San­gre Chiq­ui­to na­tive, Jean-Luc Joseph did not have a blue­print for get­ting in­to the in­ter­na­tion­al mod­el­ling scene. He sim­ply felt a cre­ative fire in his soul that he had to get out. Dis­cov­ered from some on­line pho­tos he post­ed of him­self, he re­cent­ly re­alised his biggest dream when he walked the run­way of pre­mier lux­u­ry Ital­ian fash­ion house Bot­te­ga Vene­ta in the fash­ion cap­i­tal of Mi­lan.

“It was amaz­ing!” he told Sun­day Guardian of his ex­pe­ri­ence as part of the Bot­te­ga Vene­ta Fall/Win­ter 2022 col­lec­tion show­ing at Mi­lan Fash­ion Week on Feb­ru­ary 26.

“It was a very sur­re­al ex­pe­ri­ence be­ing back­stage be­cause I’ve al­ways been in­ter­est­ed in the world of fash­ion–the pho­tog­ra­phers, the im­agery that would come out of fash­ion, the de­sign­ers’ styles. I would al­ways watch all these shows and these col­lec­tions and see mod­els walk­ing and say: I can do that; that could be me.

“Just be­ing in a po­si­tion where I am mak­ing my de­but for one of the biggest hous­es in Mi­lan is just a sur­re­al ex­pe­ri­ence; be it back­stage and see­ing the en­tire process of how every­thing is done for a high-lev­el show like that; every­thing from pro­duc­tion, teams that were there; hair­styl­ists, make-up artists, to be­ing in the pres­ence of the de­sign­er...just be­ing part of the brand’s his­to­ry be­cause this was (fash­ion di­rec­tor) Matthieu Blazy’s first col­lec­tion for the brand.”

Joseph was al­so grate­ful to cast­ing di­rec­tors, Ani­ta Bit­ton and Fin­lay MacAulay and praised 28Mod­el’s Trinida­di­an founder, Showin Bish­op for be­liev­ing in his po­ten­tial.

Re­gard­ed for its lux­u­ry ready-to-wear ap­par­el and sig­na­ture in­trec­cia­to weave (in­ter­twined wo­ven tex­ture of its leather), the elite Bot­te­ga Vene­ta fash­ion house was es­tab­lished in 1966 in Vi­cen­za, Italy, as an ar­ti­sanal leather goods brand. Bot­te­ga’s mem­o­rable show­ings dur­ing Fash­ion Week–the in­dus­try’s most cel­e­brat­ed se­ries of run­way shows fea­tur­ing the lat­est col­lec­tions of top de­sign­ers–have launched the ca­reers of such fa­mous mod­els as Lau­ren Hut­ton and Gi­gi Ha­did.

Twen­ty-two-year-old Joseph had al­ways en­vi­sioned him­self on a fash­ion run­way. But with lit­tle knowl­edge of where to be­gin, he placed his dream on hold, tak­ing up pho­tog­ra­phy in­stead around 2018. Ini­tial­ly, he used his broth­er, Raúl and oth­er friends as sub­jects. While try­ing to ex­pand his port­fo­lio, he turned the cam­era to him­self. He start­ed a self-por­trait se­ries, be­com­ing a con­tent cre­ator post­ing pho­tos of him­self on In­sta­gram.

Ob­serv­ing his pas­sion, a friend sug­gest­ed that he au­di­tion for a mod­el search ad­ver­tised lo­cal­ly by New York-based mod­el man­age­ment agency, 28Mod­els. It was Bish­op of 28Mod­els who dis­cov­ered the as­pir­ing mod­el in 2019.

Jean-Luc Joseph poses in a North Face and Gucci shoot.

Photo courtesy 28Models

“They reached out to me via In­sta­gram. They were in­ter­est­ed. I was very ex­cit­ed, but when I told the peo­ple around me, I got some mixed re­views. Some were like: of course, you al­ways want­ed to do this, oth­ers were of the con­ven­tion­al mind­set. I guess they didn’t re­al­ly see the vi­sion, the op­por­tu­ni­ty.”

Joseph said it was a bat­tle try­ing to con­vince his old­er fam­i­ly mem­bers of the mag­ni­tude of the of­fer. They felt he was young and had no knowl­edge of how the world worked. He ar­gued that youth was on his side and so he should take ad­van­tage of the time to ex­plore and ex­pe­ri­ence dif­fer­ent paths.

