Fashion week is a numbers game
Scouted on the street at 18, an underwhelming first year, then the break he needed at Paris Fashion Week. Zikale on why a no is never the end.
Before modelling, Zikale was a photographer who got stopped on the street at 18. His first Paris season started with castings at 6am and ran on one rule: keep showing up. This is his story, in his words.
I was never meant to be in front of the camera. I was a photographer. At 18 I was on my way to shoot a London Fashion Week show when a man stopped me on the street. He took a few Polaroids of me right there, and that man became my first mother agent.
He was only in London for a few days, so he moved fast. He showed my pictures to agencies, I had meetings with a few agents, and before I knew it I'd signed in London with one of the biggest agencies in the world.
The slow year
My first year was slow. I got options from Alexander McQueen, Alexander Wang and Givenchy, and back then I thought an option meant everything. I've since learnt that an option isn't a booking. By the end of that year I'd booked two editorials.
It would have been easy to read that as a sign. Instead, the following year my mother agent got me signed in Paris.
Fresh off the Eurostar
Nothing prepared me for my first Paris season, in June 2015. I walked into the agency, said hello to my new bookers for the first time and got to know the place. Then they handed me my castings and the directions to my accommodation, ready for a week unlike anything I'd experienced.
I was sharing a hotel with another model, Parker van Noord, who was in one of his first seasons too. We got a map out that night and planned the route, because we were starting at 6am. We had about 18 castings that first day. Every one had its own time slot somewhere across Paris, and we had to make every single one, because every one was a chance.
It went on like that for about five days: countless castings, countless faces, countless queues. But the excitement never left. Paris was busy, and I knew this was where I wanted to be. I'd grown up never wanting to be in front of a camera, and suddenly there was a calm in it. I felt at home.
London, then back
After Paris casting week I came home and did the London castings. Loads of them. I didn't book a single show.
Then it was back to Paris for show week, for the fittings with clients who liked me at the castings. There were plenty, but nowhere near as many as the castings. It came down to about 12 fittings. Then my first booking landed: 3.1 Phillip Lim.
They saw something in me before I'd learnt to see it myself. I'd spent the week watching other boys walk with so much confidence and thinking I had a long way to go. But I'd shown up to every casting, and Phillip Lim believed in me. That was the first proof that showing up works.
Backstage
Backstage I had a friend with me, O'Shea Robertson, a model I'd met outside modelling who had already been doing well in the industry for a while. We'd gone to the fitting together, we'd both booked it, and our looks were close together in the line-up. Having someone there who knew shows inside out meant a lot. When another model asked, "Is this your first show?", I said, "No, I've walked loads." I didn't want to look as green as I was.
Then it was time. Spring/Summer 16, June 2015, the heart of Paris Fashion Week. My first show ever, and I was look three, the third model out. That's a big deal in a show. The most people I'd ever walked in front of, that early in the line-up. I was so nervous.
As I came out I spotted Amar'e Stoudemire in the audience, a basketball player I'd followed for years. It took everything I had not to break into the biggest smile. That was the moment it landed: I'd arrived, and I belonged there like everyone else.
The walk lasted about 30 seconds. The prep before it took hours. Then a quick congratulations to the designer, swapped details with some of the other talent, and off to my next fitting.
That season I also booked Lanvin and Hood By Air. Three major shows in my first ever Paris Fashion Week, out of what felt like a hundred castings. The season after, I opened Palm Angels.
Where you're valued
If I'd quit after that first year, with two editorials while signed to one of the biggest agencies in the world, none of this would have happened. Nothing was wrong with me. My look just wasn't what London was looking for at that moment.
You don't sell water to people who live by a stream. You take it somewhere it's needed. Go where you're valued, because that can change everything.
That season, summer 2015, started my modelling career as I know it. It's when I started taking it seriously. I'm forever grateful to the casting directors, agents and designers who saw something in me back then.
What hasn't changed
A lot has changed since: my look, my book and the clients I work with. One thing hasn't, and it's what I want everyone to understand before getting into this industry.
Rejection is part of the job. It doesn't mean you're not good at what you do. It means you weren't right for that moment, and new moments come every day.
More than ten years in, I still get told no for jobs I really want. And that's okay. I keep going, because the no's were never the end of the story. They were the route to the yeses.
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