From Cité Malherbes to Paris Fashion Week where Lorenzo Bagero, DJ-producer of Mauritian origin, will perform on January 25. A checkered journey and a life lesson, where being homeless at 18 does not prevent you from becoming an “atypical businessman” at 28.
A name that hits like a brand. Lorenzo Bagero. The singularity that goes with it. Because this man with a tattooed face, of Mauritian origin, citizen of the world, does not fit into any box. Or rather, he seems to have tried them all. And as they didn’t suit him, he created one of his own.
That of the DJ-producer who, after experiencing grandeur and decadence, wishes to return to his roots. As a prelude to a “three-week European tour”, he announced a tour to Mauritius for March this year. Performances at festivals which will begin on March 5 in GrandBaie, he only says. Backdrop for a possible project to launch a modeling agency with us.
At 28 years old, it is by choice that Lorenzo Bagero, whose last name is Boodhoo, begins this tour in a native island where he has not returned “for eight years”. He grew up in Cité Malherbes in Curepipe until the age of 14.
Which school did you attend? “I didn’t agree with the school”he replies. “I didn’t study. It wasn’t for me.” He started working at the age of 13. Odd jobs which are partly explained by his “complicated” family situation. His mother has rebuilt her life, he only says.
Lorenzo Bagero left Mauritius for France at the age of 14. An adolescence lived between his grandmother and uncles. With hindsight, even if he recognizes that the “studies help open doors in the professional world”Lorenzo Bagero insists : “Charisma allows you to break down these doors.”
In France, the teenager who has energy to spare channels his energy into sport. “We adopt the behavior of the people we are with”, he explains. From his past in the city, he says he kept a “a little wild side”. A boxer’s temperament which makes him a “European mixed martial arts champion from the age of 16 to the age of 18”.
At odds with the school but also with his loved ones, the life path he recounts on the phone resembles at times a Stations of the Cross. “I lived on the streets in Paris for a year.” The 18-year-old cleans for a living. “I was also a dishwasher in restaurants.” At the time, he lived on the rue du 9-september in Paris, a business district around the Regus, a building where the offices of many companies were located.
Through an encounter, his life takes on another existence. Seeing his tattooed face, someone advised him to try his luck in fashion. By playing this physique, but especially this style “atypical”. An epithet that has stuck with him ever since. Just like the Cry baby written in the ink he wears on his forehead. Next to it is the “crown of Jean Michel Basquiat”. Under one eye, there is the symbol of a broken heart with two first names: Aydée and Lucie. “Those of my mother and my sister.” On the other cheek, the tattoo represents a rose. Each of the tattoos is “one of the blows that life gave me”. Add to this the bad boy look highlighted by a clothing preference for the rock’n’roll style in leather, bodysuit and ripped jeans, and a fashion icon is already born.
200 refusals
From then on, Lorenzo Bagero worked to pay for the trip to a fashion capital: New York. The beginnings are extremely difficult. “I received 200 rejections.” But over time, the “tattooed face” of someone who “has never been shy” gets noticed in castings. His opening – his first contract – comes in the form of a “shooting for an advertising campaign for Calvin Klein”. He is 19 years old. From there things get carried away. He becomes the chic tattooed model of the moment. Was represented for two years by the Wilhemina International modeling agency. It’s the whirlwind. Posing one day in New York, finding yourself four days later in Spain for another photo session, crossing the Atlantic again to pose in Los Angeles and so on. But once the spotlight is off, the dizziness of the fashion industry makes it prey to addictions. Lorenzo Bagero does not hide the fact that he has tried a lot of substances. “But I never got pricked”, he emphasizes. It’s a way for him to “fight against depression”.
What helped him get through it? On the phone, the soft voice speaking with a French accent says, without fluctuating, «it was there». “It’s something important to me. Every day I pray.” A path where his mother accompanies him, with whom he reconnects. Leaning on one side on this mother, “who is very strong, who taught me to become responsible and to fight every day” and on the other, on his faith, Lorenzo Bagero escapes from the double hell of addictions and depression.
He also takes a healthy step back from the whirlwind of flashes, to concentrate on the management and business aspect of fashion. Lorenzo Bagero creates his niche market: a mix of fashion and music. He hosts shows during fashion shows, which puts him in contact with the faces of the brands, but above all, with those who manage them. Lorenzo Bagero is scheduled to take place during Paris Fashion Week on January 25.
The former model, who already has the basics, is further forging “her” brand. With, for example, sweeping sentences where he explains that after wearing designer clothes for work, “today I only wear Lorenzo Bagero and you won’t find that anywhere”.
He orchestrates a communications campaign. Give interviews while cultivating a certain mystery. Even if it’s strange for a model not to want to show off too much in photos, Lorenzo Bagero wants to control the images of him that circulate online. A particularity that he takes care of while waiting for the release of a Spanish series for Netflix in which he starred.
2024-01-07 14:02:21
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