We were lucky to catch up with Katy Syme recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Katy, thanks for joining us today. Do you wish you had started sooner?

In 2012, my friend entered me into a modeling competition she read about in Cosmo magazine, during my final semester of College. I was 20, and honestly starting to panic about what would come next for me, considering my procrastination on making any post-grad decisions, and the bleak job prospects of 2012. I haven’t ever really taken credit for when my career started because it felt like a insanely lucky break and completely outside of any plans I had considered for my next steps, but I’m grateful to have started in an emotionally demanding industry with a few more years of adulthood under my belt compared to most models. Starting sooner would undeniably have offered me the chance to build my career during the “glory days” of the fashion industry – which I’m sure would have been financially rewarding – but I would have sacrificed some wisdom, and resilience that comes with age, as well as the confidence and experience that allowed me to advocate for myself whenever I was confronted with a precarious situation, and there isn’t a price I could put on that.
As was one of my goals when I started, the industry has become more inclusive and representative, and it generally produces a lot less than it once did, so starting any later probably would’ve been a flop and I feel incredibly lucky with that in mind, to have had a long – and unexpected – career.
What I like to call my advanced hobby/side hustle actually feels like the thing that I built more consciously than my day job. For as long as forever, I’ve wanted to create what I call a “weird food thing” – not a real restaurant (too formal!too scary!) – but something that brings people together and creates that cosy environment with noise and food and warm lights and laughter: in 2015 we moved into an apartment with an unfinished basement that I was convinced I could turn into an illegal underground restaurant; later, I spent months working out the math of a “6 Degrees of Separation” dinner party. The creation of my Supper Club & Symeski Made Dinner, was first and foremost born from a desire to extend my community and find new connection during the pandemic, through the thing that brought me the most pleasure – parties, with food. 2021 felt like a time of shift in New York City, or at least within my circle, with lots of friends moving away or having babies; and there was a lot of fear and pain around the isolation we’d all been feeling.
The regularity with which an acquaintance or stranger on the internet would reach out to say they’d love to come to dinner – like everyone else I’d taken to posting the elaborate meals I’d been making during lockdown, and dinner parties with friends once that was possible – was reaching a critical mass, and I remember saying to my friend on a walk one day during a broader conversation about finding purpose outside of work: “maybe I’m going to invite all those random people together”. I mused on that point probably for months, and one day, with the encouragement of a very enthusiastic date (bless a sagittarius) threw out a video on instagram, and the response was pretty overwhelming! I hope that whenever I began, I would’ve experienced the same response, but I have a suspicion that I wasn’t alone in feeling a need for connection during that lonely time, so I think the timing really worked in my favor for its initial success.
I offered months of free supper clubs, because I didn’t *need* the money, and frankly I didn’t feel qualified to charge, plus it was enriching me to meet these people and host these dinners – finally found my weird food thing! – but ultimately, I could see that the project wouldn’t have been sustainable if I didn’t ask for a contribution. The supper club remains for fun, I don’t do it for profit, but paid opportunities have been borne from it more recently. I sometimes am frustrated by the pace at which my confidence in this new space is growing – I still have tremendous imposter syndrome – its so difficult to overcome that when you work with something subjective – despite such kind feedback, and I wish I would hurry up and stop undercharging when people want to hire me!
While it’s interesting to muse on, I don’t think its helpful to consider what could’ve been in a different time, or at a different pace – creative industries are wildly unpredictable, and I also really believe in the concept that you don’t know what you don’t know! I’m really someone who likes to collect a lot of information and let that quietly synthesize until I’m confident about my next move, it’s really easy to feel frustrated by how long that information takes to collect when you’re standing with a view of 20/20 hindsight, but each step along the way is necessary, and you can’t rush that.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I’ve worked as a freelance mid-size fashion model for 13 years, creating predominantly print advertising, with some editorial and runway too, for brands like Target, H&M and Levis. I’m currently signed to IMG, and a boutique agency called Tess, in London, where I’m from. I had no idea a career in fashion would be possible for me, based on my dress size, and I was very fortunate to be signed to a prestigious agency in London during my final semester of College, where I was studying Psychology, With no real post graduate plans, I decided to model for “a year” to satisfy my curiosity and here we still are. I’ve been privileged to be a part of moving the industry towards better representation of numerous versions of beauty, and, in places, contributed to increased diversity and inclusivity with fashion – walking runways at a size 8-12. I feel incredibly proud to have had a robust and diverse career, in such an exclusive industry.
I’m also a cook, and I hold a monthly supper club in Brooklyn, for strangers to meet and connect, in a warm, fun, community focused environment. I also cater parties, or any occasion you need, with real, mostly nourishing, sometimes naughty food. My goal is to create spaces of pleasure, and offer people opportunity to experience exciting, nourishing experiences, without the gatekeeping or intimidation that’s often prevalent in the food and wine space; to create a sense of family, and abundance around every table.

What can society do to ensure an environment that’s helpful to artists and creatives?

Fund the arts for kids!! Engaging in the arts was huge for my development of imagination, problem solving, confidence, and understand of community building. It’s also rare in modern culture to experience flow state, which I think is paramount for our mental health and happiness which, even if you don’t go on to become someone who earns their living in the creative industries, is beneficial for the wider community, and develops a respect for craft, and for those earning through the arts. Making art accessible at a young age also has to contribute to innovation, which impacts the wider community. I also think cultivating a sense of creativity, or a skill at a young age, makes it much easier later in life to access that part of yourself, and I think society needs us to be focussed on more than just earning money to be happy.
I spent my childhood acting, singing, dancing, painting, playing musical instruments and cooking. Not all of it was a formal education, but all of it built me into a confident, creative person, and having those skills allowed me to be confident in taking opportunities that came my way even if they were outside of what I felt immediately qualified to engage with. It also brought me such joy, I continue as an adult to engage with art and artistry, I’m thrilled to support other artists creating beautiful things.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

I’m currently at a time of transition out of my career as a model, into something completely new which is probably the biggest pivot I could imagine at the moment! The industry has changed so much in recent years, and I’m no longer as in demand in this role. While its difficult to accept change in anything you have absorbed into your identity, acknowledging that there are so many routes to finding fulfillment, and often hanging on to what you know isn’t giving you what it once did, is really helpful during the transition period. I have loved my job, and I feel so lucky it has given me time and flexibility to develop other interests, which I can now turn to focus more on. I am hoping to return to post graduate study next fall, and I’m feeling very excited about having another career. I’ll also have more opportunity to develop Symeski Made Dinner as a brand. Its intimidating to start actioning change, particularly as during the planning phases it’s easy to forget that you are actually capable of doing more than one thing at once: career and life and personal development all kind of require intermittent, if not constant, maintenance, and it feels overwhelming to consider how you’ll actually manage all those things when you stand at the precipice looking at the whole task. I’m trying to take the change one day at a time, and to view the project as a slow build rather than a quick pivot.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @symeski @symeski.made.dinner
• Other: TikTok – @symeski

Image Credits

Profile image – Lily Cummins McCubbin @lililand

Addition photos:
1- @symeski.made.dinner
2 – Tommy Meyer @tmeyer__
3 – @Voguerunway
4 – Rich Wade @richwadephoto
5 – Rich Wade @richwadephoto
6 – Lily Cummins McCubbin – @lililand
7 – @symeski.made.dinner
8 – Tommy Meyer @tmeyer__