Kenzo Piogo walks the runway in the Peruvian embassy in Paris. *Photo by Blake*

By Tom Victoria

Kenzo Piogo wasn’t fated to be tied to a desk all day. He found his calling to travel the globe as a fashion model.

The Frenchman explained why he enjoys posing for the lens.

“I always love the fashion,” he said. “For me, classic jobs like 9-to-5 were not for me. I couldn't do it. I found modeling, and it was really matching my personality.

Kenzo, 24, also has passion for the other major aspect of modeling.

“I love fashion,” he said. “I love photography. So it's joining different things that I was loving. At the beginning, I was just, okay, let's just give it a try just doing some photo shoots with amateurs, photographers. They told me, yeah, you have some potential. So I just deepened this potential to see what happens.”

Kenzo worked this year in Asia’s Golden Sparrow.

“India is the most exotic country I have been to at the moment,” he said. “It's very different from Europe, but also very different from Bali and Thailand. The work here is interesting. It's the best place to start as a model. Because there are a lot of jobs and a lot of castings. So that's the perfect opportunity to get experience and skills like posing, expressions, attitude, but also to improve the portfolio.”

Kenzo appeared in GMARO Magazine. *Photo by Phil Nguyen*

Kenzo said the country offers much more to see in the future.

“I want to see more of India,” he said. “I only stayed in New Delhi, so my opinion of India is limited. I want to visit places like Ladakh, Rishikesh, Benarès, Pondicherry, Goa. There are so many places here that I want to discover. I won't have time to do everything before I leave. I will come back to India for holidays one day for sure because there are so many things to do here.”

Kenzo previously worked in Thailand, where there was an unexpected fashion venue in Bangkok.

“This fashion show was unexpected because when I was doing the casting, it was in the mall and I knew that it was for the mall,” he said. “I didn't expect a really huge fashion show, like something big or something great. I was just, okay, I'm just going to do it. It's always cool to meet people at a fashion show. It's always good to have experience, so let's go.”

Kenzo discovered the seemingly modest site boasted a prominent show.

“When I was on the job, I was really shocked about the organization, because it was a big organization, and the crowd, because there were a lot of people who were watching us during the fashion show,” he said. “There were big Thai celebrities. I was really shocked about it because I was expecting something small, not something big, but it was really big. There were a lot of different cameras. I was amazed.”

What didn’t surprise Kenzo was the congeniality of the Thai people.

“I already knew the Asian, South Asian culture because in Bali, it's not the same, but it's close,” he said. “That's really different than in Europe because they are really always smiling, always nice. So that's really different than from France, for example, because French people are always grumpy, always complaining. But I think that's a good difference. When I came here, I already knew the culture, so I already knew how it would be.”

After modeling for a few years, Kenzo stopped.

“For the moment, I only had a fashion show,” he said. “I didn't have a photo shoot for the moment because when I went here in Bangkok at the beginning, I was not planning to do modeling again. I was modeling in Paris back then when I was like 18 to 21, 22. But then I stopped because I was doing my business, and I was just focused on it. It's when I came back here that I say, okay, let's go do modeling again. I started to do it again at the end of December. It was not the best period to start again with the Christmas party, New Year’s Eve.”

Kenzo has the right tailor measurements and height for runways.

“I have the good measurements for it,” he said. “I'm 188 (centimeters), so I'm good for it. But this fashion show was really special because there was every type of model. It was for specific models that have specific brands, so there was an oversized model. There was also a lady boy (transgender). There were classic models like me. It was an interesting fashion show.”

Chance encounters with another model, Marius Bourgogne, led to more work for Kenzo. Marius started Renaissance Management to help other models find work across the globe.

“I met him once,” Kenzo said. “I was going to a model party in Bangkok. He's in Bangkok, too, so I met him there the first time. What's funny is that I just met him again in my building where I lived in Bangkok because he's my neighbor. I didn't know it before. One week after we met the first time, I met him in my building. He told me, yeah, I'm living here, too. We were neighbors, so that was funny.”

Renaissance had both Kenzo and Marius in New Dehli.

The Bangkok trip was Kenzo’s first sojourn to Asia for modeling.

“I was in Bali two years ago for a few months, but I was not there for modeling,” he said. “I was just traveling on my own for business and just living there for a while.”

Kenzo doesn’t mind the tedious parts of modeling such as lengthy waits to shoot and pose due to the overall enjoyment.

“What I like the most is the experience,” he said. “For example, being on stage, meeting new people I wouldn't meet if it was not in this area in this field in this industry.”

Having other business interests helped Kenzo enjoy modeling more.

“Before, it was not easy for me to handle it because I was focused on it, and that was the only thing that I wanted,” he said. “But now that I have my business, it's far better to handle it because I'm like, okay, if I have a job, it's good. If I don't have jobs, it doesn't matter because I already have something on the side. It's really better for how I feel, but also to be efficient. Because when I go to casting now, I'm not like, oh, I really need this job. Now, when I go to casting or jobs, I'm just enjoying it. I'm not in a bad state. That really makes a huge difference for me.”

Kenzo occasionally wears more brazen designs not suited for any practical use.

“The mindset with that is not always to sell it for practical daily life, but I think two ways,” he said. “First is maybe for big special events to have an extravagant outfit. The second reason is to advertise the designer, just to let him express his creativity and show, even if it's not practical, even if people won't wear it daily, but just to show his talent and what he's capable of.”

Kenzo doesn't find it too difficult now to express certain emotions for the camera.

