All clothing – Calvin Klein Underwear.
Photographer – Arnaldo Anaya Lucca for Models.com | Stylist – Matthew Edelstein
Groomer – Paul Merritt (De Facto) | Model – Mitchell Slaggert | Photographer’s assistant – JP Herrera
Digital technician – Patrick Klinc | Producer – Jazmin Alvarez | Location – The School House Pool, New York
Most models can tell you that getting discovered is a matter of being in the right place at the right time. For Mitchell Slaggert, a recent addition to our Hot List and a favorite of Versace, DSquared2, and Calvin Klein, a second earlier or later could have made all the difference. “I was walking to my car after class one day and Daniel Peddle and I crossed paths, then he chased me down and asked if I wanted to model,” Slaggert recalls, referring to the casting director who co-owns the casting company The Secret Gallery with partner Drew Dasent. “I was like, ok, this is too good to be true, thank you, no thank you. He gave me his card and he was like, ‘I’ll be expecting to hear from you.’”
Peddle adds that it was actually even more fortuitous than that, the result of a split-second decision that could just have easily gone the other way. “I didn’t actually see him very well and I only got a glimpse of him out of the corner of my eye and I was actually running late,” he recalls. “I got two blocks and it was literally like the universe tapped me on the shoulder and told me to go get that guy so I ran back. I just knew right away that this was one of those rare finds. When you scout as often as I do, you find a lot of cool people, but it’s not that often that you find someone that you get that special sense about.”
All clothing – Calvin Klein Collection.
All clothing – Calvin Klein Collection.
Peddle’s instincts, as they have so often before, turned out right. In the year since that fateful encounter, Slaggert was a Calvin Klein exclusive for his first season, has shot with Mert & Marcus and Boo George, and appeared in numerous campaigns for Calvin Klein, including David Sims’s famous Spring 2016 underwear ads along with Kendall Jenner and Julian Schneyder. Slaggert still hasn’t quite wrapped his head around how quickly his success has come. “Essentially I had no idea, I thought it was kind of the norm,” he laughs. “I almost wasn’t going to do the Calvin Klein Underwear campaign and then my sister was like, ‘You have to, it’s iconic,’ and I realized it was the same thing that Michael Jordan and Mark Wahlberg had done.”
His life has changed in many other ways as well. Born in Michigan and raised in Georgia, Slaggert had been studying mechanical engineering and was fresh from a job interview with the Department of Homeland Security when Peddle discovered him. Now he’s in a full-time acting course at the New York Film Academy and has two movie credits to his name, including the lead in Moss, Peddle’s new film written specifically for and in collaboration with him. “I was shocked and honored because I know Daniel has done this before and he’s very professional,” says Slaggert of being asked to be a part of the film. “I started training because I didn’t want to let him down and I wanted to make the most of this great opportunity.”
Left: All clothing – Calvin Klein Underwear. | Right: All clothing – Calvin Klein Collection.
All clothing – Calvin Klein Collection.
All clothing – Calvin Klein Collection.
Shot on an island off the coast of North Carolina earlier this summer, Moss follows the eponymous main character over the course of his eighteenth birthday as he deals with what Peddle, who has also directed several documentaries and one feature previously, calls “the shadow of his mother’s death and his father’s detachment.” The role, Slaggert’s first, required both emotional depth and physical strength, as he paddled across rivers and climbed trees, and allowed him to expand on a part of his own personality. “When I read the script, I mentally got myself back into an eighteen-year-old mind frame and went back to my roots growing up down in Georgia,” Slaggert recalls. “If I’m out in the woods for a while just observing animals, I get really in tune with nature. It almost feels like my second home, my home away from home.”
Now signed with WME, Slaggert has been going on auditions while continuing to study his craft, demonstrating a passion and determination to constantly improve himself even as his modeling career continues to take off. “I started taking some courses and then I started reading all these books, and they had great insight, but I learned by doing it,” he says of acting. “You can hear and see so much, but if you don’t actually start practicing it, it’s not going anywhere.”
All clothing – Calvin Klein Collection.
All clothing – Calvin Klein Collection.
