Sci-fi fans might recognise McCrary from his cameo in The Fifth Element; music mavens, from Madonna’s Bedtime Stories video; but for fashion peeps, this Texan is best known for his work with Jean Paul Gaultier and Thierry Mugler. A ’90s star, McCrary recently returned to the catwalk for the French iconoclast designer Marine Serre. And with some exciting projects in development, we might see more of him soon.
In the meantime, we can read McCrary’s poetry on Instagram, and also in some of the captions in this story. He describes his style as fragmented, rambling, and mysterious. His goal, he says, is to emphasise the connections, rather than the differences, among people. There’s no doubt that McCrary stands apart as a man pursuing his own professional and spiritual path – with style. Here, McCrary discusses his first fashion show, life in the 1990s, and one of his new projects.
Where are you from and how did you start modelling?
I’m from San Antonio, Texas, and I was a professional basketball player. [I’ve been playing since I was] five-years-old. Basketball was always a part of me, and my brothers, my family. For me, a Texas boy growing up in the south, that’s what you did, you went outside and played sports. I was on Magic Johnson and Patrick Ewing’s tour team, we were touring parts of Europe, and I ended up coming to rest in Paris for about a week. Before then I had met a model scout and had taken a few pictures in LA, and didn’t think anything more about that. The crazy story is that when I came to Paris, those pictures that I had taken were being used in The Body Shop’s promotions. The agent that I had met went on ahead and got money behind my back.
I knew nothing about fashion and things of that nature, but I walked around to a few agencies with a completely open mind. [My first stop was] Success; they didn’t even look at me. I felt like a fool standing in the corner. I’m a very big guy, I’m (about) 6’ 7” and I was about 240 pounds with muscle, so I was not model material – whatever that was. I didn’t know what a model was. I’m an artist. For me, a sports person is an artist; what you’re able to do on that court or that field, or however you get it done, it’s art, it’s creativity, it’s an extension of yourself.
I [went around] to a few other agencies and ended going into PH1; they didn’t really look at me. [But] there was a young girl, 22, it was her first day of work, and she took my pictures back to a guy named Paul Hagnauer, and then she came back and she goes, “Hey, come here: I’ll work with you.” I said, “Well, okay, cool.” Then she said, “Why don’t you go over to this casting, it’s for a big designer.”
Who was the casting for?
There were maybe like 200 or 300 people there; women, men in make-up… It was hilarious for me to see that; I’ve never been in that world, I was always a sportsperson. Then I see that everybody was moving out of the way because somebody was running up the middle of all the models, and this person was Jean Paul Gaultier. He stopped and said to me, “Hey, are you the guy with the tattoo on your back?” I said, “Yeah.” He said, “Okay, I’ll see you upstairs.” Eventually I made my way up and approached the table. It was Jean Paul, Tanel, [and a few] other people. So Jean Paul asked me a few questions, and as I got ready to try something on, he said, “Oh, by the way, you’re in my show.”
What was your first show?
It was the tattoo with piercings; that was my first show. I’ve never been nervous in anything that I do, but at the same time I want to do it right. I said, “Jean Paul, what do I do?” He goes, “Just walk.” And this is fashion history right here: I was walking slowly because I had on a skirt type of thing and I couldn’t really extend my legs. As I’m [approaching] the first row of photographers, I hear, “Hey! Get the F out of the way, you’re blocking me.” So I turned around and it was Brandi Quinones. I had to laugh, and I moved over to let her pass by me, and she [told me to] just keep on walking. And that’s how I met my sister Brandi. As I’m walking, I can hear people say, “Who is this guy? Wow, he’s huge, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.” That show was a huge success, and the next day my career blew up.
In 1999, I won model of the year, a very prestigious award [Les trophées de la mode et de la beauté], and I was very proud of that. The next day I gathered my wife and my newborn baby and I went back to LA. I was in an episode of the series Dirt with Courteney Cox for one episode. I stayed there for about 10 years but then I started to miss my European home, so I came back to Paris and I’ve been here ever since. When I came back, so many things had changed within the business. Being a supermodel myself and going through that era in the ’90s, when I came back, all of that was gone.
What was it like working for Jean Paul Gaultier?
[The thing about] Jean Paul, he let you be you. I would walk into the studio, see my rack and say, “Okay, Jean Paul, what do you think about this? How do you want this to be presented?” As a professional, I’m going to do things my way to promote my brand, but at the same time, I need to respect what I’m wearing and how I’m wearing it. I want to make sure that I give them that same respect, give them their 50 per cent. I can never be what somebody else wants me to be, I’m going to be me. You can record it on video, you can capture it on audio; but however you capture it, it’s going to be Vladimir unplugged every single time.
