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Sask-born Taylor Fuchs hits big in NY fashion, named Forbes model of year |
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Written by Dean Bennett, THE CANADIAN PRESS
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Friday, 16 May 2008 |
In the space of 18 months, Saskatchewan's Taylor Fuchs has gone from being a broke, drifting university student to the spear carrier of metrosexual fashion on the runways of Paris, Milan and New York. THE CANADIAN PRESS/ho-Credit Mode Models International
EDMONTON - In the space of 18 months, Saskatchewan's Taylor Fuchs has gone from being a broke, drifting university student to the spear carrier of metrosexual fashion on the runways of Paris, Milan and New York.
But when he goes home to White City, just outside Regina, to drink at The Pump, his friends razz him all over again.
"I've heard all the 'Zoolander' quotes thousands of times. I know that movie off by heart," the 21-year-old says with a laugh in an interview from New York, referring to the Ben Stiller sendup film on male modelling.
"My buddies work on the rigs, do construction, stuff like that. So to have a model in the mix, it's interesting for sure."
The six-foot-two Fuchs (pronounced FYOOKS) has modelled for designers like Marc Jacobs and Dolce & Gabbana in world fashion capitals along with Berlin, Hamburg and Japan. Next week, he's off to Copenhagen.
His trademarks are pouty lips, blue eyes, lithe frame and a flop-mop of brown hair that has been pulled, teased, greased and sculpted from here to Kyoto.
Recently, his fame hit the stratosphere when he was named the industry's top male model by Forbes magazine.
In '07, he was picked top newcomer by V Magazine. Last month, the food section of New York Magazine published a diary of his eating habits, with a detailed rundown of what he ate each day and where. (Sunday, for example: Had some yogurt and granola for breakfast.)
He's living in Brooklyn and working in Manhattan for Public Image Worldwide. He has taken in Knicks basketball games, Rangers playoff hockey games, a Broadway show, and golfed anywhere he can find 18 holes.
He doesn't answer to a sadistic dietician or buzz-cut fitness instructor or kowtow to a Prada-Devil boss with a brittle, titanic ego. There are no mind-numbing training sessions, strutting with one foot crossing over the other while balancing a textbook on his head.
He's had no training for photo sessions. (A good photographer, he says, brings out what is needed.)
His first real runway work was closing national shows in Milan last year. He was given one piece of advice ("Walk like you don't want to be there, look cool, relaxed, with a little bit of attitude"), then pushed onstage.
"The flashes are going, so you can't really see anybody in the crowd," he recalls. "You just walk and try not to think about tripping. It's nothing complicated."
Life is good.
But for a while the future was unclear for the kid who graduated from Greenall High in nearby Balgonie, Sask., classified as a jock (basketball, volleyball) in the teen org chart of stereotypes.
He was studying natural sciences at the University of Calgary, living on Kraft Dinner and perogies, and transferring into business studies. Nothing, he admits, was grabbing his attention.
While drinking with friends at Cowboys bar two years ago in Calgary, he was approached by a talent scout for local agency Mode Models International - the one that discovered actress Tricia Helfer.
The scout gave him a card and told him to get on a runway or in front of a lens pronto.
"I took their card and laughed it off. I didn't call them for six months, but then I got bored and thought I'd get some extra cash out of it."
Mode Models president Kelly Streit placed him with Public Image Worldwide in January 2007 and, says Fuchs, "within a couple of weeks everything was rolling."
The pay is good, he says, though nothing compared with the millions made by female models. It can get lonely, he says, on extended shoots abroad.
"It's pretty much impossible to have a girlfriend at this point. You need someone who's understanding of your business, and it's hard to find someone like that. There was a stretch for a while where I wasn't in the same spot for longer than four days for a month and a half."
He knows modelling work, and fame, can be fleeting. If the fashion work dries up, he may try acting. Or go back to school. Or get into real estate.
For now, it's one runway at a time.
"If you told me a year ago I'd be doing this I'd laugh at you.
"I expected to do a few catalogues in Calgary and be over with it, but it's been one thing after another and it just keeps getting bigger and bigger."
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