“Not tonight,” Cait Bailey instructed a photographer making an attempt to take her image inside an space cordoned off for particular friends at a Louis Vuitton social gathering on the Miami Seaside Conference Middle. “Not this time.”
Ms. Bailey, 34, urged he as a substitute goal his digicam at Alix Earle, an influencer, and her boyfriend, Braxton Berrios, an expert soccer participant with the Miami Dolphins.
“I’m not used to being the topic,” Ms. Bailey stated because the photographer snapped Ms. Earle on the occasion, held throughout Artwork Basel Miami Seaside in December.
Anonymity has change into extra elusive for Ms. Bailey, a publicist and model strategist who runs the New York workplace of Align Public Relations, as her shoppers have grown to incorporate folks with giant followings like Ms. Earle, the “Name Her Daddy” podcast host Alex Cooper, the sibling influencers Charli and Dixie D’Amelio and the singer Zayn Malik. Final month, Ms. Bailey and a number of other of her shoppers, together with Ms. Cooper and Ms. Earle, attended the South by Southwest Convention and Festivals in Austin, Texas, the place Ms. Cooper hosted an occasion selling her podcast community.
Ms. Bailey’s relationship with Mario Carbone, 44, a chef and an proprietor of Carbone restaurant and different institutions, has additionally made it more durable for her to keep away from consideration. (Mr. Carbone was at Ms. Cooper’s SXSW occasion, too; he ready Carbone’s spicy rigatoni for friends.) He and Ms. Bailey, who reside in Miami Seaside and in New York, have been collectively for six years.
Ms. Bailey’s Instagram account has no photographs however greater than 72,000 followers — a disproportionate ratio that some who spend a number of time on-line have seen. “Anybody know what occurred with Cait Bailey?,” a Reddit person posted in a discussion board known as NYCInfluencerSnark. “She deleted all her photographs.”
Ms. Bailey eliminated all of her photographs final 12 months as a result of they “had been simply all actually outdated,” she stated. Posting new ones “was simply beginning to really feel like a chore,” she added. “It was beginning to really feel like work.”
That’s to not say Ms. Bailey — who has lengthy blond hair and whose look has been likened to Margot Robbie’s — doesn’t use social media.
Her Instagram Tales have typically featured photos of her shoppers at trend exhibits (lots of which she has attended with them), snapshots of designer objects she has acquired or photographs of her and Mr. Carbone with influential folks like Michael Coste, an worker at Hermès who works with its notable clients.
A Networker ‘Like No Different’
Days after the Louis Vuitton occasion at Artwork Basel in December, Ms. Bailey glided via the group gathered outdoors manicured hedges alongside North Bay Highway in Miami Seaside. Behind the bushes, a celebration was being held on the waterfront residence of Wayne Boich, a billionaire who runs an organization that invests in actual property and vitality companies, and who began one other firm centered on the pickleball-like sport padel.
A music by the rapper Snoop Dogg was blasting via the shrubbery. He was performing reside on the opposite aspect.
It was a Friday night time round 11:30 p.m. and Ms. Bailey, after sliding previous a bouncer, stated whats up to Sergey Brin, a founding father of Google, who had a deck of playing cards in his hand.
“He’s an incredible magician,” she stated loudly sufficient for Mr. Brin to listen to, prompting him to carry out a trick. Then, he requested Ms. Bailey if she may assist get some folks into the social gathering. “In fact,” she stated. Ms. Bailey typed somewhat on her telephone and, like magic, these folks had been let inside.
As Ms. Bailey made her manner via the social gathering, she was greeted by Mayor Francis Suarez of Miami, who gave her a fist bump. Then she stopped to speak with a bunch that included Cindy Crawford and Rande Gerber. At one level, Ms. Bailey congratulated a person and a girl with an enormous diamond on her ring finger. The couple had just lately change into engaged.
“When are you and Mario going to get engaged?” the girl requested Ms. Bailey.
“Oh, I can’t tackle another challenge proper now,” Ms. Bailey replied with amusing. “He’ll know once I’m prepared.”
Throughout Artwork Basel Miami Seaside, Ms. Bailey went to some 20 occasions. Mr. Carbone, a self-described introvert, stated Ms. Bailey’s “social capacity” and “the best way she managed a room” had been among the many first issues that had drawn him to her.
Ms. Earle, who began working with Ms. Bailey in February 2023, echoed Mr. Carbone’s sentiments. “Once I first met Cait, regardless of the place we had been or the place we went, she knew somebody necessary within the room and all the time took the time to introduce me,” Ms. Earle stated. “She will be able to community like no different.”
Ms. Bailey’s networking capacity additionally appealed to Remi Bader, a plus-size influencer who began working with Ms. Bailey in 2021. Since then, Ms. Bailey has helped Ms. Bader develop relationships with manufacturers like Valentino and Balmain.
“I really feel like if I didn’t have Cait pushing for me and combating for me, they wouldn’t have labored with me,” Ms. Bader stated.
An Sudden Plot Twist
Ms. Bailey, who grew up outdoors Baltimore, has constructed her community via a number of jobs, together with positions at blue-chip and up-and-coming public relations businesses.
