Reading · the what lies beneath project

photography by Sarra Fleur Abou-El-Haj. styling, art direction + words by Nicole Fasolino

tank top, skims and bra skims

She arrives five minutes early. Bare faced. White tee. Jeans. Hair loose and unbothered. No entourage, no armor, absolutely nothing performed. Just beautiful Sai, walking into a room full of women she’s barely knows, looking exactly like herself, which, as it turns out, is the whole point.

You may know her from her years on The Real Housewives of New York, or from the 600,000-plus who follow her life and her fashion online. But knowing of Sai and knowing Sai are two very different things.

Within minutes of arriving, she begins, matter-of-factly, pure, vulnerable.

Her eight-year marriage is ending.

She states it not as confession, not as spectacle, simply as fact.

diamond rings

But that doesn’t set the tone for the day, because, unlike anyone I’ve ever known, there’s no register Sai can’t hold. This is a woman already making peace with a curveball. As all the women in the room moved in closer, protecting, it was clear: Sai lives with a bone deep belief that everything is always going to work out. Which is probably why she let us in the same way she lets everyone in on everything, with an open hand. Her life may be in shock, but she already knows it’s only a moment in time. So the conversation moves with her, from raunchy to reverent, from sex to manifestation, from farm stands to heartbreak, from kids to style, to what it truly means for a woman to keep evolving past every version of herself she’s ready to outgrow.

Sai is fluent in all of it. Funny in all of it. Exacting in all of it. You laugh until it hurts and before you compose yourself, she says something that quietly rearranges how you’re thinking about the state of your own life.

She is not a one note woman….Sai is an entire octave.

blazer, bodysuit and sunglasses

Ask her something funny, she will have the room in tears. Ask her something real, she won’t blink before giving it to you straight. She simply tells the unhurried truth, the truth of a woman who is always doing the work. A woman who is always becoming….even better.

Here is the thing I wish everyone who watches her life from afar could understand: Sai is, above all, relentless with her love.

This much is clear when we talk about her soon-to-be ex-husband, as she’s quick to explain what an amazing father he is, quick to tell stories of their best days, clearly respectful of their time united. There’s no bitterness, only the rare, hard-won softness of a woman who is sure of herself. Her ability to treat the end of her marriage with love is exactly what makes her so powerful, so special, so intriguing.

rings, bracelets and bodysuit

When I ask What are you protecting right now? “My peace, and my children” she says. No hesitation. Then she talks about her children, London and Rio, and everything about Sai sharpens. Her ambition, her discipline, her grace, her sheer range. The love for them is what lies beneath. All of it exists to protect that tenderness, not to hide it. To model it, for two children watching closely. What have her kids taught her? “That love doesn’t require you to shrink.” I sit with that, with the layers of what it means as a woman in this world…

Online, people are quick to call her hard. Cold, even. But Sai isn’t hard. Her exterior isn't the absence of a heart. It's the thing standing guard in front of one. It protects her children. It protected her marriage for as long as it could. It's protecting her now, mid-divorce, in front of a camera, in a room full of strangers. What reads as hard from the outside is, up close, just love that's been asked to defend itself many times.

What’s bringing her joy these days?

Of course it is. Because Sai isn’t waiting for life to resume its old shape. She’s already walking toward the next one, laughing the entire way there, looking hotter than ever, pulling everyone in the room along with her, wherever the conversation decides to go next.

rings and necklace

There it is. Not a divorce story. A becoming story, one where the loss is real, but it is only a single thread in a woman who is, before anything else, funny, formidable, working hard, loving fiercely, and endlessly, magnetically interesting to be near.

I left our interview and shoot loving Sai even more than when i walked in, and I walked in already loving her. Whatever's next, I'm here for every bit of it.