After stomping down many high-fashion runways, supermodel Nicole Trunfio has a new mission to redefine maternity wear — and modern motherhood.
By Jillian Anthony
Photos by Joi Conti
Styled by Liz Wendler
Hair and Makeup by Perla Rodriguez
On a recent winter day, Nicole Trunfio arrives downtown to record a podcast, looking head to toe like the venerated model that she is. A native Australian, Trunfio was discovered at the mall (yes, really) and moved to New York City to pursue her modeling career at just 16, then lived and worked there for 13 years. Though Texas has been her home since 2017, her Manhattan-forged fashion sense remains. She’s wearing a gray, long-sleeved, form-fitting dress from her own clothing line, Bumpsuit, a lush-looking camel robe coat and knee-high gray-and-white snakeskin boots with an intimidating heel. Her youngest daughter accompanies her, settling into a corner with her mom’s borrowed phone.
Trunfio sits down with Mackenzie Price, co-founder of the Alpha School. She joins Price to chat on the Future of Education podcast about alternative education, the importance of family and her long history as an entrepreneur. She has a charming energy, kind eyes and cheekbones that could crack open a geode.
“Having a family is like running a company,” says Trunfio, 38, who has at least as many businesses as she does kids. She’s been making fine jewelry for a couple of decades and launched her namesake collection online last year at nicoletrunfiojewelry.com (you can shop her pieces locally exclusively at ByGeorge). She launched an Austin pop-up of her popular “non-maternity maternity” line, Bumpsuit, at the Domain in November, with plans to move it to New York City after its March end. She’s highly involved in the product design aspect for her brands and considers “production innovation” her forte. She hosts her own podcast, The Village, talking with guests such as Miranda Kerr and Ty Haney all about motherhood. And, after an early career walking runways for Gucci, Chanel and Versace, and gracing magazine covers such as Vogue Australia and Elle Australia, she still models.
Still, one of her roles looms largest: creating a loving, supportive home for her three children with her husband, and Austin icon, Gary Clark Jr., whom she married in 2016. The family moved onto a 50-acre ranch outside of Austin in 2017, where their kids enjoy the freedom of wide open spaces you simply can’t find in the five boroughs.
“We spend a lot of time apart, so going through all the ups and downs and the long distance, and just living this high-impact lifestyle, it's kind of amazing how we've gotten through so many things,” Trunfio says. “And I just really love and admire and respect him as a person, aside from being my husband or partner or father of my kids.” (She admires him so much, she gave up playing the piano for good; “He's so talented, I’m too embarrassed to play anything in front of him,” she says.)
Of course, there are specific perks that come with having an adored musician in the family, including experiencing life on the road with rock stars. Trunfio and her three children joined her husband on tour last year, while Trunfio’s father, Joe, an outsize influence in Trunfio’s life, joined Clark Jr. on a previous tour with the Rolling Stones. She says the rock ‘n’ roll sojourn was “a major highlight in [my dad’s] life” before he passed away from cancer in 2016.
Trunfio grew up in the Australian Bush with her dad, Joe, a fitter and turner by trade who built drag cars, and her mother, Kim, a hairdresser who set up her salon in the backyard. Her father was a traditional Italian man, so she was raised conservatively, not allowed to listen to the angsty songs of Alanis Morissette or watch Sex and the City. Both of her parents were artistic: her dad could build or fix anything. (He built their Australian home, and even helped his daughter create the patent mechanism for her signature Universe Bracelet — a pyramid charm locks on to the bracelet and encourages the wearer to recite a daily ritual or mantra to “lock in your own power.”) Meanwhile, Trunfio’s mum loved pottery, painting and made her kids elaborate magical cakes shaped like train tracks and roller skates.
Trunfio followed in their footsteps as a skateboarding, straight-A student who loved making art that caught the eye of her teachers. She stayed close to her big Italian family and thought she’d grow up to practice family law; she wanted to have a well-paying job because she witnessed her parents fighting over money a lot growing up.
