Top model and talented actor Cara Delevingne talked details of her sobriety journey in yesterday’s interview with The Sunday Times July 7, 2024 issue.

Judit Melis styles the uber-talent in Alaïa, Burberry, Chanel, Gucci, Hermès, Isabel Marant, Loewe, Missoni, Miu Miu, Sportmax, Stella McCartney and more in images by Jorin Koers [IG].

Writer Vassi Chamberlain recalled meeting the mischievous Delevingne for the first time at her aunt’s wedding in 2001. It’s unlikely she was prepared for Cara’s response.

“You know I got drunk that day,” she says. “I was eight, what a crazy age to get drunk.”

Having lived through this critical journey to sobriety for so many years, Cara is uniquely positioned to discuss her alcohol-free sparkling rosé Della Vite Zero, which she has recently launched in a business founded with her two older sisters Chloe and Poppy in 2018.

Less eloquently than supermodel Bella Hadid discusses her non-alcoholic drink Kin Euphorics, the prominent-family Brit pushes back on health and wellbeing issues attached to many entries in the growing non-alcohol category.

“I didn’t want to do this because I’m now sober,” she says ,“but because I wanted an alternative.” She doesn’t mean to alcohol specifically, although of course that was behind it too, but because since she has become sober, she has struggled to find a nonalcoholic drink that isn’t full of sugar and high in calories. “I’d go out to dinner and drink seven ginger beers. I’d get a sugar hangover and a headache. It’s so stupid because you still end up feeling like shit. I wanted people like me to have a choice.”

Cara Delevingne has always cut to raw-bone basics in describing her complicated ‘life journey’ — a likely metaphor on the fashion press interview circuit. She commands respect, though, because her challenges have been severe at times and also long in duration. Cara has street cred.

Doesn’t every successful young woman in fashion world suffer from this 21st century affliction called ‘imposter syndrome’? The claim is easier to understand in Cara’s world, because she has carried many dark secrets with her — like getting drunk at eight years old, for openers. [Note that Cara told Vogue, age seven in 2023. It doesn’t matter.]

The Delevigne sisters are daughters of their famous mother Pandora Delevingne, who first used heroin days after her 18th birthday. One assumes that being diagnosed with a serious bipolar condition, coupled with drug use presented very big challenges for Pandora’s daughters.

“I do think the older I get, the more I see how similar me and my mother are. She has managed to survive through so much. She’s whip smart. I think there are really beautiful things about my mother and really sad things too. It makes the whole situation complex. When I was younger I talked about it freely because I didn’t really understand it. But it affected me, so I felt like it was my right to talk about it. I feel bad about that.”

Cara is remarkably circumspect about her family — refreshingly so. Her reflections are laced with empathy for her upbringing and not only about her mother’s mental health and addiction challenges.

Asked about her parent’s reaction to her sexuality preferences, the LGBTQAI activist agrees that they never had a talk with her about it being okay to love whoever she wished. In one in-depth quote, Cara delivers much wisdom on the topic of sexual identity:

“It’s a generational thing. I don’t think it was their fault at all. It’s just how it was. I think a lot of parents thought, ‘Oh, if I have a gay child I have done something wrong.’ ” Does she have any advice for teenage girls questioning their sexuality? “Don’t think the problem is you,” she says. She also dismisses the notion that just because you’ve slept with a member of the same sex you are automatically gay. “The point is to experiment, but it doesn’t have to change your identity, if that makes sense.”

Sober now for two years and in a committed relationship with a British woman Leah, a singer who performs under the name Minke, the ‘Cabaret’ actor recalls receiving the March 15, 2024 phone call that her house was on fire in LA.

Months later, the cause of the fire remains unknown — AOC just ran a current status check — but is under investigation. The good news for Cara is that although she was deeply saddened with extreme loss over the event, she remained stable and sober. And her cats survived.

Enjoying more than one glass of Della Vite Zero, Chamberlain notes that “It tastes surprisingly good and has that sharpness of taste you normally associate with alcohol.” Did she toast Cara’s recovery? No, but we will. Here’s to you, Cara. May the force be with you. ~ Anne