Memphy Is Operating at Her Own Frequency

On a heat-drenched July afternoon, Memphy answers the phone from somewhere in East London, where the air outside feels more like Harlem in July than the gray drizzle typically associated with the British capital. “It’s hot as hell,” she laughs. “It’s giving.”

So is she.

At just twenty-four, Memphy already occupies an uncommon number of lanes—DJ, nightlife and festival mainstay, outspoken trans muse-model, producer—and she navigates them with the sort of fluidity that makes genre, artistic disciplines, geography, and even identity feel more like invitations than boundaries. Her schedule is an endless rotation of castings, call times, international gigs, studio sessions, and brief intermissions in whatever city feels most alive that month. Still, when she speaks, there’s a casual self-possession, a quiet and complete ownership of who she is and what she wants. “I’ve come to the point in my career where I don’t have to do every single thing anymore,” she says plainly. “I’ve been trying to make sure I don’t have too much on my plate.”

That balance seems to define her. As someone who came of age between Harlem sidewalks and downtown basements, Memphy’s outlook is indubitably shaped by New York. She speaks in a language that toggles easily between deadpan humor and hard-earned clarity, tinged with deep introspection. In one breath, she’s recounting her early clubbing days at thirteen with a fake ID and a friend named Ruby, slipping into a party called Blackout: “It was super, super straight and illegal…I always felt something was missing.” The next, she’s zooming out to reflect on how the dance floor keeps her grounded—“Are you kidding me? That’s my therapy. No shade!”

Memphy’s foundation is deeply personal, almost mythically New York. Her mother, a fashion agent who represented stylists and photographers through the late nineties and noughties, was also a DJ, while her father made pop-synth music in the eighties. There’s a vivid image she conjures, almost offhandedly, of her mother spinning records at a Harlem café with baby Memphy on her hip, and her godfather—a nightlife figure in his own right—noticing them for the first time. I note she was essentially born for this, and she cracks a grin. “As fuck!” she rips, laughing but also absolutely not joking.

Such immersion—being born into the culture rather than chasing after it—gifted Memphy with an unteachable fluency. From an early age, she understood not just how to move through those circles but how to metabolize them. “I was always around fashion and music,” she explains. “It was just the air I breathed.” When she started going out in earnest, around sixteen or seventeen (fake ID in tow), she gravitated toward raves and underground scenes defined more by sincerity than spectacle. “That’s when it really clicked for me,” she says. “The music, the people—it made sense.”

Even with an enviable slate of modeling bookings—she has appeared in campaigns for Savage x Fenty (with Rihanna’s personal blessing) and walked twice for Mugler under Casey Cadwallader—she is refreshingly candid about the industry’s limitations. “They always try to push this narrative of inclusivity,” she says, “but it’s not really that.” She notes that during the pandemic, there seemed to be more genuine visibility for trans girls of color, but much of that momentum, she says, has slowed or shifted to favor whiteness again. “Now, it’s all white trans girls dominating the space,” she states frankly. “Even in the nineties and early noughties, there was more diversity.”

Music, by contrast, feels freer. Her DJ sets are genre-fluid, experimental, and emotionally honest. “I pull from a lot of genres,” she proclaims. “I try to make a broad spectrum of all different sounds.” Mixing techno, hip-hop, and pop, her selections often lean into trancey atmospheres with whatever eclectic slate of samples she’s feeling that week. She’s in the early stages of producing her own music, but she isn’t rushing it. “I don’t want to put stuff out just to do it,” she says. “I want to make sure it’s fab, obviously.” Still, she admits that carving out uninterrupted time to be in the studio is difficult when gigs and travel consume so much of her life—and when her rare downtime is sacred. “When I’m chilling, I just want to be chilling, you know?”

When she’s not chilling, however, she’s undeniably living it up. A few weeks ago in Ibiza, Memphy mixed a dizzying back-to-back set with Sophia Ziskin aboard a speedboat for Jaded London’s latest swimwear release. Two weeks later, she was in San Francisco spinning on the same lineup as Doechii, Marina, John Summit, Role Model, Thundercat, Still Woozy, and the like. Taking into consideration her existing musical clientele—HBO, Instagram, Marc Jacobs, Gentle Monster, Margiela, Diesel, i-D, and even Cero Magazine’s release party last fall—and the artists she’s shared the stage with—Madonna, Beyonce, Honey Dijon, Juliana Huxtable, Eartheater, Yaeji—one can only imagine what she’s pushing towards next.

Even as she works toward bigger platforms—she cites VTSS as a career touchpoint for both visibility and scale—Memphy keeps her circle close and her influences intimate. “Honestly, all my friends are the most inspiring people to me,” she says. “Everyone’s making something—music, visuals, moments—and being around that pushes me.” Her emphasis on friendship and community is more than rhetorical. She recently played at Stamina, a party in London thrown by one of her best friends, Mina Galan, and the way she talks about it—an easy “period” dropped after the gig comes up—says everything about what matters most to her: connection, chemistry, respect.

That’s not to say she doesn’t seek escape. The dance floor, for her, remains holy. “That’s my therapy,” she says, with a mix of reverence and exhaustion. But she’s also wary of how commodified the space can become. “Especially in New York, sometimes it feels like people aren’t really there for the music—they’re just sweaty, high-ass gays trying to fuck,” she warns, blunt but not bitter. “So a lot of times I’m in the green room, waiting for the moment I can come out, get my little edge off, and then go back. Because I’m scared!” she laughs. London’s scene, by contrast, feels more musically engaged. “People actually dance here,” she says. “They’re here for the music.” Paris, she offers, is “fun, but everyone’s just trying to look cut,” while New York has become “cute but chaotic.” Her favorite spaces are the ones that feel like true portals—Fold, Unfold, and the Color Factory in London among them.

In fashion, she still has dreams to chase, but the list is selective. She names Maximilian Davis at Ferragamo as someone she’d love to collaborate with: “He’s fab. Definitely top of the list.” And in the DJ world, she’s quick to shout out people like Sausha and Mina Galan as artists to watch—friends who are not just in the mix but shifting it. She has no illusions about how hard the work can be. “Any day I have off, I’m sleeping all day,” she says. It’s a necessary counterweight to the relentless movement that defines her life. She’s learned to protect her time, her energy, her joy. And yet there’s still the unmistakable thrum of ambition. “I want to play bigger parties, get those rates up,” she says. “But mostly I just want to keep doing what I love, all over the world.”

When asked if she sees herself settling anywhere beyond New York, she hesitates, then offers London as a possibility. “It’s got that same energy,” she says, “just a little more…quiet glamour.”

Looking toward the future, Memphy offers no grand declarations. There are no five-year plans, no prescriptive narratives about what it means to be a trans model, a woman of color, an artist, a New Yorker. There is just a refusal to be rushed, and a commitment to making it fab.

That’s more than enough.