interview

Name:
Dillon Westbrock

Agency:
Wilhelmina New York (New York)

Age:
18

Height:
6’1″

Place of Origin:
Central Point, Oregon

Ethnic Origin:
It’s kind of a mystery, I’m not really sure. I have a feeling that I’m Dutch because I met a Dutch guy this season in Paris who’s the spitting image of my grandpa. I get my hair from my mom’s side.

Birthsign:
Because I’m born on June 21, it depends on which one you’re looking at. I’m the cusp, on the summer solstice, so it’s either Gemini or Cancer, whichever one I’m feeling.

How discovered:
I wasn’t scouted like most guys were. When my mother agent first started, they lived right next door to my mom when I was in my mom’s womb, so I grew up with my mom doing local commercials and local modeling stuff. At the time when I was so young, I thought my mom was famous. I was like, “I want to be famous like my mom,” so every three years I’d go into my mother agency and they’d always turn me down. They’d say, “It’s a waste of money, you wouldn’t really get as much out of it as you wanted.” Finally a year and a half ago they were like, “Alright, we’re ready, we’ll take you.” Then they sent me to IMTA, which is a modeling and talent convention and that’s where I got signed with Storm, Wilhelmina, and then Next. Then I got signed with Elite down the road a bit.

Favorite things:
This might sound bad, but one of my favorite things is figuring out how I can manipulate a situation to where it will benefit me and maybe not so much actually carrying out, but really trying to analyze a situation and saying, “Ok here’s what I can do, here’s what this person wants, here’s what I want, here’s what I can give them.” Just little stuff like that. Back home, I really got into the books How to Win Friends and Influence People, Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers, and The Definitive Book of Body Language. Other than that, I’m a real social person. I love talking to people. If I’m talking to people, I’m good. That’s my favorite thing.

What are you listening to at the moment?
The music I’m listening to at the moment is the music that’s getting played in my model apartment. They’re always playing it, and they play everything from a little Michael Jackson to Kodak Black. One of my roommates actually plays the electric guitar, so he’s playing like “Johnny B. Goode,” so it’s really just a mix of really recent rap and then some classic rock.

Favorite movie, tv show:
Favorite TV show I would have to say is True Detective. I loved that, I thought it just killed it. My favorite movie — I actually decided this on my flight to Europe — is Avatar, believe it or not. It has everything. It has sci-fi, it has romance, it has some action. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t get choked up when I was watching it sometimes. I was like, “Oh my gosh, what’s happening? This is Avatar. I’m getting choked up for Avatar.”

Favorite designer, fragrance or beauty product:
Personally for my hair, I don’t like to use anything other than Tresemmé, just regular conditioner. I don’t shampoo my hair because it makes it really frizzy, so I just throw some Tresemmé in and just leave it for the rest of the day and then I’m good to go. My favorite brand — I’m a really simple guy but getting into fashion, I’ve really gotten to like Off-White. I walked for their show in Paris and I was like, “That’s sick, that’s amazing.” I’m really into urban street style nowadays, which is pretty cool. Also there was this one brand when I was in Paris, Officine Generale. I dug their stuff. Everything I wore I was like, “Wow, fantastic.”

Has your hair always been that curly?
Oh yeah, from the time I was born, definitely. There was a phase when I was in like fifth grade, I grew my hair out to my shoulders and it’s what I was known for, and so I just shaved it off. I didn’t realize it at the time, but it really got me out of my shell. I’d walk around with my mom and my mom has the same exact hair and when I grew my hair out to my shoulders, instantly all eyes were on us. I’d just get so many moms coming up to us like, “Wow, your hair is so cool,” and just talking to me directly as a person instead of as a child. It really gave me an opportunity to come out of my shell and speak to an adult at such a young age, so I appreciate it for that aspect, but like I said, I started getting known for my hair and not for me. So when I went into high school, it was a really dramatic phase like out of a movie. I was like, “I hate my hair,” and I shaved it all off and then immediately after I shaved it all off I regretted it. I was like, “Wow, this is horrible.”

