxic fandom’s magnifying glass hovers over her relationship with the lead singer of a famous rock band (Google it, if you must), she’s unbothered by the deluge of deranged comments that pop up with every new post.
“I don’t give a shit. I think it’s hilarious. Go for it. Have fun. People have a lot to say,” she says with a laugh. “You don’t know me at all.”
Born on July 28, 1997, under the bright sun rays of Orange County, California, Gabriella Bechtel grew up toggling between two opposing realities. At home, she basked in the warmth of her multicultural abode, where her Mexican mother and Swiss-German father consistently turned the kitchen into a culinary testing ground. “We ate dinner together as a family every single night, so there was always a fresh meal. We never had takeout,” she recalls. “We had a lot of Bon Appétit magazines lying around, so [my mother] would always try new recipes. I would come home and she’d have it open and be like, ‘I’m making this tonight,’ and she’d nail it. I would help her prep, so I grew up with my mom testing out stuff.”
While the kitchen became a fertile incubator for her burgeoning love of cooking, the classroom taught Bechtel invaluable lessons on difference. In particular, not looking like the “skinny volleyball queen” types she was surrounded by. “In dance classes, I was like, ‘I have an ass, I don’t look like any of these girls.’ But everybody goes through that, you know? I love it now.”
Less easy to let go of and love was what people said to her: “I was annoyed that I was called slurs and made to feel different, because I felt fine with myself. When I would go home with my sister, we were like, ‘We’re hot, we’re fun, we’re cool people, but everyone else is just being lame,’” she says, before growing contemplative. “I know half those people probably don’t even remember saying those things to me, or they thought that it was really funny in passing, but it did stick with me.”
I thought I was going to be on So You Think You Can Dance and be a choreographer and be in music videos.
It was within the dance studios that she began to dream of a life outside the comforts and constraints of Orange County. “I thought I was the best dancer — and in my head, I still am — but I’m definitely not. I didn’t know the amount of work that was going to go into it.” Though dreams of Juilliard wouldn’t come to fruition, all the hours spent dancing didn't go to waste. As Gabbriette came of age, she began the old “tell your mom you’re going to college while secretly driving to Los Angeles to see shows instead” thing, a rite of passage for many a cool California girl. The drives back and forth morphed into living with friends, going out, and, eventually, finding herself — or, at least, part of herself — in a Blood Orange music video.
“I put a few dance videos on my Instagram, and somebody reached out to me and said that Dev was having an open call,” she explains. “We had a few fun days of rehearsal and started to film the music video, and then I got a call that I was cut. I didn’t make it into the music video, but I did all of the rehearsals, and I think my feet are in it at some point.” As an unintentional but literal dipping of the toes into the proverbial waters, it worked. She racked up more music video gigs and eventually connected with pop star Charli XCX, who, unbeknownst to Gabbriette, would alter her life forever. “I met her on the set of a music video, and we ended up partying together for a few years,” she recalls. “I didn’t see her for a while, and then she reached out and was like, ‘I’m doing this project and I’ve been trying to cast the singer…’”
“N-A-S-T-Y C-H-E-double-R-Y. N-A-S-T-Y. I’m tasty like a cherry pie,” Gabbriette proclaims in the opening line of “Brain Soup,” the first track on the first album of Nasty Cherry. One week after sending Charli some videos of herself singing, Gabbriette found herself in the Netflix offices signing a contract for I’m With the Band: Nasty Cherry, a docuseries that chronicled Charli’s process of forming a hard-rocking girl group for the Instagram age. For all the spectacle (the band had a launch party before writing a song), the three albums they released from 2019 through 2021 actually hit. Tracks like “Music With Your Dad,” “Her Body,” and “Shoulda Known Better” could still soundtrack a night out or a sunset drive on the PCH. The vibe was a sonic Erewhon smoothie blend of The Runaways, Spice Girls, The Velvet Underground, and, naturally, a sprinkling of Charli XCX.
The band seemed poised to elevate itself beyond its artificial origins, but, like so many projects launched in 2019, the sudden shutdown of the world a year later during the pandemic proved too much for the band to bear. “We couldn’t do anything together, we couldn’t tour our second EP, and we weren’t able to make music together because we were all in different places in the world. So we just decided that it wasn’t going to work out anymore,” Bechtel explains, mournfully. “I miss it all the time. It ended too abruptly.”
That’s not to say that music is in the rearview mirror. Though the pandemic brought a career change that has left her busy cooking up viral videos, the taste of the rockstar life lingers, and she yearns for a second round — albeit one that’s a bit less pop.
“All I listen to are The Sundays and Sheryl Crow and Liz Phair, so it’d probably be more tame. I don’t necessarily listen to pop music, so Nasty Cherry was harder for me in that way; it was stepping outside of my comfort zone, especially being onstage,” she explains, before adding with a laugh: “Sorry, no more going-out music.”
