Shaun Ross
- Thread starter MeMe7
- Start date
I think he's amazing.
There has only been one other albino model, I believe her name was Connie Chiu and she worked mid-late 90s.
I think i saw a couple of photos of her. It's gonna be interesting to see how he'll do in the fashion industry , hopefully well!
Shaun Ross,JOY Mag 1st issue, 12 pages story by David Armstrong, is In newstands NOW. pick it up. Shaun Ross, just shot for Another Man, mag his second project with David Armstrong, for a 16 pages portrait story along NYC other working models. There is much more coming from Shaun - http://djameemodels.blogspot.com/
Djameemodels
Shaun Ross, has his hands full of new editorials at the news stand,lol... Check out JOY first Issue with 12 pages story by David Armstrong; He 6; Metro Pop 36; and soon Trace Black Girls Rule issue with guest editor Spike lee; Another Man Mag
Shaun Ross, has his hands full of new editorials at the news stand,lol... Check out JOY first Issue with 12 pages story by David Armstrong; He 6; Metro Pop 36; and soon Trace Black Girls Rule issue with guest editor Spike lee; Another Man Mag
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Will His Singularity Lead to Pluralism?
By GUY TREBAY
Published: September 11, 2008
“When I was growing up, people called me Powder and White-out,” Shaun Ross said the other day. “They called me other names you wouldn’t want to hear.”
Standing backstage before the Patrik Ervell men’s wear show, held on Pier 59 at the start of Fashion Week, Mr. Ross seemed jittery. If he was less self-consciously blasé than the other models in the show, all of whom had perfected the obligatory model slouch and “What, me sexy?” yawn, he had reason.
At 17 and as an African-American, Mr. Ross is already a rare enough commodity in the business. But with his pale skin and light green eyes and with hair a color his agency describes as “brond,” he is decidedly singular. It is possible Mr. Ross is not the first male fashion model with albinism, but he is the sole example that even those with long memories of the industry recall.
“It’s tricky and loaded to talk about human beings and talk about rarity,” Mr. Ervell said when asked how he had happened to cast Mr. Ross, a virtual unknown, for his show. “It sounds silly, but he is about rarity. He looks unique.”
Shaun Ross is not unique, of course; albinism, a genetic condition that impairs normal pigmentation, affects about one in 17,000 in the United States. In some parts of the world, albinos are persecuted as witches, regarded as having magical powers, murdered for their body parts or done in at birth. In the West they are treated mostly as oddities.
“As a kid, he was called Casper a lot,” said Mr. Ross’s mother, Geraldine.
Several celebrated figures, including the musicians Johnny and Edgar Winter and Salif Keita, are albino, but there had been only one model: the Hong Kong-born Connie Chiu. Now there is Mr. Ross.
“I’m the first, or anyway the only man, in the industry, and it feels good,” said Mr. Ross, who grew up in the Bronx and lives in upstate New York and who, until modeling fell into his lap, was more focused on a career in modern dance.
It perhaps says as much about shifts in a business often criticized for a lack of diversity as about Mr. Ross’s special qualities that he was discovered (as everyone seems to be these days) in a YouTube video, then quickly picked up by Djamee, a boutique modeling agency, and cast in short order for pictorials in magazines like Trace, Another Magazine and in an ad campaign for Gap.
If a glimmer of real change was seen during Fashion Week, it was in the increased chromatic diversity of the runways. Where once one saw only the wan obligatory Olgas and Mashas from countries in Eastern Europe, there are now plenty of Asian giantesses like Hye Park and black beauties like Nana Keita and full-lipped Latinas like Arlenis Sosa and South Asians like Lakshmi Menon and Brazilians representing the depth of that country’s gene pool (and not just the southern regions where German ancestry dominates).
There are male models, too, like Dominique Hollington, Shawn Sutton and Salieu Jalloh, who is surely the first in the business from Sierra Leone.
“Little by little, it’s changing,” said Bethann Hardison, a model agent and a seasoned advocate for diversity in fashion. “The business was dry as a desert for a decade, and now you have Thom Browne, who makes clothes for skinny white boys, putting a very dark-skinned black boy in a show. That says a lot.”
Not everyone in the business shares Ms. Hardison’s optimism.
