Apple Martin talks about what the college experience is like in 2025

Apple Martin is 20 years old, 21 in May. I have to admit something: I think Apple might be really cool. She has some kind of “it factor” and I can totally imagine designers, directors and casting agents all lining up to work with her. Apple is currently a junior at Vanderbilt, but she makes her way to NYC or Paris a few times a year, where she’ll attend a fashion show or have some kind of internship. That’s what she did last summer – she interned at Interview Magazine in NYC. This is part of the reason why she agreed to an Interview profile, which is how I came to the conclusion that she’s really cool. Some highlights from her Interview piece:

The vibes of Vanderbilt: “Vibes are great, honestly. It’s so much easier for me to get out of bed and walk to class when it’s pretty outside. Um, yeah. It’s really busy because after spring break I have tech week and I have to get everyone’s costumes ready for the show….I’m in the lovely Vanderbilt Original Cast, the esteemed cabaret theater group. This semester’s show is a musical parody of Love Island called Love on an Island. It’s so fun. The songs are phenomenal.

Whether she’s a drama major: “No. [Laughs] I’m a law, history, and society major, but I wish I would’ve taken—maybe I’ll take a theater course before I leave. It’s a fun balance between my very different extracurriculars and my major.

Whether she wants to be an actress: “I would love to do theater because I adore it so much. I’ve obviously never done film before, but I’ve been trying to get involved in student films. I was born a theater kid.

The college experience in 2025: “It’s a little tense, but also people want to have fun. People, including myself, are very scared, but that also means that everyone’s coming together and talking about what’s going on. But the vibe when I’m with my friends is so fun—that’s the most important thing to me right now, just hanging out with them. I went bowling. That was a great time. Just doing fun activities that take you out of the world. Honestly, seeing college in the movies, I thought there would be kegs everywhere but there are not. You see a lone keg once in a blue moon, but I wouldn’t say that people are more sophisticated about it—I think they’re just really heavy and people don’t want to do it.

Her style: “I think it depends. I feel like my style hasn’t been fully actualized yet, but I’m slowly getting more into it. Day to day, I’m wearing Doc Martens—my red Oxfords, jeans, a white t-shirt, and a jacket— but then I have my fun and fabulous stuff. Honestly, the Interview shoot made me be like, oh my god, I need to start having more fun and not be scared.

She loves to grab things from her mom’s closet: “Not all of it, but I’ll sneak into her closet and steal little things. My absolute favorite stuff is her old Calvin Klein from the ’90s. I have a lot of it and it’s the best thing in the world. Going into her archive closet is just heaven on earth….She lets me steal stuff because she’s like, “I saved it all so that you could steal it.” And then she’s always like, “You have to be so careful.”

Doing the debutante ball thing: “It’s interesting because I grew up with that uneven balance of getting out of the airport with my mom and being bombarded with cameras, and then just being a normal kid. I remember I read Discipline and Punish [by Michel Foucault], which is a great book, but talking about the surveillance state—I feel like I’ve grown up with that, which is really scary and makes me very anxious about making mistakes. So I was really discouraged from doing anything in the public eye. Also, I was like, “I don’t think we need another celebrity child in the world.” I just try to do what feels right and block out anything regarding me in the news to the best of my ability. And I’m getting a lot better at being like, “F–k it.” I’m not going to be scared. I just want to do what seems fun and figure my life out.

What it means to be a Taurus: “Oh my god, I was actually with one of my friends last night who’s also a Taurus, and then we FaceTimed my other friend who’s a Taurus and did tarot card readings. Everybody, whenever they hear Taurus, they’re like, “food and stubborn.” I will not deny that I love food and I can also be stubborn, but I feel like Tauruses are very—they want to be connected to people. They want to be connected to the earth. They love spirituality. They love their alone time and unwinding and taking care of themselves. A dream for me is a bubble bath and candles and books—just relaxing alone, but also having really deep connections with people.

What will the rest of 2025 be giving? “Chaos would be my first instinct. I’m honestly not very positive about it right now, but in an ideal world, I would hope that we get a fun disco summer. I hope that we can just dance through the pain.

[From Interview]

She also talks about how she doesn’t really know what she wants to do after college, and it feels like she has so many avenues, so many paths to live completely different lives. Will she go to law school, or will she move to NYC and start working on Broadway? Will she go into fashion? Print media? Who knows! And yes, every Taurus I’ve ever known is absolutely “food and stubborn.” That’s putting it mildly. It sounds like she loves all of her mom’s ‘90s fashion too – God, I hope Apple ushers in a ‘90s fashion comeback.

Photos courtesy of Backgrid, Cover Images.