Male Models Shouldn't Exist

Gisele. Maracanã, Rio 2016.

9 year old me was curious: who this lady is, and why is she catwalking at the world's biggest sporting event. Of course I was stunned. Only this year did I reminisce about it due to the fashion scene in the city I study in now.

Don't have much interest in or fashion knowledge (mom says I have zero fashion sense, but I disagree), but fashionista peers do, and the SOTA algorithms, doing what they are pioneered for, do keep surfacing the fashion week snippets and the latest in fashiontech (or stagnant tech) on the timeline.

So, peeking into some of the vast runway history has been on my watchlist. I realized Gisele turned her runway walk into a signature so iconic that they gave that legend a runway to cross at the Olympics. The female footprint across history is overwhelmingly strong that all iconic moments that people remember belong to the females.

The green Versace dress Jennifer Lopez wore at the 2000 Grammys is the reason why society can Google-stalk in peace today.

Meanwhile, no male model has gotten a stadium or even an invitation to the stadium. Most (males specifically; girls have different reasons) don't know a single male model, except the Chico guy maybe, who is treated as a benchmark in the facial mogging sphere. The category has been squeezed into being sideline players.

Fashion modelling is one industry (if we discount prostitution) on the planet where the standard pay gap is noticeably inverted: males earning up to 75% less than their female counterparts for doing the same work (the dude is carrying a jacket 3x his size btw).

And that's the market fairly pricing self-expression, allure and charm. And taste too. If you ask me, even their eyes do the talking.

Meanwhile, the male counterparts surely are apt for fitness/clothing commercials, but you could swap 2-3 of them halfway through the show and the designer wouldn't budge.

Probably that's the reason (of course it's much more than just simplifying business and increasing profits) why players like Gucci, Balenciaga, and Burberry closed doors to their stand-alone men's shows and folded the men's looks into the women's.

Male model as a category shouldn't really exist. The stretching history and the current state fail to justify its need but surely give enough reasons to reconsider if it's an inherent part of the industry.

And for the remaining heavy lifting needed for side and supportive roles, pictures for untouched designer magazines, brands aiming to decrease CACs, mannequins, actors, and new entrants sportsmen should be preferred. They have cheekbones too.

To reduce CACs, take lessons from Calvin Klein and American Eagle Outfitters.

New unicorn Novig is killing it too.

A more profitable and enjoyable show would be when creative directors take away the intermission time given to male models, and use it to add more divas to the lineup. The remaining divas, betrayed by the modeling world, can thrive in tech.