Walking through the long grass fields of her Texas ranch, Nicole Trunfio is 16,000km away from her Wheatbelt origins in Merredin. But to her, it’s not much of a far cry.
As she wanders past the chickens in their coop and clambers over the occasional fence at the Austin property she shares with her husband, musician Gary Clark Jr and their three children, she feels right at home.
“Ranch life,” the supermodel laughs as she scales a gate.
“It feels similar here,” she continues, chatting to STM on the phone as she strolls. “There are strong familiarities between where I live now and where I grew up.”
It is, however, poles apart from the glamorous lifestyle of her earlier career, jetsetting across the globe to walk Gucci runways and front international fashion campaigns.
Trunfio became one of WA’s biggest modelling exports, part of a generation of talent that also included Gemma Ward, Jessica Gomes and Megan Gale. She took part in this shoot at her US home to help celebrate the 21st anniversary of STM, which supported her career from when she was a teenager in 2004.
Trunfio was set on this path when she caught the eagle eye of Vivien’s Perth legend Christine Fox when she was out shopping on Queen Street in the city; Fox also scouted Ward and Gomes, as well as Bridget Malcolm and Courtney Eaton.
Trunfio was just 16 when she won the now-defunct Search For A Supermodel reality show in 2002, which led to her jetting off to New York to seek work with international fashion houses.
They soon found her; she worked on campaigns for Chanel and Dior, walked the Tom Ford catwalk and adorned the covers of many magazines. The transition from regular teenager to entering the upper echelons of the fashion and modelling world was head-spinningly fast.
“It feels like it happened in the blink of an eye,” she reflects.
“I was holding on to the edge of my seat, trying to do the best that I could and not mess anything up.”
But even as her success soared and the early days looked so promising to a “young and naive” Trunfio, there was always something lingering in the back of her mind.
“I was told that modelling had a five-year shelf life, so I was always thinking about what was next,” she says.
To broaden her horizons beyond modelling, she studied sociology, 20th century literature, film and acting at New York’s The New School in the background, with business classes thrown in, too.
“I was always trying to prepare myself because I was told it wasn’t going to last,” she says.
As her star rose, Trunfio parlayed her growing profile into acting jobs, including an appearance in the 2008 Australian film Two Fists, One Heart. She served as a mentor on the US version of Make Me A Supermodel with Tyson Beckford in 2009, and five years later, on The Face Australia, she famously clashed with fellow judge and supermodel Naomi Campbell (video clips of their disagreements continue to do the rounds on social media today).
She met and fell in love with Texan blues musician Clark Jr and their first child, Zion, was born in 2015; the couple married in a lavish Palm Spring ceremony the following year. Their daughter, Gia, was born two years later.
But it was during her third pregnancy with daughter Ella, born in 2020, that Trunfio’s entrepreneurial instincts started firing. She realised there was a gap in the market for comfortable and practical, yet stylish, maternity wear. What began as a solitary survival project turned into the spark that birthed Bumpsuit in 2020 — a brand that has since grown into a multi-million-dollar success beloved by a community of women across the world. Those business classes really did pay dividends.
“I was just tired of feeling like I either had to wear naff maternity clothes or wear the clothes that looked like I was a sausage shoved into a casing, and I just didn’t feel comfortable,” Trunfio says.
“At the time, I was raising two kids, my husband was always away, and I was breastfeeding through the night. I’d work in my office all day, run to school pick-up, and just try to feel put-together — but I had no sleep, no time, nothing.
“So I made something purely for myself: a stretchy, comfortable base layer I could face-plant into at night, sleep in, then wake up, style and walk out the door feeling chic and human again.”
“It wasn’t even ‘Bumpsuit’ yet — it was just survival. And then someone said, ‘why are you hiding this from the world? Women need that’. And they were right. I felt this immense calling to create the brand so other women could access what had helped me so much. We always joke that a Bumpsuit a day keeps the pregnancy woes away, and honestly, it did.”
Trunfio has never shied away from pushing boundaries or embracing motherhood.
In 2015, she made headlines around the world when she featured on the cover of Elle Australia, breastfeeding her son. It became a viral cultural moment and solidified her place beyond being a model, as an advocate for normalising motherhood in the public eye.
“I have always been really purpose-driven,” Trunfio says.
“When I had a jewellery line, I created a bracelet that was built to empower women, and I think my whole motive was really empowering women and amplifying the voices of women.”
But what does life look like for Nicole Trunfio today, decades on from her meteoric rise to fame and fortune?
She cherishes life’s small moments with her family, living on the ranch she describes as a “safe haven under the stars and the Texas sun”.
“I grew up on a farm, and I love getting my hands dirty. Mowing the lawn, planting trees — I even built my kids’ playscape,” she laughs.
Motherhood is where she finds the most joy.
“I actually love hanging out with my kids,” she says. “They’re interesting and intelligent and fun to be around.”
Trunfio beams while talking about life in Texas, whether it’s the family’s one-hour commute into the city, the mundanity of taking her son to basketball practice or surrounding herself with “as many Australians as possible”.
“I really love having Australians around me. I bring Australian coffee into the office every morning,” she says.
The love Trunfio has for her motherland will soon extend to Bumpsuit, too, with a top-secret homegrown collaboration coming in 2026.
“We’ll be coming back (for the collaboration launch), but I can’t tell you who it is,” she says, teasing the mystery.
With all the success she’s achieved and the accomplishments to her name, it would be easy to imagine Trunfio’s head in the clouds — yet nothing could be further from the truth.
In fact, the moment Trunfio saw her archive of STM covers laid out before her — spanning editions from 2004, 2010, 2011 (twice), 2018, 2019 and 2021 — the floodgates opened.
“STM was really the first cover I ever shot, even before my first cover of Vogue,” she says, emotion in her voice.
“Over the years I have seen my style change and work progress. Every STM shoot was such a great memory and always had such an epic moment attached, whether that was flying into the location by helicopter or shooting in fast cars. I always felt like the creative team that I was surrounded by was an extended family.”
And while the industry could be cutthroat at times, Trunfio says the real gift was the sisterhood she formed with other Perth exports.
“I’m really grateful for the career that I’ve had and for staying in touch with friends,” she says.
“Right before you called, I was on the phone with Jess Hart — she’s coming to stay with me this weekend. All these models I built incredible relationships with . . . it’s so nice to still have that. We’ve all evolved so much, our lives have changed, we’ve grown — but it’s cool. All the girls that have come out of Perth — Jess Gomes, Gemma Ward, Amy Finlayson — it’s so nice to see how everyone’s evolved. It was a roller-coaster. We had each other’s backs, that’s for sure.”
So, despite being a busy woman with a multi-million-dollar company and a family to care for, when the opportunity came to return to the publication that gave her the first cover of her career, she jumped at it.
“I love bringing it back home,” she says.
“STM has been such a big part of my career — documenting every part of my journey. It’s nice to reconnect with my foundation.”
It’s a full-circle moment for the supermodel-businesswoman-mum extraordinaire.
“I’m at a stage in my life where I’m feeling really content and happy and grateful — completely at peace,” she says.
“I’m proud of my journey. I don’t have any regrets.”