“I didn't think anything would happen,” she says. “I thought I'd marry my first boyfriend, and hopefully live in a house somewhere near the beach, and that's it.”
Suddenly, something big happened. Trunfio was discovered by a talent scout while out shopping one day. At first, she thought she wanted nothing to do with modeling. But then she was named the runner-up in the Ford Supermodel of the World competition, and, in a flash, was moving to New York City alone at 16 years old.
When Trunfio asked her parents why they were letting her move to another continent, her sheltering father looked at his young daughter and told her something she’ll never forget.
“He said, ‘Because I trust you, you have a good head on your shoulders.’ And that's a really good lesson for parents,” Trunfio says. “I know it must have been so hard for him to do. My mum told me that after they dropped me off, they pulled over and cried, and they were so worried about me, but they never showed it. And they really built my confidence up. Over those years, I saw so many models come and go. I saw so many mistakes being made. And I just had my dad's worth, and I lived up to that, because that was his standard of me.”
Trunfio focused and worked hard to get her modeling career off the ground. She was picked by Tom Ford to walk in a Gucci show, a moment that “changed my whole trajectory,” she says. Next Karl Lagerfeld booked her for Chanel, then “everyone booked me — Donatella Versace, Cavalli, Missoni, Galliano — and I became a high fashion model for most of my life.”
Trunfio was advised that her modeling career had a shelf life of five years (which would put her at the ripe old age of 21) so she planned to go back to school later in life. But she didn’t wait to pursue her education; she took classes at the New School in 20th century literature, sociology, film and acting, all while excelling as a model.
“I got schooled from being a high fashion runway model,” she says. “You go to the Versace fashion house in Milan, you go to Missoni, you meet them at Valentino, you talk to them, you see how they operate. You see how the fittings go. You're really seeing the inside of each company.”
Soon, she was dreaming up her own business ideas.
“I come from a family of tradesmen, and we're really obsessed with figuring things out and inventing things that could be helpful. So it's just really in my DNA to create new things.”
She started designing jewelry, and briefly formed a band that set her on the path to eventually meeting Clark Jr. (who wears some of her custom pieces today) through his manager, Scooter Weintraub. They started dating in 2012 some time after Trunfio saw Clark Jr. play a show in New York and was “mesmerized.”
“It took a long time for us to get together,” Trunfio says. “We’re so different. I'm such an extrovert, and he's such an introvert, and we would have passed like ships in the night, but somehow our oppositeness attracted. We connected, and it was a very magical, ethereal experience. I just knew that he was my person. I felt like we were in a force field bubble thing. He brought out my feminine side, I just wanted to nourish him and care for him, cook things and do his laundry.”
The couple welcomed their first son in 2015, when Trunfio was 28. She’s now a doting mom to three kids ages 10, 7 and 5. Trunfio has always prioritized family, but the all-encompassing role of motherhood changed her — and gifted her with brand-new ideas to connect with fellow moms and make their lives a bit easier.
“My husband's a touring musician. I don't have my family here in America, and so I really had no support,” she says. “So I was getting up three times a night, breastfeeding my youngest daughter, and I was pregnant, going into my office every day and doing school pickup. And I wanted to feel put together and professional and comfortable.”
Trunfio’s youngest daughter is the reason Bumpsuit was born. She first created the brand when she was pregnant with her and frustrated with the limited options she had for clothing that made her feel confident and cozy.
“It's really hard when you're pregnant to find options that are effortless and don't make you feel like a science project, or like Edward Scissorhands got his scissors to a garment and completely dismantled it and put it back together,” she says. “It's just so hard during such an important transition in a woman's life. I actually developed Bumpsuit for myself. I custom-made pieces for myself to get me through because I was a working mom.”
