THE SECRET IS OUT: Forster’s Simon Nicholas stole the show on day one of the recent Mercedes Benz Fashion Week wearing this Camilla Franks designed kaftan for men or ‘mantan’.
NEIL Armstrong had more company on the moon.
The lone male figure who became the bearded belle of the ball on day one of the recent Mercedes Benz Fashion Week was none other than Forster (pretty) boy Simon Nicholas who, in a former life, was school captain of Great Lakes College where he received more than a few playful noogies from a future Great Lakes Advocate journo.
Now dubbed ‘kaftan man’ Simon shared his rags-to-riches (or judging on what he was wearing, his rags-to rags) story with his former tormentor last week.
“It just seemed a good way to make a quick buck,” he said.
“I moved to Sydney with my girlfriend a month ago looking for work (he holds a communications degree). She got a job and I didn’t so I’d been scouted a bit when I was overseas and just thought I’d do a bit of modelling to help pay the bills.”
Enter designer Camilla Franks who according to Simon was looking for “hippie-lookin-dudes” for her Gypset Parade, one of the biggest of the entire fashion week.
“She was a pretty cool girl, she said to me straight up ‘you wouldn’t be here if you didn’t have long hair,” he said with a laugh.
“Apparently not a lot of models have long hair these days and her collection had this sort of tribal continental theme and I guess I suited it. It got narrowed down to six guys and eventually I got to be the one on the catwalk.”
And so began the life of limousines, paparazzi and hundreds of beautiful women right? Not quite.
“It was a real experience, I’d never done anything like that before so I didn’t know what to expect. I rocked up and I sat there for like two hours, no one spoke to me or knew who I was and all the girls were looking at me like I was some sort of creep trying to catch a glimpse,” he laughed.
“Eventually someone came up and said ‘okay you’re the kaftan man it’s pretty strange you’re the only guy here’ and I was like ‘you’re telling me’,” he chuckled.
And so it was, the lone male amongst 45 female models, that Simon was launched on the catwalk in the ‘mantan’ and stole the show with his very best blue steel.
“They even took the piss out of me on Sunrise.”
With priceless exposure Simon doesn’t have any ideas about becoming the next Tyson Beckford just yet, but is happy to see where the ride takes him.
“Yeah it was great exposure, I’ve only really had a couple of gigs and this all came out of nowhere like it was dream or something,” he said.
“It was kind of my dirty little secret, I’d sneak off and do some casting shots and not tell anybody about it but I’m sprung now so I’ll just see where it goes I guess.”
Looks like the Tomcat is well and truly out of the bag.