What would you be doing if you weren’t modeling?
Right now I’d probably be getting all my prerequisite classes out of the way. Eventually I wanted to go to university obviously, but university is expensive. I was going to go to community college in my town, bust out some prereqs for two years, and then see where it takes me. By then hopefully I would’ve known what I’d like to major in. I’ve been talking to a lot of guys and they’re telling me that there’s so much you can do with the internet. Really it is always better to go to school, but there are so many people who are so successful and start out their business just by doing it. I feel like I want to be a businessman regardless of whether I go to school or not.

What’s something uncool that you love anyway?
That’s such a hard one because I love so many uncool things. Honestly some of the music that I listen to I feel like in most cases is uncool, like it would be almost frowned upon to play in my apartment. I’m more of a mellow guy, so my music playlist is usually the last thing that I bring forward, so I guess that would probably be my uncool thing. There’s Darwin Deez, it’s kind of alternative rock, it’s new wave almost. I feel like he’s really creative. Jack Johnson, not the teen idol, but Jack Johnson the OG. I’ve grown up listening to him since I was younger. He was amazing.

Favorite modeling experience so far?
My favorite modeling experience was my first campaign with Calvin Klein, the global advertising campaign for #mycalvins. It was surreal. I’m hanging out at my house on a Tuesday night, it was like ten o’clock, and then my mother agent calls me and says, “Hey, you need to take pictures in your Calvin Klein underwear and send them to Wilhelmina.” I was like, “Ok, that’s kind of weird,” so I do that and then my agent told me, “Alright so we should expect a phone call whether or not you booked it because you’d fly out tomorrow.” Then the casting guy for Calvin contacted me directly and we got my flight figured out and I flew out at four o’clock that morning. They bleached my hair there and then they put me on a little bus in the middle of the desert in this one lake. I forget the name of the lake, but it was a dried-up lake in the hills like three hours outside LA. It was incredible. That was probably the coolest thing. That was when I was like, “Wow, I could get used to this model life.”

What was the hardest thing to get used to about the business?
Traveling. Literally a year before I started modeling, I had my first plane flight. Three years ago I flew to Texas for my brother’s Air Force graduation and since then I’ve flown at least twenty or thirty times. I’m a very social person and when I feel the most homesick, when I feel the most alone is when I’m in a new place, a different country. It was harder when I started last year because I didn’t know anyone, but this year going to all these different countries was a lot better because I knew a few more people, which made the transition a lot better.

What’s the best thing about your hometown/country?
The best thing about my hometown is how small it is. I can walk from one end to the other. Growing up there, I’ve known so many people and you think you know someone and then you talk to them more and you find out, “Whoa, they’re completely different.” Being in a small town really enables you to do that.

Place you would love to visit:
I really want to go to Alaska. My older brother is stationed out in Alaska and it just sounds like the most beautiful place. If you’re not stuck there under a job contract like he is, I just feel like it would be a beautiful place to visit.

Currently you’re obsessed with/about:
In the modeling industry, I got told right out of the starting gate that there’s nothing I can do to make an influence on the casting directors or on anyone. It’s just strictly based off my look, and in some aspect that’s absolutely true. You go into a casting and they know whether they want to book you or not just off your walk and your look, but I’m obsessed with figuring out how people work, like I said, really analyzing someone. What I like to do is get a little bit of information so that way when I get that three-minute window, I can just hit them with something, like a question that might make me stick out in their head. I feel like fate is in your hands to an extent. It depends on how hard you want to work and what you want to do.

What is the best piece of advice you’ve ever been given?
Everyone in my whole entire life is full of great advice. The best advice that I was given is a quote that my dad told me. It was along the lines of “Speak like you know, but listen like you don’t.” I like that because, being sixteen and getting thrown into this industry, I didn’t know anything. I didn’t want to come into it pretending like I knew what I was doing, because then I feel like it would just backfire and I would get thrown into something I wasn’t ready for. I really had to just take a moment to analyze the situation and just listen to what’s happening. That’s how I learned pretty much everything that I’ve learned. When you’re backstage on an editorial shoot, that’s how you learn everything, you just listen. Honestly that’s one of the first things I’m going to tell my kids.