PAUSE Meets: Brian Whittaker

Do you get time off for yourself?

Yeah, I do get time off. I used to go to college so it was kind of hard to get time for myself. It just felt like I’d go to college, If I didn’t go to college, I was working. If I wasn’t doing either of those things, I had to make time for my friends and my mum. I live in London now in my own place and I don’t go to college anymore, so when I’m not working I get time which I just use to think.

How did your modelling career start?

I got scouted on Instagram by another model. He sent me his agent’s information after he had already messaged him and showed him pictures of me. Once the agency reached out to me, they just asked for some pictures and I sent in some. They liked the pictures, so me and my dad went in not long after I was 15 years old. I remember I took the day off school to go and do it with my dad. They just liked me, I guess.

Do you think your Instagram following before-hand helped you?

In a way, yes. But I don’t think my Instagram really helped me until recently. I think because I had Instagram I didn’t have to deal with the pressures that the other models had. All the agents were putting pressure on models to get an Instagram following which isn’t really an easy task.

So you didn’t have that type of pressure, did you have a different kind of pressure?

No, I’ve honestly never really had pressure from agencies. I’m quite lucky with that because there are so many models that have to deal with a lot of pressure from agencies which knocks their confidence.

What are some of the campaigns and projects that you’ve featured in which you are proudest of?

The one I am proudest of is my first campaign – Stone Island. The other campaigns I am proud of aren’t out yet. I can’t really talk about it until its out, but one should be out in September.

How would you describe modelling in today’s age? It becomes essential for the model’s of today to be public figures, so how are you going about branding yourself?

Right now I’m focussing on branding myself a lot more. At the start, I used to just focus on growth; growth and branding are two different things. Honestly, branding should be part of your growth right from the beginning and I made the mistake of not branding myself too well before the growth. Obviously, I have done the growing part very well, I have around 900,00 followers now. The growth, I pride myself on that but branding is something I’m working on right now. It’s about finding the right balance.

Did you ever feel insecure in the early days when using Instagram? In today’s society, a lot of young people are insecure about their use of social media.

Honestly, Instagram gave me security. I was always insecure: I was a mixed race kid who grew up in the whitest place in England. I grew up in a very white village, just outside of Birmingham. When I was growing up, I was known as the black kid. I’m mixed race and to a lot of black people I am seen as white, I’m very light-skinned. If I go to a black area, I’m seen as white and they don’t really like me for that. If I go to a white area, or when I grew up in this white area, kids didn’t really like me that much either. Kids didn’t really like me until they thought it was cool to say the N word and then they used to act like “Brian’s my friend, I can say it”. When that stuff first started happening, at first it didn’t feel good but at the same time I wasn’t used to that sort of attention so I guess I appreciated that attention and just started accepting it like “I’m the black kid”. Kids started to at least pretend to like me.  That and the fact I’ve got very ‘gappy’ teeth, also another black feature of mine… Also my nostrils, a few kids used to say it looked like I had sunglasses on because my nostrils were so big.

You felt like an outsider?

I felt like an alien. I remember being in primary school, looking in the mirror and I just didn’t know what was wrong with me. I knew there was something wrong with me but I didn’t know what it was. Why do I look different to everyone else? It never occurred to me that my mum was black and I was a mixed race kid.

When did you begin to accept yourself and start feeling happy?

After high school, it’s a shame I never really went through that during school. Literally the summer I left was when my life went uphill in so many ways and I met some friends. It took me to see a different life to see that there is more too life. When you’re in school, your life is school. That’s why kids care so much about popularity and having those pouches and what-not. Your reputation in school is all you know and it’s everything. The fact that I got to experience life outside of school before the other kids – working as a model – meant that I was working with adults and people in fashion. Seeing that and having the realisation that the more people I meet, the more perspective I’m gaining. Right now I am open to have a conversation with absolutely anyone because with each person you meet, you gain perspective.

You use your Instagram in a business manner. Some models don’t utilise their platforms by collaborating with brands outside of their modelling career. How did you go about doing that and what tips would you give to other models looking to be influencers?

Social media, promoting and marketing is to have a brand identity and direction that you want in your head. You have to see yourself as a brand and see what is good and bad for the brand. If a certain company – I’m not going to throw shade – but if a company was approaching you with a fitness product and said “Hey, can you promote this and we will pay you this amount per post or we will give you a percentage on each sale you make with this code” if it’s some bulls*** brand and you’re promoting that, it’s going to make you look less serious to the brands you actually want to work with. You’ve got to not do some of those jobs that you think will look bad for your brand’s identity.

