It's almost a relief that the screaming isn't about them. At men's fashion weeks, hordes of fans crowding against security fences target pop or TikTok or Hollywood stars while they, the real stars of the show, calmly arrive through a back door in sneakers. , headphones and, if they are no longer teenagers, with a look as if they had not been partying the night before. The men's top looks more like a soldier, or an athlete, than a Bella Hadid taking selfies in a sea of flashes. They work hard and charge accordingly. If they take the reins well, they find themselves with a solid career. And they don't even need social networks. This is the case of our cover man, Clément Chabernaud (Paris, 34 years old), who walked for the first time in 2005 for Hedi Slimane's Dior Homme: the designer who, with a stroke of the pen, inaugurated the era of fragile adolescent beauty.
But Chabernaud always had something unclassifiable. With his slender elegance, his lanky charm and his noble look, he hailed the paradigm shift from the Jil Sander, Prada or Balmain campaigns. Brands that paved the way for a masculinity that he no longer only understood as hunks or hunks. He shrugs: “I started with an agency that allowed me little by little access to castings”, he explains when we ask him about his beginnings. “That's how I got my first jobs, by chance. I saw the ads on the street and I said why not. Maybe there was a market to exploit.”
When she starred in the fashion editorial of the first issue of ICON, in 2013, her face was already essential. The witnesses of that session commented on her ability to rehearse a thousand poses in front of the camera, to reinvent herself naturally and construct a photographic sequence without monotony: nothing could be further from the blue steel with which Zoolander (2001) immortalized many of the worst vices of the industry of the most beautiful beings on the planet. His chameleonic appearance was, from the beginning, inimitable. In 2014, the fashion critic of The New York Times Matthew Schneier tweeted from Milan: “Many models on the catwalk have adopted Clément Chabernaud's side look,” he noted. “Guys, it's a privilege, not a right.”
No matter how much Chabernaud describes his trajectory from normality, this capacity for permanence is not common. We asked Gert Jonkers, ideologue and founder of Fantastic Man, the magazine that in this same period has transformed the way we look at man. “How great Clément is!” He replies when we tell him that it is going to be our March cover, the first in our history dedicated to a model. “I can't think of anyone else with such a long career, almost twenty years. And bravo for him. He still looks fantastic. And the best thing is that he doesn't behave anywhere near like a celebrity, which makes him very empathetic and approachable. Who needs drama nowadays?”
Chabernaud, of course, not. The Frenchman was an athlete unfaithful to fashion when the first agents noticed him. “I think my only references were female models, like Kate Moss,” he says. Although there have been stars in the old way. From the pioneer Cameron, the British-Iranian who burst into the generation that turned fashion into a spectacle – along with Gaultier, Madonna and Elton John – to the great generation of Spanish tops, with Andrés Velencoso and Jon Kortajarena at the helm. Men who have transcended fashion, either by making the leap to cinema and/or with an overwhelming presence on social networks and in popular culture. But they are not the norm. Once again Jonkers sheds light on the matter: “It has always been very different, especially with respect to people's obsession with famous models. Personally, the world of male models seems to me a little more friendly and a little more human than the madness and frenzy in which women live. kate moss from this world. “I wouldn’t wish that kind of celebrity on my worst enemy!”
Stratospheric fame, maybe not. But there have been sparks. When Mark Vanderloo sat naked behind the wheel of a Peugeot 106 in 1994, he made the male body an object of desire in advertising. It was such a foundational moment that she took the lead from the supermodels: shortly after Claudia Schiffer did the same by stripping naked to drive her Citroën. That was in 1998, just before the cult of youth and a certain naturalness changed the rules. Andrés Velencoso signed with Chanel in the nineties and starred in his first cover in Arena Homme +, which became the bible of the sector, in 2005. Will Chalker would put on a classic suit for Zegna as he would take it off to be the image of Paco Rabanne's Black XS. Jon Kortajarena embodied the carnal and unpretentious elegance of Tom Ford and David Gandy did the same with a tiny white slip, in full sun, for Dolce&Gabbana.
There is no manual to be a model. Nor does he cursus honorum of the giants of the sector has followed the same channels. There are advertising supermodels, like Gandy or Tyson Beckford, who have barely set foot on the catwalk, in a phenomenon that is reminiscent of the highest-paid models in the industry, who are not those who dedicate themselves to fashion shows, but to cosmetics. Others, like Chabernaud, have always remained faithful to the daily work of fashion. “It has been a question of continuity,” he explains. Your profile on Models.com, the sector's database that, after several years in its top 50, has moved to the Icons category, the even more restrictive section reserved for long-distance runners, includes a resume with 520 points, double that of Velencoso, 200 more than Kortajarena and four times as much as Chalker or Vanderloo. In two decades, and with hardly any social networks, Chabernaud has not stopped working.
“I think he's a role model for today's top stars, like Leon Dame or Jonas Glöer, who are also nice… and star in our next cover,” Jonkers laughs. When we ask our star for his advice for the new generations, he returns to his practical spirit. “I would tell them, especially at the beginning, to try to accumulate many jobs so as not to limit themselves to being the model of the moment.” Said by him it seems simple. But, as always in almost everything in life, just the opposite happens.
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