“Not tonight,” Cait Bailey informed a photographer attempting to take her image inside an space cordoned off for particular visitors at a Louis Vuitton social gathering on the Miami Seashore Conference Heart. “Not this time.”
Ms. Bailey, 34, steered he as a substitute intention 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 mentioned because the photographer snapped Ms. Earle on the occasion, held throughout Artwork Basel Miami Seashore 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 several 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 tougher for her to keep away from consideration. (Mr. Carbone was at Ms. Cooper’s SXSW occasion, too; he ready Carbone’s spicy rigatoni for visitors.) He and Ms. Bailey, who reside in Miami Seashore and in New York, have been collectively for six years.
Ms. Bailey’s Instagram account has no images however greater than 72,000 followers — a disproportionate ratio that some who spend numerous time on-line have observed. “Anybody know what occurred with Cait Bailey?,” a Reddit consumer posted in a discussion board known as NYCInfluencerSnark. “She deleted all her images.”
Ms. Bailey eliminated all of her images final 12 months as a result of they “have been simply all actually outdated,” she mentioned. 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 usually featured footage of her shoppers at trend reveals (lots of which she has attended with them), snapshots of designer objects she has acquired or images 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 by the group gathered outdoors manicured hedges alongside North Bay Street in Miami Seashore. Behind the bushes, a celebration was being held on the waterfront dwelling of Wayne Boich, a billionaire who runs an organization that invests in actual property and vitality companies, and who began one other firm targeted on the pickleball-like sport padel.
A tune by the rapper Snoop Dogg was blasting by the shrubbery. He was performing reside on the opposite facet.
It was a Friday night time round 11:30 p.m. and Ms. Bailey, after sliding previous a bouncer, mentioned hey to Sergey Brin, a founding father of Google, who had a deck of playing cards in his hand.
“He’s an excellent magician,” she mentioned loudly sufficient for Mr. Brin to listen to, prompting him to carry out a trick. Then, he requested Ms. Bailey if she might assist get some folks into the social gathering. “In fact,” she mentioned. Ms. Bailey typed somewhat on her cellphone and, like magic, these folks have been let inside.
As Ms. Bailey made her means by the social gathering, she was greeted by Mayor Francis Suarez of Miami, who gave her a fist bump. Then she stopped to talk with a gaggle 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 yet one more mission proper now,” Ms. Bailey replied with fun. “He’ll know after I’m prepared.”
Throughout Artwork Basel Miami Seashore, Ms. Bailey went to some 20 occasions. Mr. Carbone, a self-described introvert, mentioned Ms. Bailey’s “social capability” and “the way in which she managed a room” have 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. “After I first met Cait, irrespective of the place we have 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 mentioned. “She will be able to community like no different.”
Ms. Bailey’s networking capability 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 preventing for me, they wouldn’t have labored with me,” Ms. Bader mentioned.
An Sudden Plot Twist
Ms. Bailey, who grew up outdoors Baltimore, has constructed her community by a number of jobs, together with positions at blue-chip and up-and-coming public relations companies.
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 youngsters who would go to the identical non-public Catholic college that she attended.
“It was the dream,” Ms. Bailey mentioned. “And I used to be excited for that future.”
Her mom, Patti Caudill, an assistant medical professor of speech pathology, helped put her on a distinct trajectory. Not lengthy after Ms. Bailey graduated from faculty, Ms. Caudill participated in a charity public sale the place she bid and received a prize for her daughter: an internship alternative in New York at PMK BNC, a public relations agency.
“I got here dwelling someday and my mother was so excited,” Ms. Bailey recalled. “She mentioned, ‘I simply secured an internship for you.’”
Ms. Caudill mentioned 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 form of blazed her personal path,” she mentioned.
Ms. Bailey’s internship led to a full-time job that concerned maintaining observe 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 provision closet,” as she put it. Its location made it a spot the place some workers “would come and cry,” she mentioned, 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,” mentioned 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 can 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 mentioned.
She give up and began working as a contract publicist — a line of labor she mentioned she would possibly nonetheless be in have been it not for a cellphone name she obtained 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 have 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 dwelling 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 mentioned. “Cait came visiting and defined what they do and the way they might be capable of 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 Road within the Greenwich Village in Manhattan.
Mr. Carbone was there with a pal, he mentioned, when he obtained 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 shopper of Ms. Bailey’s, first met her when she was working at PMK.
“I informed her we have been full, however if you wish to be a part of us, you may,” Mr. Carbone recalled telling Ms. Mitchell. “She mentioned, ‘Nice, I’ll take it.’ And that’s how I met Cait.”
Introducing them, Ms. Mitchell mentioned jokingly, “means reservations for all times!”
Mr. Carbone mentioned he grew up in a household during which “working exhausting was customary.” To be in a relationship with somebody who has an identical work ethic “makes it straightforward,” he added, noting that Ms. Bailey’s achievements have had little or no to do along with his.
“There is no such thing as a piggybacking on Main Meals Group,” Mr. Carbone mentioned, 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 mentioned, was his choice to do away with a beloved classic U-shaped couch in his New York condo.
“It was stunning, but it surely was unimaginable to take a seat on, to put on,” Mr. Carbone mentioned of the sofa, a bit by the furnishings designer Maurizio Tempestini. “At first, she was good about it as a result of we have been within the courting stage, and also you don’t wish to say something. However finally 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 mentioned, 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 mentioned. “This goes for all video games. It’s not numerous enjoyable to play with Cait.”
Not that Ms. Bailey has a lot time to play.
“She is basically working away,” Mr. Carbone mentioned.
Having a accomplice who’s bold “and is simply as keen about what they do is a fantastic factor,” he added.
