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8 Things We Learned About David Gandy in Capri

10 years after his first Dolce & Gabbana Light Blue campaign, there’s still *something* about David Gandy.

Career
8 Things We Learned About David Gandy in Capri
Renée Rodenkirchen

There are a couple things we already knew about David Gandy—that probably everyone knows. 1) He is crazy good-looking. Not in a jokey, Derek Zoolander way, but in an IRL Greek god way. 2) A related fact: when it comes to male-modeldom, no one rules quite like Gandy. He’s the ultimate in nearly every way, in large part because of that iconic Dolce & Gabbana Light Blue campaign (now 10 years old—which, honestly, just makes us feel old), in which he stars with Bianca Balti. So when we were invited to Capri, the site of that famous picture, to meet Gandy and Balti, well, it was our chance, not only to, ahem, hang out in Capri, but also to learn a little bit more about the guy.


He’s nostalgic about Dolce & Gabbana Light Blue:
“Dolce is half the reason that I’m able to do all these crazy things I’m doing. It started here ten years age in Capri. When we were coming on the boat this time, I thought how very different it was ten years ago when I was at the Milan show and then we got the call to be in this campaign, but we didn’t know what it was. I got flown to Naples and I was just walking up and down the promenade not knowing what I was shooting, never having met Mario Testino. Then how ten years later I’m being chauffeured to the private boat that takes me to the island... It always seems longer than ten years ago and it’s slightly weird how things have changed.”

He has an English sense of humor...:
“I have my own person, my cologne applier [laughs]. It’s amazing. Now and again, you’ll see him, he’ll come around and spray the perfect amount of Light Blue. I call him LB. No, I’m just the same as everyone else. I’m joking. They say to spray your pulse points because then it’s closer to your blood, so wrists and neck. And then that’s about it. I think men make that mistake of when you get used to your scent and then you spray so much on you and it’s like you're eating the fragrance—it’s way too much. Less is more with a fragrance.” 

...but not an English perspective on health:
“It’s quite easy when you come to places like this and there’s fresh fish. It’s harder to stay healthy in London then it is when I travel because in the Mediterranean and Spain, it’s just a healthy lifestyle anyway. The nutrition in England, I was just reading an article yesterday, is totally wrong. We are so nutritionally behind in the UK, it’s a little bit scary. Hence why we are the most obese European nation.

Thank god for Whole Foods. I cook for myself and don’t eat any processed foods. That’s the thing where people make mistakes is they look at something and they go, ‘wow, it says low fat and low carbs’—that’s rubbish. Just stay away from processed foods and eat fresh foods—that’s it. It’s so simple at the end of the day.”

His skincare routine is simple:
“Men are quite lucky. There’s three things a man should do: a serum, a moisturizer, a sunscreen and that’s it.”

He packs light:
“I designed beachwear, my own line David Gandy, which is part of my range, so I pretty much packed that. I thought Capri, swimwear, towelling polo shirts, maybe just some light loose trousers. That was about it. I designed the right range—for this trip anyway.

I pack quite light. I just don’t like having a lot of stuff. I quite clinically think: ‘right, I’ve got two days out.’ I never bring options or anything like that. I know what I’m wearing. And I have to have chargers and cables. I feel an electronic store when I’m going away now. There’s chargers for something and adapters for something, and laptops and wires and everything else—the madness.”

He got his start with a televised competition:
“I was at university and my friends sent a video to a TV competition on mid-morning television. I started from there and I finished uni and thought, well, it might be interesting for a year or so. Fifteen years later here we are. Still. Traveling around the world.”

He’s not *just* a model:
“I have my own clothing range, I have four charities, I powerboat race, I race cars. I have my racing license. I write for Vogue and GQ. I review cars for Vanity Fair. I don’t really model that much anymore because I have all these other things. But the fashion industry has given me all the avenues to be able to do everything that I’ve really, really wanted to do. I get bored so easily and if you meet me when I’m bored I’m just awful. I’m actually here for two weeks and I’m like, I need some time off! Let’s start a new project or something.”

He’s a speed freak:
“We just broke the powerboat speed record. We did 124 to 126 miles an hour on the water, which is just scary. You have to do all these dunk tests before and sea survival tests just in case something goes wrong. Basically you’re just chucked into a swimming pool for a whole day turned upside down, flipped up again, turned upside down. Then you have to sit there with water pouring up your nose. You have to sit there for a minute. They did this dramatic thing on BBC One about how the fighter pilots have to do it. They made it look so horrible on screen. We were fine when we were racing. Touch wood. I’ve got to do another one soon, but that was pretty extreme.”

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