Robotic, impassive runway modeling has become such a norm that even a little grin or hair flick can seem transgressive.
Pat Boguslawski is pushing the envelope way further, encouraging models to linger, gesticulate, lock eyes with the audience and emote — or storm through the room, as if tightening into a strong wind, or escaping paparazzi.
He’s the “movement director” behind Haider Ackermann‘s one-off couture show for Jean Paul Gaultier in January, where elegant postures were de rigueur, and John Galliano‘s return to the runway for Maison Margiela, a barnburner of quirky characters in one hell of a hurry.
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“I want to make people feel confident and good — and realize that they be more than a model walking with no emotions,” he says. “Often they come to the castings and feel like they should be walking like vampires or something.”
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By contrast, Boguslawski invites models to free their hips and their face muscles, to bring energy to the catwalk and something “extra” to help fuel a stronger fashion moment.
Trained as a dancer in his native Poland, Boguslawski certainly brought something “extra” when he tried his hand at modeling. At a rehearsal for an Alexander McQueen show in 2014, creative director Sarah Burton stopped Boguslawski in his tracks and asked if he could please teach the other models to feel the music like him, and to move like him.
When soon after he was asked to assist on a fashion shoot and advise the model on poses, a lightbulb went off in his head. “I told myself, ‘I’m gonna turn this into a thing.’ Because before I had never really heard of anyone actually doing this job.”
Today he’s represented by Streeters and Elite World Group and has logged campaign and show credits for the likes of Balenciaga, Gucci, Givenchy, Chanel, Versace, Fendi, Valentino and Louis Vuitton. He’s also worked with such photographers as Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott, Nick Knight, Alasdair McLellan, Drew Vickers, Charlotte Wales and Mikael Jansson.
In an interview, he held out hope that fashion might be entering an era of more expressive modeling, applauding Mugler creative director Casey Cadwallader for his recent runway extravaganza, where models vamped it up to the extreme.
Boguslawski argues that most models he’s worked with are up for anything, and no dance experience is required. “It’s all about how open-minded you are,” he muses. “We’re supposed to have fun in fashion.”
In his estimation, people who follow fashion are “hungry” for high-energy moments and original runway expressions. A case in point: The exaggerated, scissoring walk of model Leon Dame that he engineered for a Maison Margiela show in 2019 went viral, spawning millions of views and almost as many memes.
“He’s always down to create something,” Boguslawski says of Dame, who closed the fall 2023 Maison Margiela show with a twisted, mysterious runway stomp that lingers in one’s memory banks.
“Pat knows how to loosen up the hips,” John Galliano, creative director of Maison Margiela, relates in an interview, noting that he engaged the movement specialist “to instill confidence in some of our younger muses.”
The designer recalls a season when he had initiated coed shows for Maison Margiela and put male models in high heels.
“Pat was invaluable — giving confidence, balance, projection, so that the muses could command their space,” Galliano explains. “Pat scurried them off to the floor above and they spent a good part of the afternoon being coached. Then they would come down to start the fitting and honestly, I could see the magic, the effect that he had on those boys. They looked so natural in heels.”
For his latest show for the fall 2023 season, Galliano says he wanted “that very brazed face, squinting eyes, just like you do when you march against strong winds at gale force. That was the brief.”
Not that it was a blanket policy.
“In other instances, there are little idiosyncrasies, little quirks that we didn’t want to correct; that we wanted to leave or enhance. Because it was about characters and embracing all their different postures and stances,” the designer says. “We had to identify what that was to make them very individual. Pat was instrumental in that.”
For Ackermann’s turn as Gaultier’s guest couturier, the brief was “something just very elegant and beautiful,” according to the movement director.
In addition to displaying what he calls “couture movements,” he says he wanted the models “to feel very sexy and feminine and free and beautiful. And just take their time on the runway, to show the audience not only the clothes, but also the beauty they have inside them.”
Says Ackermann: “With his gentleness and sensuality, Pat is the helping hand for them to move forward with grace and strength.”
Boguslawski was stumped only momentarily when asked to name his favorite runway walks of all time. The names of four fashion veterans, each with an inimitable presence and walk, came out in a gush: Maria Carla Boscono, Shalom Harlow, Naomi Campbell and Gisele Bündchen.
Galliano, for one, is thrilled if Boguslawski is shifting the energy toward more expression on the runway.
“I have always been into expressive modeling. Why? Because I think that once that muse can convince you that he, or she or they own their outfit that to me equates someone who is cool, if they own what you are wearing,” Galliano explains. “Also, to have Pat in the fittings with us, he has to understand the line. He can often lighten the situation, which I value so much. He can make me giggle.”