Clockwise from above: Nate Gill, Salieu Jalloh, Brahim Zaibat, David Agbodji and Brad Allen photographed by Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott; Sean O’Pry on the cover of Vogue Paris Hommes International and David Gandy for a Dolce & Gabbana fragrance campaign.
THE MALE GAZE Make way for the rise of the male supermodel. BY WILLIAM KISSEL
When Baltimore native Noah Mills walks down a runway for Versace and Canadian-born Simon Nessman strikes a pose for blue chip brands like Giorgio Armani and Michael Kors, neither of today’s male modeling titans seems aware of how their effortless swagger and winning smiles are literally changing the face of the fashion industry. The business of being a supermodel, an occupation once reserved for the world’s most seductive and highest-paid women, has now become a respectable career for men as well. Eschewing the ubiquitous celebrity of pro athlete, Details magazine even put 10 of the world’s top male models on its February cover. Although Sean O’Pry’s $1.5 million paycheck last year for hawking products for Dolce & Gabbana and Ralph Lauren is still a far cry from the $42 million supermodel Gisele Bündchen received in 2013 (female models still earn 148 percent more than their male counterparts, according to Payscale.com), the price of gazing at those flawless faces on the runways and ogling those chiseled bodies in the pages of magazines has been steadily rising for years. Russian-born Arthur Kulkov took home a $905,000 paycheck last year and ranked only at number four on Forbes’ list of highest paid male models, while at the top of their game in the mid-1990s, models like Mark Vanderloo, once named “Male Model of the Year” at the VH1
56 BAL HARBOUR
Fashion and Music Awards, and Marcus Schenkenberg—you may know him as the face and body of Calvin Klein underwear— only garnered about a third of that. What’s fueling the demand for higher-profile, higher-paid male models? Industry experts say the increase in exposure and salaries is fueled by the boom in spending on men’s luxury goods, which have increased 55 percent since 2009, shortly after the economic crises began, compared with a paltry 37 percent for those of women. “All men’s categories are outpacing women’s. This is a mega-trend” in the world of fashion, Claudia D’Arpizio, a luxury goods consultant with Bain & Company, recently explained in The Wall Street Journal. Once considered a prop on the arm of more recognizable female faces in advertising campaigns, male models are now becoming singular cash cows for top brands like Louis Vuitton, Gucci and Prada, all of whom have introduced stores geared exclusively to the whims of men. And while it’s doubtful top models like Clément Chabernaud, Tobias Sorensen and David Gandy will ever achieve the worldwide name recognition of a Kate Moss or a Naomi Campbell, as more and more mass market brands like H&M and Abercrombie & Fitch blanket billboards across the country with their profiles, chances are you already know their faces.