Armando Campbell - Contributed

Up to six months ago Armando Julio Campbell had no interest in becoming a model.

Had it not been for a chance meeting with one of the leaders of Jamaica's fashion industry, Armando might have gone through life chasing his dream of becoming an architect.

Fate, however, had other plans.

Armando, who was named the 2008 Male Fashion Icon last month, is now hoping to make his mark in the fashion industry and has a potentially bright future, including a trip to Sweden next month and the possibility of trips to South Africa, Milan, and New York in 2009.

The Fashion Icon competition, which airs on Television Jamaica (TVJ), was created by Dewight Peters of Saint International Modelling Agency and is a model search seeking out people who have the personality and look to become successful players in the fashion industry.

Armando, a 22-year-old past student of St Andrew Technical High School, grew up in relative poverty in Hope Flats, St Andrew. He had ambition, but no money. So after completing studies at New Providence Primary, Calabar Junior High and St Andrew Technical High schools, he took a job at Sangster's Book Store in The Springs on Constant Spring Road in St Andrew, hoping to one day to realise his dreams.

Interest in modelling

Ironically, even though he had no interest in modelling, he had a brief but uncomfortable brush with the industry while in high school. It all started, he said, when the way he dressed caught a teacher's eye. "When I was in the 10th grade (one day) I got to school pretty late. I was a prefect at the time," he said at Devon House, St Andrew, last Sunday. "My shirt was immaculate and I was well put together. I was late, so I was outside with a whole lot of students."

An eighth-grade teacher saw him there and said "how you look so good come to school?"

The other irony was that it was his father, a clothing vendor, who played a minimal role in his life up till then, who taught him to look his best at all times.

Armando said the teacher took him to a modelling agency and had him sign up. However, unknown to his teacher, Armando provided the agency with incorrect personal information. "I was not interested in modelling because of some of the stigma associated with the industry," he confesses.

That was until one day in June this year when Peters, the head honcho at Saint International, walked into the book store to buy magazines. "Peters was having problems with a sales clerk and I went to assist," Armando recalled. "When he saw me he had his assistant take my number."

They called him minutes later, told him about the Male Icon competition and then pretty much inserted him into the final 30 contestants. All this time Armando still maintained his doubts about whether he wanted to be a model. But as he progressed he continued to amaze himself.

Evolution

"I was totally surprised when I made the top six," he recalled. "But when I made the final four I said to myself there must be something that this guy sees in me that I did not see."

Armando also began to witness his own evolution. "While going through the rounds I began to see what modelling could do for me," he said. "I had never been in a position to rely on myself. I learnt that I could transcend from a life of poverty into being somebody."

His family, including his dad, has thrown their full support behind Armando as he ventures into this new field of challenges for him, working at strengthening his portfolio to jump at the opportunities that he expects will be coming his way. Peters is also seeking out an international agency that will help Armando realise his full potential. "He is looking for an agency that would see me as not just another black male model," Armando says.

The Male Fashion Icon winner also knows this because already he has since experienced the benefits of being popular. He reveals how he recently had lunch at the US Embassy, adding that people in general now treat him differently.

He also hopes modelling provides him with a gateway to his degree in architecture/interior design and also helping the less fortunate. "My main aim is that I will become accomplished enough to give back," he said.

Armando said he wanted to give the kids in his community a role model to look up to, because many of them have only the drug pushers and abusers to look up to. He also wants them to know that "you may be born in the ghetto, but the ghetto is not born in you. Never give up and always stay true to yourself".