With gently tousled hair and sporting a cornflower blue Ralph Lauren cable sweater, Tyler McFerson appears as relaxed and confident in the cozy comfort of a quaint mountain town coffee shop as in the simple elegance of a Sunfish sailboat gliding through the Hamptons.
Exactly.
That is what agents for Ford Models must have been looking for when McFerson’s striking 16-year-old cheekbones jumped off the test shots (taken by his little sister) that he sent them last summer.
Up until that point, it had been rough sailing for McFerson, a Flagstaff native. His girlfriend had just broken up with him and he was desperate to win her back. If she didn’t want to see his face again, would it bother her that plenty of others did? He thought it might. “I wanted to make her jealous, so I sent pictures to a couple of [modeling] agencies.”
This bold move turned out to be a brilliant strategy. McFerson was just growing out of his awkward middle school years and into his six-foot-two-inch frame. But the break-up did not help his self-image. “Prior to ninth grade, I was an ugly duckling. My teeth were too big for my mouth. I had braces and a Spider Man comb-over with about 30 pounds of gel.”
This ugly duckling was about to find out he was a swan in Calvin Klein’s clothing. His family is thrilled with the transformation. His mom, Lynn, drives him to photo shoots in Phoenix (he is not allowed to drive on the highway yet) and little sister, Kaylee, and her friends have practically formed a fan club.
Much more than just a pretty face, this model teen also tutors fifth through eighth graders in math, is on the speech and debate team and is involved in government through Model U.N. and Inspire Arizona, which strives to increase voter participation.
This summer, while many teens will be flipping hamburgers at McDonald’s or selling jeans at The Gap, McFerson will be walking the runway in Milan, Italy before heading to New York, where he recently signed on with Request Models. Ford will remain his mother agency.
“It’s definitely bizarre. This has all happened in the last six months,” he said.
Now at age 17, the BASIS teenager and AP scholar is graduating from high school a year early and plans to get to know the world of fashion. Several colleges have expressed interest in him because of his academic success, but he says he’s taking a few years off from school and holding out for the Ivy Leagues.
“I’m thinking of going into something with design – industrial design, graphic design, maybe fashion – I haven’t spent enough time in the industry to know if its fashion that I want to pursue in college or not.”
Meanwhile, a career in modeling can be lucrative, he admits. “It depends on how much you’re willing to work for it. It can be a substantial salary – 80 to 90,000 – which is good for taking pictures for a living,” he said. And he’s not ruling out a career in acting. “We’ll see where this takes me.”
Although he is not back together with the girlfriend whose actions changed his life, McFerson is enjoying being “the boyfriend on the shoot” in full-page ads like a recent romantic shot with a female model in the upscale Arizona Foothills Magazine. FBN
By Bonnie Stevens
FBN Editor
