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Tyson Beckford for Greg Lauren F/W 16 presentation

He was impossible to miss—standing on a pedestal, spotlit from above, his arms akimbo as he looked off into the distance, his cape swaying gently off his back. There were two fighters preparing for a boxing match in the ring just a few feet away, but much of the attention at Greg Lauren’s men’s Fall/Winter 2016 presentation on Wednesday was on Tyson Beckford, the supermodel-turned-superhero at the heart of the designer’s latest collection. “The first drawing that I had done for this collection was a more conceptual piece, and it was this idea of the hero, because all of my collections on some level explore the idea of heroes and heroic imagery,” says Lauren. “From the very first moment, I was thinking of a destroyed hoodie with a cape instead of hood, and when I drew it, I literally drew it with Tyson in mind.”

Lauren, who has been friends with Beckford since the latter was launched to stardom thanks to his work for Ralph Lauren (uncle to the younger designer), says that he could not envision anyone else embodying that central role. “Tyson is possibly the only truly iconic male model of the last twenty-five years. But more than that, now that he’s a little bit older, he’s got a little bit of history and a little bit of a story to tell.” That distinctiveness is exactly what Lauren looks for in his models, with the help of casting director Zan Ludlum. “The most important thing that models have to have when they come into my casting sessions is a sense of self,” Lauren explains. “I don’t mean confidence, but I like guys who are bringing their individuality into the room. I think a lot of models today have almost been trained to become invisible so that the clothing ends up speaking louder than the individual, but for me, the clothing comes to life when the model brings a little bit of himself to it and it blends together.”

Lauren recounts that they looked at several other models first, but none of them were quite right. “A couple of guys came in, and they might have been physically right—maybe they had the right size and stature—but something was missing,” he recalls. “Then when I came in on the last day, my casting team had huge smiles on their faces and they said, ‘You’re not going to believe it, but Tyson’s coming and Tyson wants to do it.’ That was unbelievable. It was the sketch come to life.”

Lauren’s designs have always been inspired by what he calls the “classic male archetypes,” and several of those, from artists and fighters to soldiers and, yes, heroes, were on display at the presentation, which had a vivid set design meant to evoke a “dark secret club down a back alley.” Lauren says that the format also required, intentionally, more input from the models than the traditional runway show, in keeping with his values. “I spoke to each and every model and told them what was going on in the world where they were standing,” he says. “It was a lot more like directing a film than anything else. They really had to embody a character.”

And, for Lauren, Beckford’s presence helped to bring the collection full circle in more ways than one. “I’ve known Tyson for a long time, because I was around when he was discovered by someone else in my family,” he says, “so I also felt that there was a history there and something very poetic about him now being part of my presentation.”

Designer Greg Lauren | Casting Director Zan Ludlum | Producer Nick Ponton | All images Betty Sze for models.com

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