Profile
Babin Fever
What's a nice East Texas guy like Lucas Babin doing modeling for Gucci and Versace? Making up to $7,000 a day, that's what.
Funny, Lucas Babin looks more like a West L.A. hipster than an East Texan. But take away the makeup, the lighting, and the airbrushing, and the 21-year-old model with shoulder-length sandy blond hair, chiseled cheekbones, and almost feminine good looks would seem just as natural behind the wheel of a pickup as he does wearing a Gucci suit. Speaking of which, it was just a year ago that Lucas was photographed wearing his first such getup—for an ad for the venerable Italian couture house—a mere two weeks after he had signed with Ford Models. This season his face is also popping up in ads for such labels as Gap Jeans and Versace Jeans Couture.
In late September 1999, dressed in off-the-rack jeans, a black T-shirt, and flip-flops, Lucas walked into the modeling agency's Los Angeles office during an open call. He had never modeled before, but within days he was booked for an Abercrombie and Fitch ad shot by top fashion photographer Bruce Weber, and a week later he did the Gucci shoot. "It's crazy," he says. "A lot of guys do this for years hoping to get Gucci." In Lucas' opinion, luck and looks are what it's all about: "If you're told you need to go to model school or model camp by someone, they're just trying to get your money. Modeling isn't something you can learn how to do. It's all about how you look." Confidence and charisma don't hurt either, and Lucas seems to have more than his share of both. When he did the Gucci ad, he persuaded the label's creative director—one of the fashion world's hottest designers, fellow Texan Tom Ford—to give him a suit he'd modeled. "They don't give you anything," he says. "You have to ask for it. You can't be bashful out here."
Lucas doesn't sound like an East Texan either, although he grew up in Woodville, a small town nestled among rolling hills and dense forests about fifty miles north of Beaumont. He calls Woodville "the coolest town in America" and his childhood friend Brad Shepherd agrees. "Nothing beats the Wal-Mart parking lot on a Saturday night or driving the back roads just for fun," Shepherd says in a drawl that leaves no doubt about his roots. When I ask Shepherd why he thinks Lucas doesn't have an accent, he chuckles and says, "He never really had one. He's not your typical guy." Lucas grew up with his twin sister, Kirsten, and their three older siblings—a brother, Leif, and two sisters, Marit and Lala. Their parents told them they could be whatever they wanted to be, and Lucas always knew what that was. "I've always known I wanted to do film and music," he says. His father, Brian, a dentist and the town's mayor, nurtured the latter ambition, buying Lucas almost any instrument he desired. One year the coveted item was a drum set. "I thought, 'No way I'll get that,'" Lucas says. But he did, to the consternation of his mother, Roxanne, who would wear earplugs when he practiced. "It's the coolest present I ever got," he says. But his father could be less enthusiastic when it came to non-music-related paraphernalia, making Lucas wait awhile for a new tennis racket, for example. "I'm glad about that now," says Lucas, who'd rather hold court onstage at the keyboard or with a guitar. Both father and son play guitar, and like his father, Lucas is also an accomplished pianist. Roxanne is a singer "with a beautiful voice," according to Lucas, who says that his parents used to sing and play country and folk music together in clubs in Houston and their hometown of Beaumont to help pay for Brian's dental school tuition.
After Lucas graduated from high school, he worked for a surveyor in Woodville, earning about $5 an hour hacking through brush with a machete. When his brother moved to San Diego, Lucas followed him to give acting a try. He attended "some stupid junior college" in San Diego and would go to L.A. for auditions. "I had no idea what I was doing," he says. "I didn't know any agents or casting directors. I didn't know anything." One thing he did know was that he didn't want to go back to cutting brush, so he decided to drop in at Ford, putting his days of minimum wage behind him. "They pay you ridiculous amounts of money [to model]," he says. "You can get addicted." He now earns between $2,500 and $7,000 a day—"But I don't work every day," he points out. He also began to have some success as an actor, doing MTV's late-night soap Undressed and an MTV pilot titled This Is How the World Ends, and he recently landed a small part in the WB network's vampire saga Angel. Meanwhile, he's still hoping to make it onto the big screen. "I've been so close lately," he says. "I almost booked three different feature films."
So far, all the success doesn't appear to have gone to his head. He shares a $1,000-a-month apartment in West Hollywood with a fellow aspiring actor from Woodville, Bryan Gay. Occasionally Lucas is recognized on the street, but he insists that there's nothing glamorous about his life—until he goes to work. "The extravagant part comes with the job," he says. "You know, the parties and that kind of thing." When life does get a little overwhelming, he heads back to Texas and goes deep-sea fishing with his father. The Gulf was rough on a recent trip, and the fish weren't biting. "It's amazing how no fish and throwing up over the side of a boat keeps you grounded," he says. After more than a year in California, Lucas says he still misses Texas, "especially barbecue and Sonic." But for now he'll remain in L.A. He may even go back to school and pursue a degree in film at the University of Southern California. "Eventually," he says, "I just want to make a contribution to society through film and make movies that are about average people accomplishing great things, like Saving Private Ryan."
