When you first meet Sunrise Ruffalo…
What strikes you is the unmistakable suspicion that she is a “somebody.” With her tousled blonde mane, her slim gray wool blazer, her pristine Adidas Stan Smiths, and a level, assured voice, she exudes a stealthy glamour that makes her stand out, even in a stylish town crawling with stylish city weekenders like Narrowsburg, NY.
Words by Mimi Vu Photography Michael Mundy Creative Direction John Paul Tran Beauty Moani Lee Hair Michael Thomas Lollo
Sunrise Ruffalo featured on the cover of DVEIGHT The Tastemakers Issue #9
Even if you didn’t know she was married to an Oscar-nominated movie star (that would be Mark Ruffalo), or that she pals around with the likes of Kirsten Dunst and Dakota Johnson, or that she’s a red carpet regular in Valentino and Chloé, you would understand instinctively that she was, at the very least...not exactly a local.
Sunny is standing in her newly minted store, Sunny’s Pop, on Narrowsburg’s Main Street, briskly rearranging her stock of elegant housewares and antique furnishings, chatting to neighbors who come from up and down the street to say hi, and running ideas past her longtime assistant, Noelle. She is prepping for a photo shoot for her website and there is a lengthy to-do list and—”Oh no, my dustpans, where are the dustpans?” She stops to tell me the beautiful, sleek chair I’m admiring is “actually a potty chair,” and breaks into a good-natured laugh.
I’ve never spent time around celebrities, or even their next of kin for that matter. Despite my initial apprehension, Sunny turns out to be a thoroughly charming, funny, intelligent, down-to-earth spirit, with not a shred of pretense in her being. She has no hesitation in talking about her itinerant childhood living on food stamps. Half of her life was spent with her hippie father, who took her on the road in a VW bus, following the Rolling Stones from city to city (“My dad dressed like Mick Jagger up until the day he died—with the spandex pants and everything”).
Sunrise Ruffalo in Callicoon, New York. Portrait by Michael Mundy
The other half was spent in France with a more “normal” aunt who had a steady job and owned a children’s clothing shop, where Sunny would spend her days lovingly wrapping people’s purchases. She dropped out of high school at age 14 and left her home city of New Orleans to model, making her way to Paris, Italy, and Japan before landing in Los Angeles, where she ultimately met her husband. With no proper education or training, she tells me, she has always thrived on pure instinct.
It was instinct that eventually brought her to live in the Catskills. Many people who come to roost upstate are fleeing something, even if it’s just the high rents and noise and chaos of city living. But for Sunny and her family, the flight turned out to be much more dramatic.
Back in 2007, Sunny was the co-owner of a jewelry boutique, Kaviar and Kind, in L.A.—a much buzzed-about shop that showcased the new designers, such as Jennifer Meyer, Solange Azagury-Partridge, and Lorraine Schwartz, then making a name for themselves with playful, ethically leaning jewelry for a clientele of young Hollywood stars. When she and Mark had their third child that year, Sunny made a difficult decision to close the wildly successful shop and focus on her family. Then disaster struck: Mark’s younger brother, Scott Ruffalo, was killed in L.A. “Literally everything happened within months,” she says. “We had another baby, we decided to shut the business down, Scott died.” They soon dropped everything and ran. “Mark fired all of his agents, everybody. Our kids needed something different, we needed something different. We decided to come here. It became a place of refuge and peace and calm.”
Red dress by Uzi, jewelry by Melissa Easton
The move was a perfectly natural one for the family. Sunny and Mark had owned a house upstate since 1999, and had faithfully been spending every summer there with their kids, who could run wild in the surrounding fields and woods. Soon they were full-timers, people who did chores and salted their roads in the winter and hauled their trash to the dump like everyone else. It turned out to be precisely the salve they needed. “Tragedy and drama propel you to either sink or swim,” she says. “And for us, it felt like a very survival move.”
What helped them mend their spirits were their neighbors. Their first winter here, Sunny broke her leg in a riding accident. There was an outpouring of support, not to mention a procession of homemade tuna casseroles, soups, and stews. “It really shows you the grit of your community when you’re sick,” she says. “I have found the most amazing friends here, and I could not have done it without them. The locals really embraced Mark and me and my kids and brought us into the fold.”
Poplin jacket in navy blue, embroidered ivory camisole, both at Sunny’s Pop
After several years of raising their kids in the Catskills, Sunny and Mark decamped to NYC, largely for the kids’ schooling. But they are still regulars upstate, and last summer, with her youngest child approaching 10, Sunny started thinking about retail once again, and how much she’d missed it. When she heard that a local antiques shop in Callicoon was vacating its space, she pounced and got to work. The result, Sunny’s Callicoon Pop, a pop-up selling home décor and antiques that she’d sourced in her travels, was her way of gingerly sticking one toe back into commerce. “I was nervous because I hadn’t been in retail in ten years,” she admits. “I thought, ‘Is it going to embrace me? Are people still going to think what I have to say is relevant?’ ” It turns out her fears were unfounded. The pop-up did so well that she officially transplanted it to this Narrowsburg storefront—a longterm commitment—this past December.
Perhaps it was her uncertain childhood, or the trauma of losing her brother-in-law, or the years spent raising her own clan—but this time around, she has a very different focus than the rarefied bling she specialized in during the Bush years in L.A. “I’m a mother of three, I spend a lot of time in my home, and I love my home,” she says. “[The shop] reflects how closely knit I am to my family, and how much it means to me. It’s much more democratic, having a store that’s home goods. There’s something for everyone in my shop.”
Shirt dress by Elena, fleece pullover in blue by Isamu
Indeed, browsing her selection, I found at least a dozen things that were very much “for me.” The shop is quietly impeccable, with an array of beautiful yet unshowy goods, arrayed nonchalantly on simple and utilitarian shelving. Functionality dominates here, even in the more decorative items. Sunny enthusiastically shows me a “seed pod” clutch purse by Albuquerque-based accessories line Oropopo—it’s a neat little pouch that sort of resembles a fruit husk, made of laser-cut leather and just big enough to hold “lady accoutrements.” It hangs next to a set of military-green metal tool and storage boxes from Parma, Italy, and fold-up travel totes from the NYC label 8.6.4.
Along the opposite wall are an array of ceramics from artisans such as the upstate-based Kelli Cain; measuring spoons and spatulas made of ethically sourced exotic woods from Guatemala; hand-crafted brooms from Thailand; and even gorgeous birch-handled toilet brushes from Iris Hantverk in Sweden, which nest into minimalist concrete bowls nice enough to eat soup out of. “I find things that have the human touch, of some kind of craftsmanship to it,” she explains. “And things of some socially conscious message, too. There’s wonderful artists all over the world, and people are championing them and helping them survive by bringing their work out of those countries.”
For Sunny, connecting small communities of artisans and shoppers is the right way to have a voice in retail in 2018. “Smaller towns are benefitting and supporting the artist,” she says. “They want us to be here, because it brings in food, it brings in people. This was a great tourist community at one time, and it’s coming back.” And she’s clearly thrilled to be doing her part to revive it.
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