Text Sarah Hay
Photography Gregory Derkenne
Two seasons ago Jamie Bochert caused a frisson of excitement when she opened the Marc Jacobs show: who was that girl?
The New Jersey native had retired from modelling three years previously to concentrate on making music. Heads turned and the Gothic beauty was snapped up for campaigns with Lanvin, Gucci and Marc Jacobs, walking for Ann Demeulemeester, Balenciaga, Celine and Narciso Rodriguez’s autumn/winter 11 shows. Back in 2003, when Jamie first left modelling, a scruffy guy with dyed jet black hair ordered a beer at the bar where she was working. “Fuck bartending,” the guy told her, “you should concentrate on your music.” The two began dating and moved in together. That Christmas Jamie’s new beau surprised her by buying her a piano. “I’d just met Jamie and I didn’t tell her what I did for a living,” says Jamie’s boyfriend, the actor Michael Pitt, over the phone from the couple’s Brooklyn apartment. “She had no clue. Then all of a sudden she saw me dubbing lines in Last Days (Gus Van Sant's tribute to Kurt Cobain). In the scene I was wearing a dress and had blonde hair, she was quite surprised!” When she’s not busy modelling, 32 year old Jamie spends her time writing songs with the view to entering the studio soon with Michael to record them. They are yet to secure a record deal but the buzz surrounding the couple is already strong. Going under the musical moniker of Frances Wolf, Bochert’s songs possess a dark, haunted romance that builds to an emotive crescendo before falling away to an eerie lullaby...
