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Biography |
Can you imagine signing up for a six-month contract that
pays you enough to buy a house but involves only five days'
"work" lounging around in front of a camera, followed by
five months 26 days of ... lounging around. That's exactly
how 24-year-old Swede Robert Konjic has spent his time when
he was picked as the new "face" of Gucci menswear.
Robert is incredibly lucky, but then he is also absolutely
beautiful - not hunky, or rugged, or conventionally sexy -
but beautiful with his to-die-for cheekbones, mesmerising
eyes and perfect skin. He has been employed under what is
known in the trade as an exclusive, which means he can't
work for another designer until the campaign featuring him
is well established, and he is known as the Gucci boy, and
nothing else.
For any model, getting an exclusive is the big break. It
could mean fame, it certainly means fortune and sometimes it
means celebrity. Beefcake male model Marcus Schenkenberg
found fame through Versace with such a deal. Robert Konjic
(pronounced Konich), however, is just happy to be the Gucci
boy. It means he doesn't have to work too hard at modelling.
He was flown to Milan two weeks ago to do the Gucci show
but, ironically, was cancelled at the last minute. Tom Ford
wanted "football hooligan" types and Robert was thought "too
beautiful", which really makes him laugh. "Two years ago I
was fitting engines at a Volvo factory; a year before that I
was a cocktail waiter," he says.
He still can't believe he got paid "a lot of money" to take
his clothes off and pose with a beautiful model for the
Gucci perfume campaign (he also models sheer underwear and
the mainline collection). The moment when photographer Mario
Testino asked them to be intimate proved the hardest. "I was
thinking, `Cow, cow, chicken, chicken', anything to put my
mind off what was happening. Eventually I had to ask for
time out, it was very embarrassing," he reveals. |
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