I Became a Male Model by Accident at 66

I love my hairy macho chest and I wouldn't wax it for anyone

That’s another story, from a time when my skin hadn’t yet acquired the texture of a crumpled paper bag. My point is, I can grimace for the camera if I have to. Still, when you have four years to use your free bus pass, you don’t expect a cutting-edge, high-end designer to hire you as an in-house model. But that’s what happened to me.

In 2022, my friend and neighbour Nick Hart, whose clients include David Bowie, Kanye West, Prince William, David Beckham and Benedict Cumberbatch, offered me a job. He needed some publicity shots for his new eponymous brand. God knows why he’d chosen me, but it certainly wasn’t because I had the right build for a fashion plate. The world is full of skinny, broad-shouldered types who could inspire aspiration better than I could. No, he said. He knew my sunglasses personality and it spoke to him.

Willis stars in Nick Hart's 2024 fashion campaign

PHILLIP BANKS; HAIR BY JESSICA/GLAM AND GO

Nick must have had a clear head when he hired the young filmmaker Tyrone Smith. Like a taller but handsomer Prince, he exuded nonchalance. This shoot, he declared, was no big deal, and that became my mantra too. If you can just leave your body and tell it to copy Tyrone, you'll be fine, I told myself. That's what I did, and I succeeded, I hope.

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Do this, do that, said photographer Phil Banks. Look over your shoulder, no, your left shoulder, and lower your chin. Don't smile, said Nick, lean forward a little bit, and let me just pin these pants up higher in the back. Now let's try the silk shawl cuff with the white shoes. Turn around slowly, said Phil. Actually, let's change shoes, said Nick. And so it went on, for about four hours.

I was a window mannequin for Phil and Nick, I didn't contribute, I let myself be manipulated into shapes that freed me from all responsibility. (After all, you can't be embarrassed when you forget yourself.) And they claimed to be happy with the result. So much so that every two or three months since then, I've been called back. Among Nick's specialties are the concrete parades, the guerrilla events for which he dresses a group of us and we parade quietly through areas of stylistic interest, usually led by an opera singer singing Gershwin arias. Summer time.

For the Queens Jubilee we were on Portobello Road and, later that year, at Frieze in Regents Park. During September Fashion Week 2023, we walked past venues such as the Roundhouse and Selfridges. For February Fashion Week last year, I was a human mannequin in a showroom Nick had opened in the West End. And despite the curious stares and Far Eastern influencers snapping photos for their Insta feeds, I felt safe. In fact, the only time I nearly blushed was the fortnight when Nick had a huge poster of Tyrone and me in a gallery window, opposite Bassett House nursery in Notting Hill.

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Nicks’s quality tailored clothing could be described as radical. He favours a monochrome Anglo-Asian hybrid: a tailored androgynous uniform with a discerning silhouette and an outsider attitude. I’m more basic and mass-market. Back in my civilian days, I used to feel a little intimidated when patrons at our local coffee shop would start to look at me twice, especially if they were parents from school. (Their toddlers would look at me quizzically, struggling to make the connection.) But I’ve more than gotten over that.

On the contrary, I enjoyed the attention. Daniel Craig, a young man of 56, must introduce him as the new face of Loewe. There are many people who earn thousands, tens of thousands of dollars from advertising campaigns, so why not be one of them?

With this in mind, I have made some attempts to include modeling in my professional portfolio. On the advice of a friend who is in the film industry, I sent some photos to the Ugly modeling agency, which deals with characters, I hasten to add. (No response.)

I applied to be in a TV commercial and recorded the requested audition video of me burning my dinner. (Don't call us.) And in a crescendo of embarrassment, I got a meeting with world-renowned photographer Cathleen Naundorf, a protégé of Horst P Horst.

It was the great arbiter of elegance Nicky Haslam who did it. I've known him for a long time, so when I saw him at a party I showed him the pictures of Phil on my phone. “You should contact Cathleen,” he said. “She's living in London at the moment and doing a project on older men. She's just given me a blowjob.”

There are plenty of people making thousands of dollars, why not me? said Willis, pictured with Smith.

PHILLIP BANKS

And so, to have a drink with a slightly bemused Cathleen, who told me how she had recently taken a beautiful portrait of Nick Rhodes of Duran Duran and made it clear to me, in the kindest way possible, that her subjects were in fact renowned creatives and not, well, me.

At least Hart hadn’t abandoned me. In May of this year, he called me back into the studio to shoot for his lookbook, which debuted in June at the Pitti Uomo trade show in Florence. Of course, the Wall Street Journal gave it a rave review. But what’s more impressive is that I’m blown away by Nick’s fabulous ensembles, and Lookbook Me takes up a few pages in the latest issue of the very fashionable biannual magazine. ten.

Normally, I can't say this little saga has made me any less self-conscious. Try taking a picture of me and I'll still be as shy as ever, writhing inside. But point a professional camera at Brand Tim, tell him to put on sunglasses and look menacing, and he's ready for his close-up.