Interview for Capricho Magazine:
We got close - really, really close - to the most famous male model. He is Brazilian, he is beautiful, he is going to win you.
From the Bahamas, Marlon comes like a wave, bringing the sea into our room, inside a luxurious hotel in São Paulo. "Hello, sweetie. Hi, prettie", he gives out praises to everyone in our work-team. "Sampa"(São Paulo's nickname) can be kinda ugly, incredibly cloudy, but not if you're next to Marlon Teixeira. The Catarinense, born in Balneário Camboriú, is the most famous brazilian model in the world. Our male version of Gisele. Only ours. From anyone else. "See what you can save from this", says the 23-years-old model to our make-up artist. He jokes, but knows he doesn't need to be saved. From nothing. His sun-kissed skin highlighting his small yellowish eyes needs no retouching. And his professional trajectory couldn't be more successful so far. Since he was 16, Marlon writes his own story in the fashion industry. Discovered by Anderson Baumgartner, owner of Way Model Management, at his aunt's restaurant in Balneário, he has been photographing and walking the runways since then for the high fashion brands: Dior, Gaultier, Armani...
"At that time, my family wanted me to work at McDonald's. Imagine myself using that cap and making fries?" Even though how delicious imagine this scene can be (what's better than Marlon + fries?), the chances of the guy becoming anything else besides a model, "perhaps a lifesaver", as he said in the interview, were big. Nothing was easy for him, even though he prefers to say that everything was important for his development. "Since I was a kid, life showed me no matter how hard you try to schedule your life, everything is going to happen only when it's the right time", he told me. In his early years, when he turned 4, was diagnosed as having a Mediastinal tumor. The treatment lasted another 4 years and the model, since childhood was pushed to learn that life can be hard. "Look, I wondered several times why things had to be harder for me. This disease 'thing', on the bright side, made me more prepared than any other boy at my age".
Yes, because then everything was different.
"Before I turned 10, I couldn't do anything. I didn't practice any sports, I couldn't even run", he says. But on his teenage years, surf came into his life. "At that time, I didn't know for sure what I wanted to do, but I remember wanting to be a pro surfer", he also taught, to get paid his surfboards and the subscriptions for the championships.
For this reason, it must have been difficult for him to accept the flashes in the beginning of his career. "I never thought of being a model. Before, I didn't liked to take pictures or taking my shirt off in the beach."
In his very first job, he didn't had to attend the casting. The Dior's work team looked at him and knew that he was the model of the season. "I wasn't understanding anything, only after I figured out it was a good start. Everything ended up as me being the face of the brand, I moved to Paris, and they even got a translator for me."
Finally, comes the time to take the pictures.
He takes his clothes off with the facility of someone who lives at the sea side. "I like to travel to Indonesia, take my surfboard and go to the beach, this gives me peace". At the Big Apple, he prefers asian food - "Really spicy!" - and go skating, with is iPod, listening to Velvet Underground. "I only don't like much Sertanejo or Pagode, apart from these, I like any type of music".
And that's some of what you will see on Meu Book 3, reality show about his and other models' life, airing on E!. "You will see a bit of my routine", he says. A lot of photoshoots, a lot of flashes, but not too much parties. Marlon prefers calmness and less "pegação" (a slang which kinda means "dates", but not really). "The right girl can be at the market place, at the street, on the elevator, anywhere...", he believes. Romantic, huh? His girl will pass the day admiring the sea along with him, or discovering some hidden place at the beach. "The first thing I would do will be taking her into some place nobody ever took her before", he tells. With you, Marlon, we go anywhere...
bellazon