Tech Geek to Fashion Hunk!

 

Tech geek to fashion hunk: A top male model on what it's really like to work in fashion

"I don't have very many friends who are models," says Robert Mull, a New York-based male model. The 24-year old stands at 6'2" and is brooding with broad shoulders, but carries a boy-next-door type smile — and goofy laugh — that makes him all the more approachable. It's a quality that made him perfect for Perry Ellis, a brand in which he's currently the face of.

 

"A lot of them are very egotistical," he says. "Whenever any of my friends ask what it's like I'm like, 'you've never been in a room where there's more egos.'"
We're backstage at Skylight Clarkson Sq. during the last day of New York Fashion Week: Men's, where a sea of half-naked men are getting dressed.  Da Drone Boyz are filming Mull for a video for Mashable, where onlookers are curiously taking notice. Mull is among them, fresh-faced though he's been up since 4:30 a.m. where he commuted from his apartment in New Jersey to make the early call time. 

 

"Walk the shows is nerve-wracking for sure, but it becomes robot-like after a couple of times," he says. "And it's kinda mindless work. When I go to bed I don't feel like I bettered anyone else. I don't feel like I helped people in need. That's what I want to go to bed feeling like."

 

It's a completely different turn for Mull, who used to be a geek, employed at a tech firm in San Francisco. A native to the Bay area, Mull went Saint Mary's College of California where he graduated with a degree in business marketing and communication. Long before his full-time job, Mull found his big break in high school when he sold the trademark to his small t-shirt line to Levi's Strauss & Co. 

 

"The only thing that I did right through that entire year and a half was selling the name, 'Denizen,' and website and everything to them," he says. "It was when I was a freshman and super crazy. Never did I think I'd be modeling though."
Mull was scouted on the streets of San Francisco and never thought of himself as a face who could enter the fashion business. He then started picking up jobs in the Bay Area when he had the time but then realized one day that he didn't want to sit inside an office building. 

 

"I took my suitcase into work then went into the CEO's office and was like dude I quit," he recalls. "I then went to the airport and hopped onto a plane."
After being signed by Adam Models, Mull says it wasn't smooth sailing. The first job to keep him afloat was working retail at Lululemon in New York City's Soho. 

 

"People have the perception that once you're signed you're going to be booked right away," he says. "That's just a dream."
But modeling, he explains, is being a salesperson for your own persona and look. 
 "It's a sales job," he quips. "You're learning how to sell yourself and your image and making it work for a different brand because you go to these castings and they're all pretty people. They are all good-looking human-beings. Any of them could be great at the job. At the end of the day, people want to work with people they enjoy being around. It's figuring out how to make yourself appealing to all of the different types of people that are out there."

 

Though modeling forever isn't in his future, Mull says that it's "good for now."
"I want to become more influential to have a bigger platform to do bigger things," he says. "Modeling isn't everything, but I am grateful for it."