Don’t hold your breath just yet, Nasty Cherry fans. Though Bechtel listens to the band’s unreleased demos and is in talks with bassist Georgia Somary about collaborating on new music, even the most cursory glance shows Gabbriette’s plate is full of projects that’ll keep her far from the recording studio. Her IG grid is a hodgepodge of fashion campaigns, magazine covers, and, of course, drool-inducing food content. In just the past two years, she’s walked Diesel’s FW23 runway, starred in campaigns for the likes of Miu Miu, Bottega Veneta, and Heaven by Marc Jacobs, and launched collabs with everyone from the iconic LA restaurant chain Monty’s Good Burger (releasing a blackout shake worthy of her ’90s grunge image) to R & M Leathers.
Kim Kardashian taught me to always wash my dishes in between cooking
It’s the latter that produced a sexy BDSM-inspired cooking apron that she’s particularly proud of. “I just wanted to do something and I love R & M Leathers…” she begins before leaping off her bed to show me the leather section of her closet — which seems to be nearly all of her closet. “I was thinking that if my cookbook is not going to come out any time soon because it’s taking forever to write, then I should do [the collaboration]. It’s really chic. It’s really fun and they’re still selling.” For Gabbriette, the apron is part of a larger vision that’s begun to take shape. “I live every day like it’s my last. A cookbook is [definitely] going to be coming out at some point, plus more food videos [and] hopefully my own TV show. I have big dreams,” she says with a laugh.
As Bechtel settles back into bed, this time in full lounge mode, the conversation pivots toward Internet trends, as her viral baddy bona fides come out in full force for a game of “2024 food trend ‘ins’ and ‘outs.’” It’s “out” with the air fryers (“It smells like plastic. Just use a fucking oven”), Stanley Quenchers (“Any time I have seen one or have used one, they smell”), and viral WaterTok flavored water (“Drink normal water or go get a juice”). And “in” with the natural milk (“Like really raw, like the Amish milk”), tinned fish (“Just anchovies with olive oil. Mm-hmm. So good. So classic. So Italian”), keeping her kitchen clean (“Kim Kardashian taught me to always wash my dishes in between cooking”), and staying in. “I’m very into being home, organizing, getting my shit ready for moving into another phase of my life.”
In this current digital age, where power has tipped from brands to individual creators, worldbuilding is at the top of her mind. “My dream would be to have my own hotel with a café inside that’s my restaurant and have candles for it,” she explains excitedly. “I just want to curate an entire lifestyle.” Given her well-defined style (“a little farmhouse, a little bit brutalist, just a sexy dungeon”) and a legion of fans waiting to see what she’ll get into next, the Gabbriette B Total Lifestyle Experience isn’t a matter of how — it’s a matter of when.
Gabbriette's List of Ins + Outs
OUT:
Air fryers: “It smells. I had an air fryer. It smells like plastic. Out. Just use a fucking oven. I’ve never owned a microwave. My mom put it in my head that I would go brain-dead if I stood in front of a microwave.”
Stanley Quenchers: “I think those things are so gross. They get really, really dirty and they’re hard to clean. I just don’t like them.”
Flavored water: “Drink normal water or go get a juice. I was doom-scrolling on TikTok and some guy popped up — he’s like, ‘My water of the day,’ and adds seven pumps of pineapple and makes flavors. Gross.”
“Viral” restaurants: “I’m ‘out’ on the over-exaggeration of really mediocre spots. I don’t know who starts these trends of like, ‘This is the best bagel in LA,’ and then you go and you’re like, ‘Babe, what is going on? It was like $20 for this bagel and it’s just bad.’”
IN:
Erewhon smoothies: “I stand with Erewhon. I love it. I like a peanut-butter-banana-smoothie kind of thing. It’s called the Peanut Butter Blast, and I always do half the amount of peanut butter, extra thick, and I replace the milk with coconut milk. There’s my order.”
Raw milk: “I recently started drinking raw milk and I love it.”
Tinned fish: “I love tinned fish. So delicious. There’s so many out there right now. I just bought a mackerel pâté and these smoked anchovies in a chili oil with preserved lemon. They’re so good on toast.”
Diners: “I love a trashy, nasty diner that’s greasy and goes all-out. Get a nasty waffle covered in everything. I love it.”
London dining: “I just went to some amazing places in London. [English breakfast] hits, but there’s also some cafés that aren’t just English food. There’s Café Cecilia and Brunswick House that do really good small plates and dishes that are so great.”
Staying in: “I’m really into staying in and organizing my life because I’m always gone for such long periods of time, which is fun, but then I come home and I feel like there’s so many things to do.”