“Before, for me, it was really hard to do any kind of emotion,” he said. “I was only doing one certain type of emotion. It was really hard for me to do all those things. But now that I improve on myself, because there is a gap of a few years between last time and now. Now, I don't have a specific emotion that is harder than another one. Maybe sadness would be more difficult. But it's like a game. You play a character like you're an actor for the shoot.”

Kenzo wasn’t always comfortable in front of the camera.

“The first photo shoot was really intimidating because you don't know what to do with your body,” he said. “You don't know how you look. You don't know what angle is good. You just don't know. But you just have to go into the water and just do it, and you become comfortable with them. There are some people who are instantly comfortable in front of the camera and who are really natural, but I think that's a really small number of models. For most of the models, you have to practice and you become good with practice.”

Kenzo once visited New York for a school trip, but would like to return to America someday.

“It was not, I think, a good representation of the USA, but I really want to go,” he said.

Other locales also appeal to Kenzo.

“I want to go all around the world, but the main places that I want to visit will be Medellin in Colombia, Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia, Warsaw in Poland, Los Angeles and Miami,” he said.

Kenzo is attracted to the Florida city’s climate and atmosphere.

“Overall, it's the Latino vibe, the weather,” he said. “It's looking really good to me.”

Kenzo also has interest in Eastern European countries such as Poland.

“That's a really different vibe from Thailand, but I love it,” he said. “I love places for their specificity. In Thailand, the people are really nice, really friendly. In Poland, people are cold, but that's a different mindset. They are not cold because they are bad people. They are just cold because it's in their culture. They're friendly only when you are really friendly with them, so that's another type of culture. I like to take in different cultures, to really integrate them. I'm really curious about this culture in Poland because I was living in Estonia for a few months, so it's a similar culture, Slavic northern culture. Also, the buildings and the city looks really nice there, so I'm really curious about it.”

Kenzo’s spread in Blake magazine. *Photo by Cyprien Leym*

Kenzo hopes modeling keeps him on the move.

“My previous goal when I was in Paris, my dream was to travel thanks to modeling,” he said. “That was my big dream. Get the experience. Now, I'm experiencing it, and it's even better than in my dreams because I feel comfortable. I'm not dependent on that because I have my business on the side. I don't have specific goals on modeling. I just want to go the furthest as possible and see what happens, just enjoying it, do my best and see what can it bring to me.”

As a youth, Kenzo first glimpsed modeling on television.

“It was in some TV reality show,” he said. “It was not showing the true models, but it was giving me a first shot of what modeling is. And I was, oh, that's interesting. That doesn't seem easy, but it seems interesting. It was a famous French model that is Baptiste Giabiconi. He was the muse of (fashion designer) Karl Lagerfeld. This guy was really famous. He was appearing in some TV. I read this bio, and I was, okay, so this guy is a model. His life is really interesting.”

Kenzo wasn’t encouraged to become a model growing up.

“Not especially,” he said. “It's only when I started to do some photo shoots that I was receiving maybe you can have some potential. But it was never you really need to do it. I was just going with the flow and I ended up in modeling.”

Kenzo has a technology business dealing with social media.

“With my partners, we have software that help creators to grow on TikTok,” he said. “We give them the best trends to go viral on TikTok. It's just iteration. We start something, and then we just go with the market. First offer we did, it was okay, but it wasn't fitting the market enough. Then we adapt with the feedback we had. So through iteration, we arrived to this offer. But even this offer is not perfect yet. We always improve, because that's the key: to not be satisfied about what you have, but always improve. That's really important.”

Kenzo explained why TikTok is popular.

“Now, the consumption of the content is really different than before on YouTube,” he said. “Ten years ago, it was a video from three minutes to 10 minutes. Usually that was the ideal range. Now, the market is really short content with TikTok, YouTube shorts and reels. But on YouTube, most of the videos are from 10 minutes to 30 minutes now. There are a lot of different types of formats and types of content that are more adapted to some people, but also to some moment of the day. Because you won't consume YouTube videos at the same time than shorts. For example, shorts can be you are in the subway, you just scroll on your phone and you just look at some shorts.”

Kenzo said other platforms have their time, too,

“But when you are in your bed in the evening just before going to sleep, maybe some people will scroll on TikTok,” he said. “But maybe most of the people will just launch a video, watch a video of 30 minutes, 40 minutes.”

Kenzo works out to stay fit.

“I have a coach,” he said. “It's a friend and he's now my coach, so it's really nice. Before I was only doing exercise by myself, so I'm curious to see the difference between a coach and working out by myself. I was doing also jiu-jitsu before I tried a little bit of Muay Thai, which is nice. I found a new passion a few months ago — that is Bachata and I really love it.”

Kenzo doesn’t need to be motivated to get things done.

“For modeling, it's really a game,” he said. “Even when I go to casting, for me, it's fun. I met people I don't know. I do some photos for the casting. But for the business, sometimes, it's less fun. But I don't care about my motivation. I just do what I need to do. If I need to do something, I just do it. Sometimes when I'm not motivated, I just listen to myself. I always listen to myself. But if I really have something to do, I just do it.”

Kenzo offered advice to aspiring models.

“I would say that not putting your whole hope in modeling,” he said. “Start something on the side that is not dependent on modeling because you don't know how modeling can evolve for you and even just for your well-being. For me, it's so good to have something on the side that is not dependent on modeling, and it's made me better in modeling. So I think that's the best advice for models: always have something on the side.”

Kenzo said not giving up is key to modeling.

“It's persistence,” he said. “Even if you fail the casting, never mind. Just continue what you need to do. You just have to keep moving ahead.”

Kenzo’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kenzo.piogo/

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