Hav­ing al­ready worked an eight-to-four job in or­der to pur­chase pho­tog­ra­phy equip­ment, Joseph said he knew the typ­i­cal of­fice path was not for him.

“It just didn’t make me hap­py and at that point in time, I re­alised that I didn’t want to be in a po­si­tion for the next how­ev­er many years do­ing some­thing I wasn’t hap­py do­ing. I pre­ferred to make a liv­ing out of some­thing that I was pas­sion­ate about.”

Sev­er­al vir­tu­al meet­ings with the agency con­firmed his be­lief that mod­el­ling was his call­ing. Con­fi­dent that “a boy from Grande (min­utes away from San­gre Chiq­ui­to) could break through in­to the in­ter­na­tion­al fash­ion world” with no re­al ex­pe­ri­ence, he ac­cept­ed the of­fer to go abroad.

How­ev­er, when he was ready to set out on his jour­ney in the ear­ly part of 2020, his ex­cite­ment was damp­ened as COVID hit. With the abrupt pause in his plans, he had to con­tend with rum­blings from fam­i­ly mem­bers about not hav­ing fol­lowed sound ad­vice to seek con­ven­tion­al work.

“But I was just so fo­cussed, I was just so hyped. I un­der­stood the op­por­tu­ni­ty and the vi­sion and I stuck with it. I didn’t con­form to what oth­ers were telling me be­cause I knew the po­ten­tial,” he re­called.

Re­lief came in June 2021 when he fi­nal­ly was able to trav­el to Italy. He said things start­ed slow­ly as he had to go out on dif­fer­ent ap­point­ments for gigs and fa­mil­iarise him­self with var­i­ous cast­ing di­rec­tors. Be­gin­ning to doubt that he would ever get hired, en­cour­age­ment from fam­i­ly mem­bers back home kept him go­ing.

Jobs start­ed com­ing his way from the UK and back in Italy, one of his first ma­jor gigs was an ed­i­to­r­i­al for Es­quire Italia mag­a­zine. From there, things picked up with op­por­tu­ni­ties from high-end brands like Off-White, Alexan­der Mc­Queen, the North Face x Guc­ci and Elle Italia most­ly in Italy, but al­so through­out Eu­rope. About eight months af­ter leav­ing Trinidad, Joseph land­ed the Bot­te­ga Vene­ta con­tract.

The North­east­ern Col­lege alum who stud­ied sci­ences in Sixth Form said he has seen the most stun­ning places, met the best ex­perts in the fash­ion in­dus­try and sam­pled the finest cuisines, but is proud of his hum­ble roots in San­gre Chiq­ui­to where he and his sib­lings, Raúl, Mia and Akim grew up with his moth­er, Tia, a mem­ber of the pro­tec­tive ser­vices.

Joseph waxed nos­tal­gic about play­ing games like mar­bles and tag with his sib­lings, paint­ing and draw­ing with Mia and play­ing video games with his broth­ers. He al­so shared fond mem­o­ries of liv­ing with his grand­moth­er in Damarie Hill to be clos­er to his sec­ondary school af­ter the oth­er mem­bers of his fam­i­ly moved to Ari­ma.

Joseph said he takes in­spi­ra­tion from most­ly his moth­er who was ded­i­cat­ed and hard­work­ing, bring­ing up her chil­dren with the sup­port of his grand­moth­er. She helped him per­fect his “chef skills”, he laughed.

He gleaned wis­dom from his grand­moth­er whose per­spec­tives shaped much of his out­look on life, and with whom he of­ten gar­dened and baked.

Con­ver­sa­tions with friends, Akell Gould, Kel­ly Smith, Ola­ju­won Scott, Elon Thomas and Tyrese Thomas about goals and am­bi­tions have al­so in­flu­enced him.

Apart from that of his moth­er, he val­ues the sup­port of Mia–his biggest cheer­leader “from day one”–Raul and Akim, 11, whom they nick­named “Lit­tle Man”. He said he al­ways tries to main­tain good com­mu­ni­ca­tion with his fam­i­ly, tak­ing time out to speak with them al­most dai­ly. He feels he has some­what cleared a path for his sib­lings who al­so have cre­ative tal­ents. He hopes to be an in­spi­ra­tion to them.

“I feel like my ex­pe­ri­ences would be a proof of con­cept and would make it eas­i­er for them to fol­low what they want to do,” Joseph said.

He is work­ing to­wards so­lid­i­fy­ing his place on the in­ter­na­tion­al mod­el­ling scene and help­ing to cre­ate an av­enue for cre­atives in T&T.

