Anna Cleveland on the Transformative Power of Spirituality and Meditation

This article is taken from the Spring/Summer 2022 issue of AnOther Magazine:

“Because my mother regularly practised meditation, as a child I often fell asleep in rooms of people meditating and singing Sanskrit melodies and mantras. I participated in collective group meditations, too, and received the shaktipat – an energy handed down from generation to generation, from the master to the disciple. These childhood experiences have marked my life forever. Spiritual knowledge belongs to all of us, we just have to be open to it. Books, like those by the philosopher and mystic George Gurdjieff, are like meetings with teachers – the right book always arrives at the right time and it’s like a road sign. The spiritual path can improve our lives, not only on the mountain when we are detached from everything, but also in our big cities at this precise moment in history. In the field of fashion, where I work, I think there can be an awakening if we are connected.”

Anna Cleveland’s introduction to spirituality and meditation came via her mother, Pat, model and muse to Salvador Dalí and Antonio Lopez. Cleveland’s father is the Dutch former model and photographer Paul Van Ravenstein. Raised in Stresa, a resort town on the shores of one of Italy’s largest lakes, Lago Maggiore, she appeared in her first photoshoot aged two and walked the runway at five. For her, fashion is the family business. Even now, as a globally recognised model in her own right, that connection remains. Cleveland has appeared with her mother in shows and campaigns, as well as on the covers of magazines. “Our relationship is not just between a mother and daughter who love each other,” she says, “but between two souls who have found one another.”

This article appears in the Spring/Summer 2022 issue of AnOther Magazine, which is on sale here.

Grooming: Roxy Attard at Future Rep using DAVINES. Photographic assistant: Federico Covarelli