Senior Constentine "Dino" Papanastasiou hopes that after he walks down the catwalk in chaps, a Speedo and an executioner's mask, his good friend Bassil Cahr - the designer who dressed him - will buy him a round of drinks, or at least introduce him to a couple of girls.
"This isn't something you'd normally do - at Tech especially," said Papanastasiou, a double major in business information technology and economics. "This year is more of an upper-scale kind of thing. As Bassil was telling me, more people are coming ... and it's becoming something much more than everyone originally anticipated."
There are six guys out of the 30 models in this year's FMDS fashion show, double the count from last year's show. Fifth-year senior Cahr has been credited with the influx of male participants.
"Some of them were recruited from the gym, and it turns out that everybody just knew everybody," Cahr said. "It just all worked out. And I was like, you know what, you pretty much do have a hot body and decent face - because nobody likes a busted model - so they turned out great. And they're taking it really well considering it's a Speedo and very revealing, but they are proud of their bodies so they get a kick out of it, too."
Cahr didn't always plan on sending models down the catwalk in Speedos and chaps - that is, until he realized that he didn't have enough time and money to create pieces to embody his original theme of luxurious, over-the-top Parisian-Greecian beauty.
"I had an internship that took away some time, and I was low on money so I had to kind of improvise. And my favorite topic, of course, is always sex (so) I was like, well, let's use the men more, so I did a lot of Speedos, and paint all over the bodies, and there's some masks and gloves and plastic involved, and it's really just like spontaneous and fun. ... My theme is all about the human body so it's really nice. It's very sexy."
Hence the chaps, Speedos and accessories. Cahr laughed a little when talking about how he's dressing Papanastasiou.
"He's getting the chaps, the green reaper mask, and he also has a necklace that's going with it that's like a braided, black necklace with a little tassel that resembles the fetish kind of thing, like a whip. Then I'm going to give him the riding crop as well," Cahr said.
Despite the eccentricities of the clothes, the recruits were lured into the show with the prospect of meeting other single girls, which Papanastasiou refers to as an "added bonus."
"Well sometimes I'd be like, oh, there's a lot of girls, you'll meet a ton of girls at the practices. You'll have a great time, and then one person egged on the other," Cahr said. "They love the attention, they love being bad, and I always produce something crazy so a lot of people will make the association. ... It works out for everybody."
However, male models have been a considerably rare species in the collegiate fashion world, and, of course, there are different demands in the way the male models walk down the runway compared to females. Simply put, girls wear extremely high heels and sway their hips, whereas the guys have to strut powerfully, their chests out and with their arms driving their bodies forward.
And another thing: The guys have to wear make-up, too.
"Honestly, it's not a masculine thing, but the bottom line is that's something you have to do whether you're modeling, acting, whatever it is," said Papanastasiou, who modeled for print and commercials during high school. "Guys that are insecure about doing this type of thing, I don't know much to say about that. You just have to get over it, otherwise you're going to look unconfident. As long as you walk down there - in a Speedo, in a mask or with a whip - you have to be confident about it and do it. You just can't sit there and think about it and let your insecurities overcome you.
"A lot of it is comfort for me. You have to be comfortable with the whole entire scene, and then your body language will carry you through. That's really how I did the prints stuff; that's how I did the commercial. And so that's what I'm going to use to actually do my job."
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