Plate I · Calvin Klein, 1991
Plate II
Plate III
“The first man to appear on the cover of Harper's Bazaar.”
Discovered rollerblading in Venice Beach, California. His six-foot-four frame and signature long hair ignited a global media response that defined the male sex symbol of the 1990s fashion era. Calvin Klein Jeans. Versace. Iceberg. The face that made the nineties believe it had invented masculinity. In person, he stops a room. No filters required.
The face that made the nineties believe it had invented masculinity.
Born in Stockholm in 1968 to Dutch parents, Schenkenberg had studied economics and was working odd jobs in Los Angeles — most recently as a nanny in the Hollywood Hills — when photographer Barry King spotted him rollerblading on Venice Beach in 1989 and asked him to test. Those tests put him on a plane to Europe. By 1990 he had signed with Boss Models in New York and was walking runways in Milan and Paris. His breakthrough came in 1991 when Bruce Weber cast him in a 116-page Calvin Klein Jeans campaign for Vanity Fair — the shower scene with Carré Otis that stopped newsstands and reset the commercial standard for male fashion advertising in a single issue.
People magazine named him one of the Fifty Most Beautiful People in the World in May 1992. He went on to shoot the Versace campaign with Stephanie Seymour — photographed by Richard Avedon — which he has described as the finest images of his entire career. He has modeled for Valentino, Donna Karan, Giorgio Armani, Gianfranco Ferré, Joop, and Iceberg alongside Versace and Calvin Klein. He was photographed for Harper's Bazaar with Kate Moss on a New York subway in 1992 — one of the defining editorial images of the decade. He was the first man to appear on the cover of Harper's Bazaar.
In 1997 he published a book, Marcus Schenkenberg: New Rules, documenting his career. He speaks five languages, splits his time between New York, Los Angeles, and Stockholm, and remains represented by Ford Models and Soul Artist Management. He has never required a platform, an algorithm, or a cultural moment beyond what the camera found when he stepped in front of it.
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