“We’re still stuck in tokenism,” said George Brown, an owner of Red NYC, an agency whose roster is filled with models of the moment. “I thought this season, with Italian Vogue, we would see a more dramatic uptick,” he added, referring to the July issue of the magazine, which featured only black models. “It didn’t bear fruit.”
Modeling is still “stuck in novelty mode,” Mr. Brown said. Casting agents want “one model that’s really dark skinned or else really mixed and light.”
Or else, perhaps, they want a black man whose skin is white.
“Somebody gave me this name, trailblazer,” Mr. Ross remarked this week. “At first I was like, ‘What is that?’ Then I learned it means someone who goes first and makes a path. So now I’m getting used to that idea.”
NyTimes
By GUY TREBAY
Published: September 11, 2008
“When I was growing up, people called me Powder and White-out,” Shaun Ross said the other day. “They called me other names you wouldn’t want to hear.”
Standing backstage before the Patrik Ervell men’s wear show, held on Pier 59 at the start of Fashion Week, Mr. Ross seemed jittery. If he was less self-consciously blasé than the other models in the show, all of whom had perfected the obligatory model slouch and “What, me sexy?” yawn, he had reason.
At 17 and as an African-American, Mr. Ross is already a rare enough commodity in the business. But with his pale skin and light green eyes and with hair a color his agency describes as “brond,” he is decidedly singular. It is possible Mr. Ross is not the first male fashion model with albinism, but he is the sole example that even those with long memories of the industry recall.
“It’s tricky and loaded to talk about human beings and talk about rarity,” Mr. Ervell said when asked how he had happened to cast Mr. Ross, a virtual unknown, for his show. “It sounds silly, but he is about rarity. He looks unique.”
Shaun Ross is not unique, of course; albinism, a genetic condition that impairs normal pigmentation, affects about one in 17,000 in the United States. In some parts of the world, albinos are persecuted as witches, regarded as having magical powers, murdered for their body parts or done in at birth. In the West they are treated mostly as oddities.
“As a kid, he was called Casper a lot,” said Mr. Ross’s mother, Geraldine.
Several celebrated figures, including the musicians Johnny and Edgar Winter and Salif Keita, are albino, but there had been only one model: the Hong Kong-born Connie Chiu. Now there is Mr. Ross.
“I’m the first, or anyway the only man, in the industry, and it feels good,” said Mr. Ross, who grew up in the Bronx and lives in upstate New York and who, until modeling fell into his lap, was more focused on a career in modern dance.
It perhaps says as much about shifts in a business often criticized for a lack of diversity as about Mr. Ross’s special qualities that he was discovered (as everyone seems to be these days) in a YouTube video, then quickly picked up by Djamee, a boutique modeling agency, and cast in short order for pictorials in magazines like Trace, Another Magazine and in an ad campaign for Gap.
If a glimmer of real change was seen during Fashion Week, it was in the increased chromatic diversity of the runways. Where once one saw only the wan obligatory Olgas and Mashas from countries in Eastern Europe, there are now plenty of Asian giantesses like Hye Park and black beauties like Nana Keita and full-lipped Latinas like Arlenis Sosa and South Asians like Lakshmi Menon and Brazilians representing the depth of that country’s gene pool (and not just the southern regions where German ancestry dominates).
There are male models, too, like Dominique Hollington, Shawn Sutton and Salieu Jalloh, who is surely the first in the business from Sierra Leone.
“Little by little, it’s changing,” said Bethann Hardison, a model agent and a seasoned advocate for diversity in fashion. “The business was dry as a desert for a decade, and now you have Thom Browne, who makes clothes for skinny white boys, putting a very dark-skinned black boy in a show. That says a lot.”
Not everyone in the business shares Ms. Hardison’s optimism.
“We’re still stuck in tokenism,” said George Brown, an owner of Red NYC, an agency whose roster is filled with models of the moment. “I thought this season, with Italian Vogue, we would see a more dramatic uptick,” he added, referring to the July issue of the magazine, which featured only black models. “It didn’t bear fruit.”
Modeling is still “stuck in novelty mode,” Mr. Brown said. Casting agents want “one model that’s really dark skinned or else really mixed and light.”
Or else, perhaps, they want a black man whose skin is white.
“Somebody gave me this name, trailblazer,” Mr. Ross remarked this week. “At first I was like, ‘What is that?’ Then I learned it means someone who goes first and makes a path. So now I’m getting used to that idea.”