The trail she has taken has deviated considerably from what she envisioned after graduating from Georgia Southern College in 2012, which she described as: Return to Baltimore’s suburbs, marry a lacrosse participant and lift kids who would go to the identical personal Catholic faculty that she attended.
“It was the dream,” Ms. Bailey stated. “And I used to be excited for that future.”
Her mom, Patti Caudill, an assistant scientific professor of speech pathology, helped put her on a special trajectory. Not lengthy after Ms. Bailey graduated from school, Ms. Caudill participated in a charity public sale the place she bid and gained a prize for her daughter: an internship alternative in New York at PMK BNC, a public relations agency.
“I got here residence in the future and my mother was so excited,” Ms. Bailey recalled. “She stated, ‘I simply secured an internship for you.’”
Ms. Caudill stated she by no means had any doubts that her daughter would achieve success, however that she by no means envisioned Ms. Bailey having the profession she has right this moment. “She’s type of blazed her personal path,” she stated.
Ms. Bailey’s internship led to a full-time job that concerned holding monitor of press about shoppers at PMK, which has since merged with Rogers & Cowan to kind a brand new company. Her desk was in a hidden-away space — “principally the availability closet,” as she put it. Its location made it a spot the place some staff “would come and cry,” she stated, or vent.
Michael Cohen, an assistant at PMK when Ms. Bailey labored there, described her as his “work spouse” again then. “It was clear she was a folks individual,” stated Mr. Cohen, who’s now the president of movie and tv at Lena Dunham’s Good Factor Going Productions. “She valued relationships.” He tipped Ms. Bailey off to what could be her subsequent job: a place as an assistant to a publicist at PMK whose shoppers have included Kim Kardashian and Selena Gomez.
After 4 years on the company, Ms. Bailey left to work at a start-up digital concierge service. However it wasn’t lengthy earlier than she began to overlook working in publicity, she stated.
She stop and began working as a contract publicist — a line of labor she stated she may nonetheless be in had been it not for a telephone name she acquired in 2019 from Nicole Perez-Krueger, a former publicist at PMK, who on the time was constructing a brand new firm known as Align Public Relations.
Good Instincts (and Timing)
Ms. Bailey, after being employed at Align, took a specific curiosity in influencers, or content material creators, on TikTok. The app arrived in america in 2018, solely a 12 months or so earlier than she began at Align.
Among the many first potential shoppers she approached had been Charli D’Amelio and her elder sister, Dixie, influencers who’ve parlayed their social media fame right into a TV present.
Charli D’Amelio recalled that Ms. Bailey got here to the sisters’ household residence in Norwalk, Conn., for a gathering in March 2020, with a bag of bagels in tow. By the point Ms. Bailey left, the D’Amelios had made a verbal settlement to change into Align shoppers.
“I had by no means heard of a publicist earlier than and I didn’t know what that was or why I’d need one,” Charli D’Amelio stated. “Cait came to visit and defined what they do and the way they’d be capable to assist the household.”
By then, Ms. Bailey and Mr. Carbone had been relationship for about two years. They met in 2018 at his namesake restaurant on Thompson Avenue within the Greenwich Village in Manhattan.
Mr. Carbone was there with a good friend, he stated, when he acquired a textual content message from Shay Mitchell, an actress with whom he’s pleasant, asking for a last-minute reservation. She was with Ms. Bailey; Ms. Mitchell, who’s a consumer of Ms. Bailey’s, first met her when she was working at PMK.
“I instructed her we had been full, however if you wish to be part of us, you may,” Mr. Carbone recalled telling Ms. Mitchell. “She stated, ‘Nice, I’ll take it.’ And that’s how I met Cait.”
Introducing them, Ms. Mitchell stated jokingly, “means reservations for all times!”
Mr. Carbone stated he grew up in a household by which “working exhausting was customary.” To be in a relationship with somebody who has an analogous work ethic “makes it straightforward,” he added, noting that Ms. Bailey’s achievements have had little or no to do together with his.
“There is no such thing as a piggybacking on Main Meals Group,” Mr. Carbone stated, referring to his firm, which has just lately opened a string of eating places in Florida.
A telling signal that he had fallen for Ms. Bailey, he stated, was his choice to do away with a beloved classic U-shaped couch in his New York residence.
“It was stunning, nevertheless it was inconceivable to take a seat on, to put on,” Mr. Carbone stated of the sofa, a chunk by the furnishings designer Maurizio Tempestini. “At first, she was good about it as a result of we had been within the courting stage, and also you don’t wish to say something. However ultimately she was like, that is the worst sofa ever.”
As Ms. Bailey has impressed Mr. Carbone to surrender sure issues, he has influenced her to take up new pursuits like backgammon. “She received higher than me, and I admit that,” Mr. Carbone stated, describing Ms. Bailey as a “unhealthy loser and a worse winner.”
“If she wins, she gloats; if she loses, she finds an excuse at why I received fortunate,” he stated. “This goes for all video games. It’s not a number of enjoyable to play with Cait.”
Not that Ms. Bailey has a lot time to play.
“She is actually working away,” Mr. Carbone stated.
Having a accomplice who’s formidable “and is simply as keen about what they do is a lovely factor,” he added.
