Paolo Roldan was going fast, starting strong as a Givenchy exclusive in 2010, had the world talking about his Marcus Piggot shoot for French Vogue in the same year, taking a step to a long held goal to create his line with a Bench Body collaboration in 2017. “I’d land in Toronto then get a call, you have a flight in five hours, and I would just unpack, shower, repack, and leave,” he recalls. He felt unstoppable, like anything was possible, even taking on the basketball court again for the first time in eight years since tearing his Achilles.
He didn’t become the professional basketball player he dreamed of being yet he’s reached heights since—unprecedented ones as the first Filipino male supermodel and paved the way for Southeast Asian representation previously dominated by his female counterparts. His fame has been compared to Anna Bayle in the 1980s. Making a career out of modeling for men, especially for anyone who didn’t fit the mold, was unimaginable back then.
Yet here was Roldan, 20 years in, full time for 15. But hitting the court again after so long was a different story, setting him back in 2019 with an injury. “With that sort of thing you have to be able to play all the time to just jump right in.
My Achilles couldn’t take it,” he shrugs off. One thing about Roldan is that he is mentally resilient. But having the injury just as the lockdowns started was challenging.
The athlete in him persisted. He took on his physical therapy as a challenge to .