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With his industry CV and internet audience proliferating side by side – the 22-year-old is at the forefront of a new generation of models. He talks the Disney Channel gem that reformulated his life's trajectory, navigating social anxiety on fashion's biggest stages, his teenage fitness Instagram account and how a delayed layover almost scuppered his March Oscars appearance.
Words ANDREW WRIGHT
Calum Harper saw himself on a Times Square billboard for the first time in March this year. “I manifested that [moment] a dream, an absolute dream,” the model and content creator beams of his debut appearance on the LED displays. You could say the 22-year-old’s generation is more au fait with speaking their dreams into existence than any before it, as they are with the mechanics of TikTok. Harper’s a veritable master of the latter, building a 2.7 million-strong following with droll, often self-deprecating commentary on his day-to-day adventures as a model – encompassing fashion weeks, attending Coachella and escapades with his best friend, colleague Kit Price (“my biggest inspiration and definitely healthy competition”). It makes sense, therefore, that the platform was where he documented said manifestation on 13th January 2023 and revisited the video two years and two months later, to give his followers an update: he’d done it.
It was his global campaign for Karl Lagerfeld, a dream come true in itself, that would see Harper beamed out onto the Manhattan crossroads. “Having a billboard on Times Square is something I wanted since I started modelling,” he says. “Getting that, especially for a brand like Karl Lagerfeld, who I'm so proud to be working with, was just such an honour.” He’s becoming part of The Big Apple’s furniture in more ways than one – whether finding his way into its iconography or simply building a life in the city following his 2024 relocation from London. His high-rise Soho apartment is a far cry from his quaint childhood roots in English cathedral city Gloucester, however, where he lived until age 18, before making a beeline for the British capital in pursuit of modelling and acting. He wasn’t sold on London life, but New York might just have won him over. “It looks like it's going to be a long-term relationship, me and New York,” he says, albeit “It's looking very rainy outside,” on the desaturated April morning we connect.
Harper’s new zip code means continent-hopping is now a regular necessity to meet the ever-growing demand for him on the runways and front rows of Europe’s fashion capitals. Gucci, Hermes, Zegna, MSGM and Diesel are just a few of the houses he’s walked for since first being signed during the pandemic. Aged 18, he was originally bound for a business management degree in Cardiff but sent out a shotgun round of applications to all the London modelling agencies he could find after an unlikely watershed moment in the arms of Disney Channel classic, High School Musical. “I would not be here without that film,” he tells me, “and I’m not even joking.”
Calum wears full look KARL LAGERFELD
“Growing up I always loved musicals, theatre and always wanted to do acting. I wasn't the most academic fellow. I worked hard, but I just didn't seem to crack it.” He had a shy side too – remnants of which remain these days, manifesting in social anxiety – but attended theatre groups and took up roles in school productions nonetheless. “I was always trying to do things and trying to find my way.” He had thought, after school, “‘Oh, I’ll just go to uni and play it safe.’” That was until the performance chops of Troy, Gabriela and their East High classmates rewired his outlook upon a rewatch during the summer ahead of his enrolment. “Those bloody songs,” he enthuses. “Eighteen-year-old Calum Harper was uplifted.”
It prompted him to re-divert his plans in favour of a London drama school with modelling viewed as a means of gaining visibility alongside studies. That was also the theory behind content creation, although he had early stripes in that realm originating in a fitness Instagram account, created when he was in school. “A 16-year-old Calum Harper wasn't the best behind a CapCut,” Harper admits. “So it was just some videos of me lifting some weights. But I so badly wanted a career in front of a camera, no matter what that looked like.” His present-day phone lock screen is a picture of him and his mum at the top of the Empire State Building, around the time of the fitness page’s inception. “I’m holding a vlogging camera,” he laughs.
There was little room for muscular gains on his path to the runway, however, so the weight-lifting journey was truncated. “I came quickly to a halt. The big, bulky gym lad wasn't really the look.” The first year of modelling required endurance of a different kind, though. He was working in a restaurant alongside his studies, and “I was getting zero paid modelling jobs. I kind of just accepted the fact that this wasn't really going to be a career for me. Modelling is one of those things which you can't work hard at. It's not based on ability. It's kind of just luck of the draw.” However, after signing with his mother agency, Menace Model Management, things really picked up. He credits the team with changing his life.
