Vogue revisits the culinary queen, tastemaker, and lifestyle super-influencer Martha Stewart in her pre-fame days as a rising model and aspiring businesswoman.Vogue revisits the culinary queen, tastemaker, and lifestyle super-influencer Martha Stewart in her pre-fame days as a rising model and aspiring businesswoman.
Before her name became a byword for “good taste,” Martha Stewart was born Martha Kostyra, the oldest daughter of six children in a well-to-do Polish Catholic family. Raised in Nutley, New Jersey, she displayed an entrepreneurial knack from an early age: A 10-year-old Martha booked her first paid gig by planning birthday parties for the kids in her neighborhood. She began modeling as a teenager, earning $50 an hour to appear in ad campaigns for the likes of Chanel and Tareyton cigarettes. With her 5’9” frame and knockout beauty, Stewart’s modeling portfolio radiates the same mix of cold charm and playful sensuality that would later define her entire brand.
But it would take some time before Stewart became known, as David Letterman once referred to her, as the “James Brown of home entertaining.” Stewart modeled into her early twenties, mostly as a way to supplement her scholarship money at Barnard College. After graduating with a degree in architectural history, she married Yale Law student Andy Stewart, had a daughter, Alexis, in 1965, and worked on Wall Street as the only female stockbroker at her firm. “The job taught me so much about what it takes to build a real business, a real company—a meaningful and useful enterprise,” Stewart later recalled. “Yet it was not until I left Wall Street that I discovered my true entrepreneurial bent. I loved ideas. I loved building. I loved creating…and I loved making money as a result.”
Raised by parents who passed on their love of cooking and gardening, Stewart left Wall Street in the mid-’70s to start a catering company out of the basement of Turkey Hill, her iconic former residence in Westport, Connecticut. Her kitchen skills and elegant aesthetic earned her a reputation among any East Coaster lucky enough to attend one of her famed garden parties.
Many of the recipes she developed as a caterer would eventually be featured in her first cookbook, Entertaining, which became an instant bestseller when it hit holiday shelves in 1982. It’s a domestic bible imbued with her wisdom, stylishly delivered takes, and dry humor: “So the pie isn’t perfect? Cut it into wedges. Stay in control, and never panic,” she writes.
“I have a microphone on one ankle and an ankle bracelet on the other, so I’m well balanced today,” she quips.
Almost 40 years, 102 books, an illuminating documentary, and an entire media empire later, Stewart remains as gloriously un-relatable as ever. When she isn’t posting thirst traps from the pool of her Hamptons estate, Stewart is still dreaming up new ways to expand the reach of her brand even further. What that looks like? A venture into CBD skincare, a standalone store, and her first (and very extensive) kitchen appliance line—a slow cooker, blender, waffle maker, and electric griddle among the star products featuring her moniker—just this year.
Stewart’s approach to living well continues to transcend time, too. In spring, she released The Martha Way: Essential Principles for Mastering Home and Living—Your Guide to Cooking, Entertaining, and Stylish Home Organizing. It’s an expansive guide to cooking, entertaining, home organizing, collecting, and gardening. And honestly? Some of the best parts are just Stewart’s classic and accessible recipes for staples like chocolate chip cookies and an omelette.
Today, when she’s not on her sprawling 153-acre estate known as Bedford Farm, you’ll find her gala-ing in the Hamptons, hobnobbing among the well-hatted in New York, and summering across Europe—and good for her! To celebrate the entrepreneur, author, tastemaker, lifestyle super-influencer, and DIY icon—who recently turned 85—Vogue digs into the archives to compile a photographic tribute to Martha Stewart’s pre-fame days as a rising model and aspiring businesswoman.
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Photo: Frank Horvat 1/29Stewart was a student at Barnard College in New York City when Glamour selected her to appear in a “10 best-dressed college girls” spread for their August 1961 issue.
In the 1960s, Martha moved to New York City to study history and architectural history at Barnard College. She modeled to support herself.
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Photo: Courtesy of Martha Stewart 3/29Discovered at the age of 15, Stewart signed with the legendary agency Ford Models and immediately started booking television commercials. “I got enough modeling jobs at $50 an hour—which was a lot of money at that time,” she explained in the documentary Makers.