I don’t care what brand I’m working for. The clothes don’t make you, you make the clothes. You can have a man and a woman wearing the same exact look; [it’s] that person’s individuality, that person’s vibe – that person is who makes that look.
You walked some haute couture shows, what was that like?
Haute couture, when I learned what it was all about, it was even more of a bougie type of clientele. You had to not just model the clothing, but just really live the clothing for the client, and let them come and feel it. I love to get the people into the show; they’d never seen anyone like me, and they never will, and I wanted to personalise the show for them. If there was a woman sitting in the front row and I had a flower, I would come up and give her the flower, I would come up and kiss her hand, especially if it was a woman who was not used to something like that. I wanted this person to just have this moment. I wanted to just let them feel as I was feeling, and that always went a long way in my career. I didn’t do the show for me, I didn’t do the show for the designer; [it was] for the people that came to watch the show. I used to always get off on that, and just enjoy that about the shows. Haute couture was really a tip top moment of, I want you to feel the material. I would come walk over to you and give you a close-up, you know, document the sequins, document the cut, document how it was sewn, and just let this person really live it and feel it.
What do you think of the current wave of 1990s nostalgia?
I feel the millennials of today look at our time in fashion and mimic it, respect it, and draw its energy into their work because fashion creativity has really been watered down, and to a large extent lost. And also the business is trying to create stars, giving certain people everything: all the best brands, photographers, creative directors to work with to make sure certain people are the face of everything. Now, it isn’t a model promoting a top brand, there are actors and other known celebrities. Why? Because that era, my era, of the supermodel is gone. You can never create what you do not have organically, who you are already, because it won’t last and it looks faked. My work and the work of those in my time never gets old, never goes away because we were real in how we were, timeless and forever. I am proud to have been a part of such a special time.
Modelling wasn’t so diverse in the ’90s. Did you experience discrimination?
Of course I did. But it was different for me, being a big guy nobody was going to be stupid with me, call me any kind of name, because he knew he would’ve been knocked out. That’s not how I was discriminated against, I was discriminated against monetarily. There were people who – I won’t say talent-wise, because what I do is not a competition with anybody else – but because of their colour, they got more campaigns and were given more money than I got.
I’m Native American myself, Cherokee and Black. Before I had those adjectives equated to myself, I was a man. I’m a Black man, but at the same time, what exactly is Blackness? Now, me being an artist, I’ll tell you how I look at Blackness. I’m a poet as well, so bear with me. Blackness to me is that mystery that you don’t know, it’s the unknown. If you want to put something negative to it, if you want to put something beautiful or positive to it, that’s on that person. We separate ourselves too many times with too many different things; with religion, with colour, with our different countries. I want to bring things together. I’m a man of mystery. I relate to Black people; I relate to people.
Look at America, how it is. America was built on hurting and separating and really just – excuse my language – fucked up shit. You reap what you sow, and all that shit’s coming back. It’s coming back, and it’s sad. What’s sad is those peoples, and I say peoples, it’s not just white people, those peoples all around the world that have subjugated people and built themselves up on the backs of other people; you can never be anything great holding another people down under your boot – that’s not greatness, that’s a weakness, if you ask me. I want to live my life as a productive, open-minded man, and I try to be the best father I can be to my daughters.
My brand is timeless, my work is fashion history and I’m proud of that, not for myself, I’m proud that my daughters could see these things. I like to see what I did before, not to say, “Look what I did”, but to evolve from it, to change with it, to push the envelope.
What’s next for you?
If you ever go back and look at my old work, I’ve always been a guy that had on eyewear, all my life, because I have light-sensitive eyes. I have hazel eyes and working in the fashion business with all these flood lights and flashing lights, it’s really taken a toll on my eyes. [So I decided I needed to] do my own brand. [I started working with] Julien Vansteeger. He’s been educating me about the business and for the last four months I’ve just been day and night, four, five, six in the morning, [working] with this guy and doing my renderings on my different frames. It’s going to be something really, really amazing. I think what helps me along is the fact that I know about the marketing, I know about doing campaigns. I know about that aspect of selling because I was always selling someone else’s brand – now I’m going to apply those skills to my own. Now it is my time to create my eyewear brand. YellowBone Eyewear, a spiritual brand, coming soon...