Trunfio saw a gaping niche in the market to create clothing women could invest in while pregnant and still wear long after those nine mutable months were up. All Bumpsuit products — from lace dresses to pajamas to shapewear and unitards — are fitted on pregnant and non-pregnant women with custom fabrics that both stretch and recover. She also developed the brand’s best-selling Reversible Comfy Bra, modeled after traditional binding practices; this can be worn as a nursing bra or scoop neck, and waist trainers to support postpartum moms’ cores. (Trunfio gifted herself with an Ayurvedic postpartum doula after each of her births, which includes the practice of binding, meant to ground mothers back to the earth).
But Trunfio couldn’t stop at just clothing; she wanted to solve some of the biggest pain points she’d faced as a new mom. She designed the Armadillo Baby Carrier to be the elusive cross between functional and aesthetic that she couldn’t find, and swears she even carried her then-four-year-old around Boston in it all day in total comfort.
“It really is the best brand for moms,” she says. “But, you know, those on my team that aren't pregnant, and have never been pregnant, and they are wearing Bumpsuit.”
In 2020, Trunfio started working with a couture production warehouse in downtown LA who manufactures all of her production, then launched the brand a week before her youngest daughter’s birth (working mom, indeed). Since then, the viral brand has continued growing, but it wasn’t until last November that the brand branched out to a physical store in the Domain. As usual, Trunfio had an inspired new concept she wanted to test, and big ambitions to bring her community together.
“As a new mom, you're inundated with so many products, and you really don't need much — really just some diapers and either a boob or a bottle,” Trunfio says. “So we wanted to really simplify it for mums.” Enter The Marketplace, an online and in-store one stop-shop for the 25 beloved and well-vetted products you might need to survive and thrive in early motherhood.
“We've got the best travel system, stroller, car seat, a Moses basket [a soft carrier that also turns into a bassinet], diapers, baby bottles, nipple cream, pacifiers — just all the best of everything,” Trunfio says. “And when a new company comes out with something better, we'll replace the products. We're making sure we're offering moms the best, because that's what they deserve.”
The pop-up was blessed by a grand opening party and free concert performed by the one and only Gary Clark Jr. The store itself was designed by Austin architect Will Fox of Fox & Fox as a gathering point for moms and moms-to-be to feel welcomed and supported. It has a central, playpen-like lfeature where kids can linger and moms can rest. And, every Wednesday the store hosts free events such as Mommy and Me yoga and music classes, meditation circles, and sound baths. There’s also a monthly Mommy and Me walk that meets at Mañana Coffee near Lady Bird Lake where all attendees get free drink vouchers and some Bumpsuit goodies to take home.
“Having a brand like this, for me, it's really purpose driven. I felt a responsibility on so many levels, not only to bring product to the market that's innovative and high quality and very useful, but also to offer resources to our community, because we're speaking to the next generation of mothers who I feel really need to be seen and heard.”
For Trunfio, part of recognizing all sides of motherhood is also creating a caring space for those mourning pregnancy loss.
“In the beginning of the brand, I was doing customer service myself,” she says. “If you got an email from Taylor, that was me. And I noticed one of the return reasons was pregnancy loss, which is something that's very normal. I've experienced three miscarriages myself, and so have most of my friends.”
Each October, which is pregnancy and infant loss awareness month, Bumpsuit hosts an in-person retreat (and another online) to recognize those carrying that unique pain. Participants can enjoy sound healing, try somatic movement practices, writing and poetry workshops and join in other restorative activities.
“It's really impactful and emotional to be able to attend that,” Trunfio says.
In a ranch home headed by two creative magnates and unofficially run by three energetic children, the hours move quickly. But Trunfio says that when she and her husband do go out on the town in and around Austin, they like to pop up at new restaurants, find hidden gems out at Wimberly, Lockhart or Gruene, and drive into Hill Country and just get lost — some small pleasures mixed into a big, unexpected life.
“It's kind of a movie,” Trunfio says. “I feel like a cat that's lived nine lives or something. Hopefully I'm not on the ninth one.”
