Brae - Victorian Model

You started your modelling career back 15 years and decided to take a leap of faith in it so what was your first photo shoot like?

I will never forget my first photo shoot was very intimidating. I didn’t know what I was doing, I had no guidance in respect to mentoring from others in the industry at that point. It was one of those things where you had to learn and teach yourself as you go. You’d get certain perspective from photographers that you were working with. It definitely helped me become more confident even after that first photo shoot. It was rejuvenating and made me feel really good about myself and I definitely liked the pictures that came out as a result of the effort that was put into the day of actually getting it all done.

What is the craziest thing that has happened to you while on set of a photo shoot?

Having a dildo pulled out that was bigger than my arm. It was quite funny as it was a prank pulled on me by one of the photographers I’d worked with for many years and he knew I didn’t do those type of shoots in respect of where that was going. So as a joke he started on my next prop and said, “Just turn around for a second I have a really interesting prop”. Mind you I was in handcuffs at the time and I turned around for what looked like a baseball bat to me but was a rubbery baseball bat and it was huge. And I said I hope that’s to stir the pot of stew, I really hope that’s what that’s for haha.

What have some of your biggest hurdles been to get yourself where you are in your career?

Witnessing a murder, I don’t know if that is way too harsh to go there. That actually helped me to become a strong person, it broke me but at the same time I got this job at Peters and I had 100 of the guys working there ask me why don’t I step into the world of modelling and I in turn laughed at them. At that time, I was domestically abused and missing a front tooth and was a little bit apprehensive of how that would work out in the modelling industry. So, hurdle wise I had to rise above my own imperfections.

Let us look at you tattoos, when did you get your first tattoo, describe it and have you added anything to the tattoo?

I don’t even know how many years it was; I’m going to go five years ago. I waited and didn’t want to start off life early with tattoos, I was a wild child but I didn’t want to start off with tattoos that I would hate 20 years later because I made some stupid decisions when I was younger and impulsive decisions because I’m an impulsive person. So I waited until my 30’s and I’ve always loved Mandela dot work and I decided to a get a huge tattoo, for your first tattoo lets say, its an octopus on one side and then on the other side I’ve got my date for the Mandela which was done by Jessie Lee who is an amazing tattoo artist. From there I haven’t added to that tattoo, I’ve just added a lot more tattoos to the body.

That was actually going to be my next question because if you look closer there is a weird looking design of a woman that actually is an octopus. Care to explain all this?

Her name is Oblena. I named her because I have a huge fascination with octopus which is very strange thing to have, I know but they are extremely smart creatures, I’ve done a lot of watching of research on octopus and octopi. I actually had Oblena drawn up for me because I’m a huge Tim Burton fan and a massive Dr Seuss fan and I thought how can I convert the two, you can’t right, unless somebody out there could be artistically creative doing that type of themed work. I just so happened to come across a beautiful girl Lisa Gross who I was put onto to through a tattoo artist Jessie Lee who did my first one because she had sent her a skateboard with this amazing weird looking Tim Burton/Dr Seuss type creature on it. Lisa Gross lives in Canada and I paid her $US150 to draw me up Oblena. I wanted an octopus goddess in the style of Tim Burton slash Dr Seuss and I feel like that is what Oblena is. What made me want her was the fact that I’ve always had a huge respect for. For anyone that has grown up in the era of being a 1987 baby like myself, after school you get home, you go to the cupboard and get some munches, turn the TV on and you would find the show Real Monsters. There was a character named Oblena and that’s where I found her name although she wasn’t an octopus but was a Real Monster and I loved her for that.

Let’s move straight to the left arm where you have two decretive designs as well as your hand tattoos. Did they just look good that you had to have them there or was there another reason?

That was kind of an inspiration after watching Vikings, I’m not going to lie. The positioning for my tattoos, it started off with one side, it was done by Jessie Lee again, however she moved away. I have a bit of OCD and I like symmetry and like two things to be symmetrical to a degree. I also really liked the fact that it looked like shields so for me instead of going for the full sleeve like a lot of inked models do I decided to not do the sleeve and do the gloves and the body armour type of look if that makes any sense. The difference is that three of those four tattoos were done by the same artist, now the hand tattoos you can actually join and make into a full circle when they are put together. But unless you see them put together you don’t know that and it amazes a lot of people when you put them together. It was just good to be a little different.

Let’s talk about your back tattoos which firstly isn’t a big design but a thin long one that looks more like a Māori style?

It is a Māori inspired tribal tattoo and actually stems from a Polynesian design however due to the tribal respect we didn’t take the exact design that we could of because I’m not Māori. I didn’t want to disrespect the culture so I took inspiration from their beautiful style of tattooing. I had the tattoo artist draw it up in a way where it was exactly the same outline shapes but rather than filled rather than symbolic Polynesian tribal it was filled with symbols of a bit of this and a bit of that. We did that on only the spine and only one side to my back so it’s kind of half back tattoo but I am adding to that and it’s a work in progress.

Featured in Baddass Kulture Mag Issue #4 Sept 2024