NyTimes
update on his career from nymag
Last fall, when the issue of model diversity was finally on center stage, the Times ran a piece about Shaun Ross, a young, albino black model. Ross was fresh on the Fashion Week scene, appearing at Patrik Ervell, Tim Hamilton, and 3rd Fl. The article “showed people that being an albino isn’t weird,” said Ross, 17. But what it didn’t do was launch a career: This time around, Ross only booked one show — Odyn Vovk, which, ironically, in Ukranian means “One Wolf.”
Ross, who was born in the Bronx and goes to high school upstate, is not the first albino model. There’s Connie Shiu; recently Diandra Forrest was signed by Elite. But at the moment, he is the only male, in a milieu where Tyson Beckford has truly reigned and been considered the ideal for black male models. “People have so many perceptions of me,” says Ross. "There’s the futuristic robot or alien, or the God-sent child or something crazy. I’m immune to it.” Still, in a realm of a great deal of sameness seen on men’s runways, where blending appears the palate of the day, race and color aside, Ross just might still be too Other.
“I really didn’t stop getting teased until last year,” he says. People called him names, “the nastiest one being 'Cum.' Not just from kids, but adults too. My theme could be, ‘What is wrong with people today?’ That’s the question I ask myself almost every day.” His life of albinism has prepared him for the constant gaze, scrutiny, and often rejection that is the fashion world. And maybe next season they’ll be ready for him.
Last fall, when the issue of model diversity was finally on center stage, the Times ran a piece about Shaun Ross, a young, albino black model. Ross was fresh on the Fashion Week scene, appearing at Patrik Ervell, Tim Hamilton, and 3rd Fl. The article “showed people that being an albino isn’t weird,” said Ross, 17. But what it didn’t do was launch a career: This time around, Ross only booked one show — Odyn Vovk, which, ironically, in Ukranian means “One Wolf.”
Ross, who was born in the Bronx and goes to high school upstate, is not the first albino model. There’s Connie Shiu; recently Diandra Forrest was signed by Elite. But at the moment, he is the only male, in a milieu where Tyson Beckford has truly reigned and been considered the ideal for black male models. “People have so many perceptions of me,” says Ross. "There’s the futuristic robot or alien, or the God-sent child or something crazy. I’m immune to it.” Still, in a realm of a great deal of sameness seen on men’s runways, where blending appears the palate of the day, race and color aside, Ross just might still be too Other.
“I really didn’t stop getting teased until last year,” he says. People called him names, “the nastiest one being 'Cum.' Not just from kids, but adults too. My theme could be, ‘What is wrong with people today?’ That’s the question I ask myself almost every day.” His life of albinism has prepared him for the constant gaze, scrutiny, and often rejection that is the fashion world. And maybe next season they’ll be ready for him.
I was scrolling down on Abdul laugerfelds blogspot and I saw this model named shaun ross who happens to be albino I thought it would be cool to start a topic on this kid I found so much on him he is going to be big along with deondra forrest he is only 17 thats just WOW
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Londonegde
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****Edited*** Off topic ... please restrict comments to the model's work and style.
To me he is just a boy who is albino. If he was born without albinism, He will never model.
To me he is just a boy who is albino. If he was born without albinism, He will never model.
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happycanadian
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he's certainly very interesting looking. he's got the right body for this particular time in male modeling. his face is beautiful, in terms of his features.
he's just not a great model. at least not from what i've seen so far. absolutely zero versatility in his photographs. for example- there are 3 pages of the thread, full of pics, and not one of him smiling. or with his mouth open. or looking remotely happy. or sad. or anything really. his facial expression is nearly identical in every. single. photograph.
i would really love to see more of him, because i do think there's a potential in his look. but he's gotta step-it-up and lose the self-consciousness that's preventing him from really "letting go" in pictures.
impress the photographers with a great personality and big charm, and they'll fall in love with your face, Shaun.
he's just not a great model. at least not from what i've seen so far. absolutely zero versatility in his photographs. for example- there are 3 pages of the thread, full of pics, and not one of him smiling. or with his mouth open. or looking remotely happy. or sad. or anything really. his facial expression is nearly identical in every. single. photograph.
i would really love to see more of him, because i do think there's a potential in his look. but he's gotta step-it-up and lose the self-consciousness that's preventing him from really "letting go" in pictures.
impress the photographers with a great personality and big charm, and they'll fall in love with your face, Shaun.