If we look at my Instagram and, for example, Luka Sabbat’s, we both have a very similar follower. Luka has built up his Instagram so strategically and has such a clear brand identity that he can be doing all these fashion posts and it all looks organic. That’s another thing, you’ve got to make your posts look organic with sponsorships, make it look as organic as possible or people will see it’s a bulls*** sponsor and people don’t like that as people can see through the bulls***.  Back to what I was saying about Luka, he’s done it very strategically and very smart, so now people only associate him with fashion. It makes sense for high-end fashion companies to be hitting him up. But if I look at myself, I do, do fashion but I also do a lot of fitness – people know me for having a good physique. For example, while Luka will be doing a lot of fashion, fitness companies aren’t going to go to Luka. Fitness companies are going to gravitate towards me as I am physically fit. I am running, I show that I am running and people know that I am into fitness and people come to me for fitness inspiration. It’s about branding; you’ve got to see yourself as a brand.

The thing that I’ve been thinking about a lot lately is see(ing) yourself as a brand versus when you have a brand. When you have a brand, you are prepared to put money into your brand to get it off the ground. How many people are prepared to put money into themselves and their Instagram? No one. If Instagram is your business, you’ve got to put money into it. It’s about how bad you want it and how hard you’re willing to grind for it.

Tell us the story of how you met your girlfriend.

I woke up and my friend had sent me this message and it was a screenshot. He was like “Zara Larsson just posted you on Twitter”. I was like “What, who’s that”. He was like “What, you don’t know who that is… she’s a singer”. I went on her Instagram and thought “Oh, she looks cute”, obviously saw she had a lot of followers so thought she must be doing something. I went on a music streaming service, typed her name in and I listened to the first song and thought “Oh, I’ve actually heard this before”, she’s super popular on the radio. It’s so weird, after that day, every store and gym that I went to, they were always playing her music. I gave her a follow on Instagram, I DM’d her and I was like “I’m Brian Whittaker, I’m the guy you were looking for”.

Basically, the post said: Who’s this guy, how old is he, where is he from, how does he like his eggs cooked. Then I sent her a DM saying “I like my eggs scrambled”. We just talked for a little bit and then we met up a couple of weeks later in London and went for a nice dinner. We then saw each other about a month later in New York and then after we saw each other in New York we actually didn’t see each other for a long time. The thing is, after New York she then came back to London not too long after that. She was like “Come to London, I’m coming to London so come and meet me”. So I came to London to meet her and because I used to live close to Birmingham it took around 2 1/2 hours to get there. I go all the way down to London, I’m texting her like “Hey, where are you staying? Where are you at?” and she’s not replying. When I got to London, one of my friends was actually there so I went straight to my friend’s place and we just started hanging out and we were hanging out for like 2 hours and I was hitting Zara up and I was like “Hey, what are you doing?”. I was trying to call her and her phone was dead. After a while I said, you know what, I’m just going to go home. So I started going home and then she called me and she was like “Oh no, I fell asleep. I got to the hotel and I fell asleep, come and see me now”. It was getting late so I thought the time I get to her hotel, I’m only going to be able to be there for around ½ hour and then have to go back. I felt a little bit embarrassed and I said “I’m just going to go home”. Went 2 ½ hours back home, 5 hours on the train and she had pretty much stood me up. We actually didn’t see each other for a year – we barely spoke at all. Then we met as I was in Paris walking for Fenty x Puma and she was also in Paris doing press and promo. The funny thing is, we were actually both supposed to see other people whilst we were there and we both cancelled on these people and then we saw each other. That’s when we clicked. Every other time we saw each other, there was always something like “Oh I got to get home, I’ve got school tomorrow”, it was that kind of stuff. In New York, I was with my mum and she was looking for something. I remember I was going for dinner with Zara and my mum was like “Hey, where’s the camera charger? I need the camera charger!”. It was so late, I was 16 at the time and she was worried. There was always something. Last year when we met in Paris, it was just perfect timing and everything just want so perfectly. We just went for a nice dinner and drank wine.

If you weren’t modelling, what would you be doing?

Honestly, I don’t really see myself as a model despite that being the only thing I’m really doing. If I wasn’t modelling? There are some things I am going to pursue but I’ve not talked about it to anyone except for my friends and Zara. One of those things is music and one of those things is acting.

I can definitely see you in the acting field.

Yeah, a lot of people say that. Especially because of my voice, people are always saying that I sound like I should be in a movie. I’m just going to take life as it comes. There’s other things on top of that, there are companies that I want to start and I want to get involved with investing and all that kind of stuff.

Have you ever felt depressed on your journey with the amount of exposure you’ve got?

Not really. The thing about social media, when everything is going well – you’re on top of the world. But when you aren’t gaining as many followers as you were or you’re not getting as many likes on your post, you may think that you don’t rely on social media for happiness but it does have an effect. You are so used to things going well and that is the norm so you don’t think about it. As soon as things aren’t going as well… it can give you a lot of anxiety. It used to give me a bit of anxiety when I had patches of time when things weren’t moving so smoothly but as soon as things start picking up again you realise it’s not that deep. At the same time, social media can effect people because either you’re really not going to be accepting yourself and you’re going to try and be everyone else on social media. Or then, like me, it has really helped me come out of my shell and gain confidence. I would not have been anywhere near as confident now without social media. I’ve had people say negative things to me and you’ve got to learn to overcome that.