But it isn't the movie industry that's knocking on his door these days. Lucas can be seen sporting those $2,000 Gucci suits again in new ads, as well as in campaigns for Calvin Klein Eyewear and Versace that will run through the spring. Tear Sheet, an insider magazine for the fashion industry (which bills itself as "the loudmouth of the beautiful biz"), recently named him one of its "50 Most Beautiful." He was also featured—wearing tiger-striped suede pants and a sleeveless black muscle shirt—as one of "This Year's Models" in the September 14 "Hot Issue" of Rolling Stone. (His feelings about the photo, however, are lukewarm: "They took all these shots of me playing my guitar, but I'm not playing it in the picture.") And he made headlines in July when he walked the mistress of fashion herself, Donatella Versace, down the runway in Milan after the show of her men's collection for fall 2000. That night he proved he wasn't just another pretty face by playing the piano at a gathering in the lobby of the Hotel Principe di Savoia that was attended by such stars as Matthew McConaughey and Boy George. Lucas had just met Elton John backstage at the show, "So I played 'Rocket Man,'" he says proudly.
Of course, when you're a male model, even one as talented and ambitious as Lucas, it's hard to avoid the stereotypes: that men so good-looking must be conceited and shallow, for example. And they're often assumed to be gay. "But that's not true at all," he insists. When I mention that he doesn't sound stuck-up, he says, "Tell all the girls that," and notes that the harshest critics are often other men. "They do get jealous," he says. "But they just see all this makeup and airbrushing. Sometimes I think I look like a total jerk. But it's just an image." As it happens, when I showed Lucas' picture to several co-workers, the men's reactions were just a tiny bit defensive. "Oh, that's a man?" and "He's a pip-squeak" were some of their responses, while the women all chimed in with choruses of "He's beautiful" and "Good hair." (The folks back home tease him about his long hair, a style "not at all typical in Woodville," says Shepherd.) Another misconception about male models, according to Lucas, is that they date their female counterparts. "The women are harder to impress because they make so much more money," he says.
Just after his combined fashion coup and musical debut in Milan, a New York Times article quoted him as saying that he was looking forward to working with model Sophie Dahl on an upcoming ad campaign and that photographer Steven Meisel was going to "hook him up" with the British babe. But Lucas claims he was never interviewed by anyone for that story. Dahl is a friend, he says, but he doesn't want to date her: "And I'd never rely on Steve Meisel to hook me up!" Despite that experience, Lucas tells me that it is nice to have the opportunity to talk to the press, "because when you're modeling, you're just a face." Indeed, the author of that New York Times story called him "one of the most talked about new faces of the week."
Funny, Lucas Babin looks more like a West L.A. hipster than an East Texan. But take away the makeup, the lighting, and the airbrushing, and the 21-year-old model with shoulder-length sandy blond hair, chiseled cheekbones, and almost feminine good looks would seem just as natural behind the wheel of a pickup as he does wearing a Gucci suit. Speaking of which, it was just a year ago that Lucas was photographed wearing his first such getup—for an ad for the venerable Italian couture house—a mere two weeks after he had signed with Ford Models. This season his face is also popping up in ads for such labels as Gap Jeans and Versace Jeans Couture.
In late September 1999, dressed in off-the-rack jeans, a black T-shirt, and flip-flops, Lucas walked into the modeling agency's Los Angeles office during an open call. He had never modeled before, but within days he was booked for an Abercrombie and Fitch ad shot by top fashion photographer Bruce Weber, and a week later he did the Gucci shoot. "It's crazy," he says. "A lot of guys do this for years hoping to get Gucci." In Lucas' opinion, luck and looks are what it's all about: "If you're told you need to go to model school or model camp by someone, they're just trying to get your money. Modeling isn't something you can learn how to do. It's all about how you look." Confidence and charisma don't hurt either, and Lucas seems to have more than his share of both. When he did the Gucci ad, he persuaded the label's creative director—one of the fashion world's hottest designers, fellow Texan Tom Ford—to give him a suit he'd modeled. "They don't give you anything," he says. "You have to ask for it. You can't be bashful out here."
Lucas doesn't sound like an East Texan either, although he grew up in Woodville, a small town nestled among rolling hills and dense forests about fifty miles north of Beaumont. He calls Woodville "the coolest town in America" and his childhood friend Brad Shepherd agrees. "Nothing beats the Wal-Mart parking lot on a Saturday night or driving the back roads just for fun," Shepherd says in a drawl that leaves no doubt about his roots. When I ask Shepherd why he thinks Lucas doesn't have an accent, he chuckles and says, "He never really had one. He's not your typical guy." Lucas grew up with his twin sister, Kirsten, and their three older siblings—a brother, Leif, and two sisters, Marit and Lala. Their parents told them they could be whatever they wanted to be, and Lucas always knew what that was. "I've always known I wanted to do film and music," he says. His father, Brian, a dentist and the town's mayor, nurtured the latter ambition, buying Lucas almost any instrument he desired. One year the coveted item was a drum set. "I thought, 'No way I'll get that,'" Lucas says. But he did, to the consternation of his mother, Roxanne, who would wear earplugs when he practiced. "It's the coolest present I ever got," he says. But his father could be less enthusiastic when it came to non-music-related paraphernalia, making Lucas wait awhile for a new tennis racket, for example. "I'm glad about that now," says Lucas, who'd rather hold court onstage at the keyboard or with a guitar. Both father and son play guitar, and like his father, Lucas is also an accomplished pianist. Roxanne is a singer "with a beautiful voice," according to Lucas, who says that his parents used to sing and play country and folk music together in clubs in Houston and their hometown of Beaumont to help pay for Brian's dental school tuition.