Fashion model Jean-Luc Joseph

Photo courtesy 28Models

Q&A with Jean-Luc Joseph

At school, how did you go from sci­ences to pho­tog­ra­phy?

I've al­ways felt like I was a cre­ative per­son. I did art us­ing dif­fer­ent medi­ums; draw­ing, paint­ing...I've al­ways loved por­trai­ture. I was very in­ter­est­ed in the fash­ion in­dus­try. A lot of the pho­tog­ra­phers, from Pe­ter Lind­bergh, Mario Testi­no to Al­bert Wat­son, I was very in­trigued by their work and that re­al­ly in­spired me to want to pur­sue pho­tog­ra­phy. But I feel from the jump it was very dif­fi­cult for me to pur­sue some­thing like that in a house­hold that re­al­ly val­ued job se­cu­ri­ty and job sta­bil­i­ty. It was: get a gov­ern­ment job or a con­ven­tion­al job; doc­tor, lawyer. So that had been a strug­gle for me ever since I got out of sec­ondary school.

What is the most ex­cit­ing thing about mod­el­ling to you?

I would say the most ex­cit­ing thing is hav­ing the op­por­tu­ni­ty to trav­el and meet new teams, meet amaz­ing peo­ple, be on set with leg­ends whether it be styl­ists, hair­styl­ists, de­sign­ers. Al­so ex­pe­ri­enc­ing new cul­tures and cuisines, of course.

Has any par­tic­u­lar dish or as­pect of the Ital­ian cul­ture im­pressed you thus far?

I can't name the dish­es. (Laugh­ter) I think com­ing to Mi­lan and just ex­pe­ri­enc­ing every­thing...I've been to South­ern Italy once. I didn't get to ful­ly en­joy it as I was there on a job, but the scenery was beau­ti­ful. I've been to Mont Blanc de Cour­mayeur which is in the Ital­ian Alps. That's where we shot for the North Face x Guc­ci. The views were so breath­tak­ing. That was the first time I ex­pe­ri­enced snow as well. We went up on this mas­sive ca­ble car and we could have seen the en­tire­ty of the re­sort and the moun­tains and the beau­ti­ful town of Cour­mayeur.

Just work­ing with the team there as well. A lot of the peo­ple had worked on the first mag­a­zine shoot that I did – Es­quire – so it was a re­al­ly spe­cial ex­pe­ri­ence for me.

What is your typ­i­cal day like?

On the day to day, we would get our sched­ules the day be­fore. It de­pends on the day, what time of the sea­son it is; if it's clos­er to Fash­ion Week it's go­ing to be very hec­tic. It's go­ing to be a lot of up and down from one venue to the oth­er. I think a mis­con­cep­tion about mod­el­ling is that peo­ple don't think it's a re­al job, but it is be­cause if we go to cast­ings it's like go­ing to three, four dif­fer­ent in­ter­views with dif­fer­ent com­pa­nies. You need to be dressed ap­pro­pri­ate­ly; it's the same as in­ter­view­ing for a typ­i­cal job. Af­ter cast­ing calls, you should get a re­sponse with­in four days. On the job, from start to fin­ish, let's say it's a so­cial cam­paign it would be reach­ing on set, prep­ping, so you would have the hair and make­up team, pro­duc­tion would be set­ting up the stu­dio, the pho­tog­ra­ph­er would go through the mood board with you and let you know what you all would be ac­com­plish­ing for the day and then you shoot. A typ­i­cal day is eight hours.

Is there any­thing you want to say to oth­er young peo­ple who have dreams?

Yes. This may sound cliché, but this has al­ways stuck with me: The best time to plant a tree is ten years ago and the next best time to plant it is right now. A lot of times we feel like we might not be ready or we have a fear of be­ing judged – whether we're start­ing a busi­ness, start­ing some­thing on YouTube – and we pro­cras­ti­nate a lot and say we're wait­ing on bet­ter equip­ment and so on, but I feel we just need to start. We may not feel like we're ready, but I feel we get a lot of ex­po­nen­tial growth be­ing out of our com­fort zone. That's how we learn, how we ex­pe­ri­ence. That will go in­to the next quote which is: it's bet­ter to have tried and failed than failed to try.

Fol­low Joseph's jour­ney via his In­sta­gram @iamjean­lucjoseph and see oth­er Caribbean mod­els on 28Mod­el's In­sta­gram ac­count @28mod­els.