[The thing about] Jean Paul, he let you be you. I would walk into the studio, see my rack and say, “Okay, Jean Paul, what do you think about this? How do you want this to be presented?” As a professional, I’m going to do things my way to promote my brand, but at the same time, I need to respect what I’m wearing and how I’m wearing it. I want to make sure that I give them that same respect, give them their 50 per cent. I can never be what somebody else wants me to be, I’m going to be me. You can record it on video, you can capture it on audio; but however you capture it, it’s going to be Vladimir unplugged every single time.
I don’t care what brand I’m working for. The clothes don’t make you, you make the clothes. You can have a man and a woman wearing the same exact look; [it’s] that person’s individuality, that person’s vibe – that person is who makes that look.
You walked some haute couture shows, what was that like?
Haute couture, when I learned what it was all about, it was even more of a bougie type of clientele. You had to not just model the clothing, but just really live the clothing for the client, and let them come and feel it. I love to get the people into the show; they’d never seen anyone like me, and they never will, and I wanted to personalise the show for them. If there was a woman sitting in the front row and I had a flower, I would come up and give her the flower, I would come up and kiss her hand, especially if it was a woman who was not used to something like that. I wanted this person to just have this moment. I wanted to just let them feel as I was feeling, and that always went a long way in my career. I didn’t do the show for me, I didn’t do the show for the designer; [it was] for the people that came to watch the show. I used to always get off on that, and just enjoy that about the shows. Haute couture was really a tip top moment of, I want you to feel the material. I would come walk over to you and give you a close-up, you know, document the sequins, document the cut, document how it was sewn, and just let this person really live it and feel it.
What do you think of the current wave of 1990s nostalgia?
I feel the millennials of today look at our time in fashion and mimic it, respect it, and draw its energy into their work because fashion creativity has really been watered down, and to a large extent lost. And also the business is trying to create stars, giving certain people everything: all the best brands, photographers, creative directors to work with to make sure certain people are the face of everything. Now, it isn’t a model promoting a top brand, there are actors and other known celebrities. Why? Because that era, my era, of the supermodel is gone. You can never create what you do not have organically, who you are already, because it won’t last and it looks faked. My work and the work of those in my time never gets old, never goes away because we were real in how we were, timeless and forever. I am proud to have been a part of such a special time.
Modelling wasn’t so diverse in the ’90s. Did you experience discrimination?
Of course I did. But it was different for me, being a big guy nobody was going to be stupid with me, call me any kind of name, because he knew he would’ve been knocked out. That’s not how I was discriminated against, I was discriminated against monetarily. There were people who – I won’t say talent-wise, because what I do is not a competition with anybody else – but because of their colour, they got more campaigns and were given more money than I got.
I’m Native American myself, Cherokee and Black. Before I had those adjectives equated to myself, I was a man. I’m a Black man, but at the same time, what exactly is Blackness? Now, me being an artist, I’ll tell you how I look at Blackness. I’m a poet as well, so bear with me. Blackness to me is that mystery that you don’t know, it’s the unknown. If you want to put something negative to it, if you want to put something beautiful or positive to it, that’s on that person. We separate ourselves too many times with too many different things; with religion, with colour, with our different countries. I want to bring things together. I’m a man of mystery. I relate to Black people; I relate to people.
Look at America, how it is. America was built on hurting and separating and really just – excuse my language – fucked up shit. You reap what you sow, and all that shit’s coming back. It’s coming back, and it’s sad. What’s sad is those peoples, and I say peoples, it’s not just white people, those peoples all around the world that have subjugated people and built themselves up on the backs of other people; you can never be anything great holding another people down under your boot – that’s not greatness, that’s a weakness, if you ask me. I want to live my life as a productive, open-minded man, and I try to be the best father I can be to my daughters.
My brand is timeless, my work is fashion history and I’m proud of that, not for myself, I’m proud that my daughters could see these things. I like to see what I did before, not to say, “Look what I did”, but to evolve from it, to change with it, to push the envelope.
What’s next for you?
If you ever go back and look at my old work, I’ve always been a guy that had on eyewear, all my life, because I have light-sensitive eyes. I have hazel eyes and working in the fashion business with all these flood lights and flashing lights, it’s really taken a toll on my eyes. [So I decided I needed to] do my own brand. [I started working with] Julien Vansteeger. He’s been educating me about the business and for the last four months I’ve just been day and night, four, five, six in the morning, [working] with this guy and doing my renderings on my different frames. It’s going to be something really, really amazing. I think what helps me along is the fact that I know about the marketing, I know about doing campaigns. I know about that aspect of selling because I was always selling someone else’s brand – now I’m going to apply those skills to my own. Now it is my time to create my eyewear brand. YellowBone Eyewear, a spiritual brand, coming soon...
No comments:
Post a Comment