Where are you from and how did you start modeling?Im from San Antonio, Texas, and I was a professional basketball player. [Ive been playing since I was] five years old. Basketball was always a part of me, and my brothers, my family. For me, a Texas boy growing up in the south, thats what you did, you went outside and played sports. I was on Magic Johnson and Patrick Hewings tour team, we were touring parts of Europe, and I ended up coming to rest in Paris for about a week. Before then I had met a model scout and had taken a few pictures in LA, and didnt think anything more about that. The crazy story is that when I came to Paris, those pictures that I had taken were being used in The Body Shops promotions. The agent that I had met went on ahead and got money behind my back.

I knew nothing about fashion and things of that nature, but I walked around to a few agencies with a completely open mind. [My first stop was] Success; they didnt even look at me. I felt like a fool standing in the corner. Im a very big guy, Im (about) 6 7 and I was about 240 pounds with muscle, so I was not model materialwhatever that was. I didnt know what a model was. Im an artist. For me, a sports person is an artist; what youre able to do on that court or that field, or however you get it done, its art, its creativity, its an extension of yourself.

I [went around] to a few other agencies and ended going into PH1; they didnt really look at me. [But] there was a young girl, 22, it was her first day of work, and she took my pictures back to a guy named Paul Hagnauer, and then she came back and she goes, Hey, come here: Ill work with you. I said, Well, okay, cool. Then she said, Why dont you go over to this casting, its for a big designer.

Who was the casting for?There were maybe like 200 or 300 people there; women, men in makeup. It was hilarious for me to see that; Ive never been in that world, I was always a sportsperson. Then I see that everybody was moving out of the way because somebody was running up the middle of all the models, and this person was Jean Paul Gaultier. He stopped and said to me, Hey, are you the guy with the tattoo on your back? I said, Yeah. He said, Okay, Ill see you upstairs. Eventually I made my way up and approached the table. It was Jean Paul, Tanel, [and a few] other people. So Jean Paul asked me a few questions, and as I got ready to try something on, he said, Oh, by the way, youre in my show.

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The Life and Times of 1990s Superstar Vladimir McCrary - Vogue.com