Still, “It is a big rat race of an industry,” he continues. A case in point is the casting process – “It just sucks.” Despite now boasting an international profile, “I’m still in a position where I do all of [the castings],” Harper explains. “And I like to do all of them just to try and give myself the best shot. But it's a gruelling process, and the success rate is rather, rather slim.” His chirpy documentation of such rigmarole has become a tentpole in his TikTok output – a recent video saw him darting around Paris ahead of the Fall/Winter 2025 shows, undertaking six castings in one day. Despite being praised for the unfiltered window these videos offer into modelling’s more tedious hours, Harper still believes they glamourise the profession to an extent. That day in Paris appeared fruitful and “It did come across like the castings were going really well,” he says. But sometimes early optimism can be illusory. “I ended up walking one show that season. The castings can be very much a tease, and then things go downhill from there.”
Calum wears full look KARL LAGERFELD
His lingering social anxiety can also be hard to mute. “To be totally transparent, that is something that I struggle with,” he says. “There are some days when your life revolves around a camera, and you have days where you’re like, ‘I just really want to rot in my bed.’ Some days that can get a little bit tricky, and those days are somewhat regular.” The industry’s fickle fortunes can be unforgiving to respite, however. “Things have been going great recently, but you’re never sure… like this could all end one day. And so there's also a part of me that's like, ‘I want to dive in and just make the most of every moment.” A workout usually helps him rally when he’s not feeling his best. So too does “a long bloody walk to my favourite cafe,” to secure the slow-release caffeine hit of a matcha latte.
And on the days life is good, it can be really good for Harper. Like March 3rd, when he and Price attended their first Oscars. Someone working for The Academy was a longstanding fan of the pair’s content, so they invited them to walk the red carpet and watch the ceremony. “I personally felt a lot of imposter syndrome around it. I was like, ‘I don't really feel like I deserve to be here,’” he says. Although by the time he arrived before the flashbulbs of the carpet's photographer’s pit, he was simply happy to have made it to the event at all. “At one point, I was convinced I was not going to be in LA on time,” he recalls. Harper had been in Milan for fashion week until the day prior, so his window for travel was compact and didn’t leave room for the delay to their London connecting flight that occurred. “I was at the British Airways front desk, in tears, trying to get this lovely, lovely woman to book me onto a flight,” Harper says. The next available flight was seemingly full, but the member of staff, Colleen – they ended up on first-name terms – somehow managed to fit him on. “Colleen was honestly the nicest woman I've ever come across. And she could see how stressed and gutted I was, so she was like, ‘Why do you have to be in LA so bad?’ And I was like, ‘Look, I'm going to the Oscars. It's my first ever Oscars, and I really don't want to miss it.’ And she said, ‘Oh, okay, we'll make sure to get you on.’”
Calum wears full look KARL LAGERFELD
It might prove pivotal that she did, as being in the room when Adrien Brody scored his Best Actor gong or Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande flexed their vocal melismas with a Wizard of Oz-themed medley re-mobilised Harper’s performance dreams in a similar way the cavorts of the HSM kids did a few years prior. “I was just like, ‘Yeah, I want to be on that stage,’” he says. He has his sights set on a deep, dark role – perhaps a villain, citing Sam Levinson’s stylised sex and drugs-laden adolescent drama Euphoria as appealing territory. The third season, rumoured to be its final outing, is now in production, so he might have missed that bus.
However, with magazine covers, campaigns and a towering internet audience continuing to pile around him, you don’t get a sense he’ll be reliant on even the star-making power of an HBO gig to harness his wins. In the meantime, the rest of his day is allocated for scaling objectives of more mundane heights. “I have a load of things I'm currently procrastinating awfully on,” he admits. He could also clear some space on the living room display bearing his magazine covers, for when this one lands on his doorstep. “I have a very vain little shelf, like a vain little bastard,” he laughs. “But they’re things I'm very proud of that I've worked on.” If the glimpse in the background of his TikToks is anything to go by, the ledge above his TV on which they balance might soon be struggling to keep pace with Harper’s proportions of success. Maybe shopping for a dedicated shelving unit – a sturdier trophy cabinet – would be a sensible addition to the to-do list, too. And, more manifestation. Simply call it forward planning.
Photography by David Roemer
Styling by Seppe Tirabassi
Grooming by Scott McMahan at Honey Artists using Skin Dialogue
Editor Andrew Wright
Art Director Michael Morton
Fashion Director Luke Day
Production Director Lola Randall
Junior Art DirectorNatasha Lesiakowska
Producer Gillian Avertick
Videography by Mylo Butler