Photographed in her 9-5 era, when she was working on Wall Street.
Stewart posing with an American flag in the August 1961 issue of Glamour.
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Photo: Courtesy of Martha Stewart 6/29In addition to various television commercials. Stewart’s modeling clients included the likes of Tareyton Cigarettes, Breck, Lifebuoy Soap, and Clairol.
Stewart closely studied Italian, German, and French cuisine while on a modeling assignment in Europe in the early ’60s.
Stewart supplemented her scholarship money at Barnard College with her modeling income. Originally a chemistry major, she eventually graduated with a double major in history and architectural history.
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Photo: Courtesy of Martha Stewart 9/29Stewart has long enjoyed the company of animals, owning at least 20 cats, 25 dogs, 10 chinchillas, and scores more over the past 40 years or so. “Ever since I’ve owned a house, I’ve craved backyard farmyard animals,” she once wrote.
Stewart’s modeling career ran the gamut, going so far as to walk in multiple fashion shows and appear in magazines, catalogues, and advertisements.
“During my modeling days, we didn’t have a team of stylists for photoshoots. I had to do my hair myself,” Stewart wrote in a how-to guide inspired by her glamorous ’60s updos.
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Photo: Courtesy of Martha Stewart 12/29“I knew that I could model, I knew I could pose for pictures, but I was not sexy, and I was not provocative,” Stewart told People. “That feeling never came. It still hasn’t come. I’m waiting for that day.”
As an institutional stockbroker, Stewart entertained her clients at a number of New York City’s top restaurants and would often ask chefs to share their tricks of the trade.
Martha and Andy Stewart holding a black Cochin hen and a basket of eggs outside the barnyard of their home.
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Photo: Susan Wood 15/29Stewart carrying a basket of eggs from a chicken coop on the grounds of her Westport, Connecticut farmhouse, 1976.
Stewart kneading dough in her kitchen, 1976.
Stewart working in the vegetable garden of her Connecticut farmhouse, as featured in the June 1977 issue of House & Garden.
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Photo: Courtesy of Martha Stewart 18/29Martha, photographed in the first home she shared with then-husband Andy Stewart in Turkey Hill, around 1972. She set herself a mission to build a chicken coop and populate it with various kinds of laying hens. She propeled a nationwide trend for homegrown poultry and eggs.
Stewart carrying a basket of greens as she walks through her vegetable garden, 1976. “I was the only one of my father’s children who took naturally to the garden—I never minded the hours in the blazing sun, weeding and cultivating,” she wrote in the introduction to Martha Stewart’s Pies & Tarts. “My father sent for every garden catalogue available, and we pored over them together, choosing what we would like to have on an imaginary estate.”
Martha Stewart and husband Andy baking in their kitchen in 1980, as Martha catered an event.
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Photo: Susan Wood 21/29Located on Turkey Hill Road, Stewart and her ex-husband bought the dilapidated 1805 farmhouse in the early ’70s and restored it to its former glory.
Stewart outside her henhouse, which she lovingly referred to as the “Palais du poulet,” 1976.
Stewart’s kitchen in Turkey Hill would later become the model for the TV studio of Martha Stewart Living, which aired over a thousand episodes between 1993 and 2004.
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Photo: Susan Wood 24/29Stewart holding a basket of eggs while leaning against a wheelbarrow in the chicest way imaginable, 1976.
Stewart during her catering days with her pet Persian cat, 1980.
Circa 1980, Martha hosts one of her small cooking seminars in her professional kitchen in Westport, Connecticut. “My audience has certainly grown, thanks to television, publishing, and the internet, but years later it still brings me so much joy,” she said of this time.
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Photo: Getty Images 27/29Martha and Andy entertaining dinner guests in their dutifully restored rustic kitchen. Here, Martha is talking to author Jill Robinson.
Working on a sticky apricot almond tart in her Connecticut kitchen, August 1976.
Martha and Andy—before matching couple style became cool—outside their home in March 1980.