After Lucas graduated from high school, he worked for a surveyor in Woodville, earning about $5 an hour hacking through brush with a machete. When his brother moved to San Diego, Lucas followed him to give acting a try. He attended "some stupid junior college" in San Diego and would go to L.A. for auditions. "I had no idea what I was doing," he says. "I didn't know any agents or casting directors. I didn't know anything." One thing he did know was that he didn't want to go back to cutting brush, so he decided to drop in at Ford, putting his days of minimum wage behind him. "They pay you ridiculous amounts of money [to model]," he says. "You can get addicted." He now earns between $2,500 and $7,000 a day—"But I don't work every day," he points out. He also began to have some success as an actor, doing MTV's late-night soap Undressed and an MTV pilot titled This Is How the World Ends, and he recently landed a small part in the WB network's vampire saga Angel. Meanwhile, he's still hoping to make it onto the big screen. "I've been so close lately," he says. "I almost booked three different feature films."
So far, all the success doesn't appear to have gone to his head. He shares a $1,000-a-month apartment in West Hollywood with a fellow aspiring actor from Woodville, Bryan Gay. Occasionally Lucas is recognized on the street, but he insists that there's nothing glamorous about his life—until he goes to work. "The extravagant part comes with the job," he says. "You know, the parties and that kind of thing." When life does get a little overwhelming, he heads back to Texas and goes deep-sea fishing with his father. The Gulf was rough on a recent trip, and the fish weren't biting. "It's amazing how no fish and throwing up over the side of a boat keeps you grounded," he says. After more than a year in California, Lucas says he still misses Texas, "especially barbecue and Sonic." But for now he'll remain in L.A. He may even go back to school and pursue a degree in film at the University of Southern California. "Eventually," he says, "I just want to make a contribution to society through film and make movies that are about average people accomplishing great things, like Saving Private Ryan."
But it isn't the movie industry that's knocking on his door these days. Lucas can be seen sporting those $2,000 Gucci suits again in new ads, as well as in campaigns for Calvin Klein Eyewear and Versace that will run through the spring. Tear Sheet, an insider magazine for the fashion industry (which bills itself as "the loudmouth of the beautiful biz"), recently named him one of its "50 Most Beautiful." He was also featured—wearing tiger-striped suede pants and a sleeveless black muscle shirt—as one of "This Year's Models" in the September 14 "Hot Issue" of Rolling Stone. (His feelings about the photo, however, are lukewarm: "They took all these shots of me playing my guitar, but I'm not playing it in the picture.") And he made headlines in July when he walked the mistress of fashion herself, Donatella Versace, down the runway in Milan after the show of her men's collection for fall 2000. That night he proved he wasn't just another pretty face by playing the piano at a gathering in the lobby of the Hotel Principe di Savoia that was attended by such stars as Matthew McConaughey and Boy George. Lucas had just met Elton John backstage at the show, "So I played 'Rocket Man,'" he says proudly.
Of course, when you're a male model, even one as talented and ambitious as Lucas, it's hard to avoid the stereotypes: that men so good-looking must be conceited and shallow, for example. And they're often assumed to be gay. "But that's not true at all," he insists. When I mention that he doesn't sound stuck-up, he says, "Tell all the girls that," and notes that the harshest critics are often other men. "They do get jealous," he says. "But they just see all this makeup and airbrushing. Sometimes I think I look like a total jerk. But it's just an image." As it happens, when I showed Lucas' picture to several co-workers, the men's reactions were just a tiny bit defensive. "Oh, that's a man?" and "He's a pip-squeak" were some of their responses, while the women all chimed in with choruses of "He's beautiful" and "Good hair." (The folks back home tease him about his long hair, a style "not at all typical in Woodville," says Shepherd.) Another misconception about male models, according to Lucas, is that they date their female counterparts. "The women are harder to impress because they make so much more money," he says.
Just after his combined fashion coup and musical debut in Milan, a New York Times article quoted him as saying that he was looking forward to working with model Sophie Dahl on an upcoming ad campaign and that photographer Steven Meisel was going to "hook him up" with the British babe. But Lucas claims he was never interviewed by anyone for that story. Dahl is a friend, he says, but he doesn't want to date her: "And I'd never rely on Steve Meisel to hook me up!" Despite that experience, Lucas tells me that it is nice to have the opportunity to talk to the press, "because when you're modeling, you're just a face." Indeed, the author of that New York Times story called him "one of the most talked about new faces of the week."
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