Model Citizen

Supermodel Bruce Hulse reveals the triumphs and pitfalls of his profession in his memoir, “Sex, Love, and Fashion”

Bruce Hulse is no Derek Zoolander. But when Ben Stiller’s male model-skewering comedy ‘Zoolander’ hit screens in 2001, Hulse got the joke’because he has witnessed that lifestyle since the 1980s. Now a Palisadian family man, Hulse discusses his tangle with Me Decade-decadence and working in a female-dominated profession in his new autobiography, ‘Sex, Love, and Fashion: Memoir of a Male Model’ (Harmony Books). Hulse signs his book on Wednesday, September 17 at Village Books on Swarthmore. ‘I’m a so-called ‘male supermodel,’ which is a complete oxymoron,’ Hulse says. ‘When you think of a male supermodel, how many can you name? There’s probably one and that’s Fabio, and he’s really known for posing for the covers of romance novels. I’m trying to give a little bit of credence to the profession and history; the one job in the world where we’re secondary to women. We don’t make the same money.’ A Cornell University graduate with a degree in Asian studies, the thoughtful Hulse defies the stereotype, and in ‘Sex, Love and Fashion,’ he effectively gives us a peek behind the runway curtain and reveal an industry awash in promiscuity and designer drugs. Inbetween his constant traveling and his cocaine binges, Hulse forged romances with supermodels such as Paulina Porizkova, Elle Macpherson, and model-cum-actress Andie MacDowell, before trading it all for a calmer, healthier Pacific Palisades existence. ‘The hard thing about writing a book,’ Hulse confides in the Palisadian-Post, ‘is that you get a deal and they’re petrified you’re not going to come in on time or with the right material. You’re revisiting a time that’s dreamlike. It’s always interesting to revisit the past, but I love living in the present.’ Hulse credits Wendy Holden, the writer who worked on Goldie Hawn’s autobiography, as a great collaborator on shaping his memoir. The writing process, he adds, ‘took longer than we expected, because there were so many photos that we had to get approval for.’ Before Hulse digs too deep into his life in the fast lane, he reveals a Havertown, Pennsylvania childhood marred by an alcoholic mother who chased down her antidepressants with whiskey sours. Hulse stresses that by the time he entered adulthood, she had sought help and kicked her demons. But there was a difficult period when he and his three sisters had to deal an emotionally unavailable mother. ‘I’ve always been close to my dad,’ Hulse says. ‘But I was a full blown teenager running around with my buddies and my mother’s problems were the last thing I wanted to deal with. When she was in a mental hospital, my dad stepped up to the plate and helped us get through it.’   Hulse grew up in suburban Philadelphia and took up surfing at age 10 at Cape May, New Jersey, where his family had a boat. He also wrestled with depression before he was able to identify it. It emerged after he was accepted to Cornell. His girlfriend Ginger, who was attending nursing school in Ohio, fell in love again with her childhood sweetheart. ‘This felt to me like yet another abandonment by a woman,’ writes Hulse, who likens the split to feelings he experienced with his emotionally absent mother. I have to say it wasn’t the happiest time in my life.’ Hulse attended college from 1970-74, during one of the most turbulent times in the university’s history. In 1969, African-American students took over Willard Straight Hall in a protest of Cornell’s bureaucracy, and the Vietnam War continued to divide the Ithaca, New York campus. But it was at Cornell where, at a female friend’s urging, Hulse first modeled: posing nude for art classes. You can almost see Hulse smiling as he writes, ‘It wasn’t long before I became popular around the Cornell art department.’ Also foreshadowing his future profession, he was in a Sports Illustrated photo spread that included Cornell’s basketball team. Post-college, a First Agency scout discovered Hulse. His first shoot was in Paris for French Men’s Vogue with photographer Paolo Roversi. Soon, Elle followed. As in the magazine. As in MacPherson. Depression blocked Hulse from furthering a relationship with Elle MacPherson (‘A beauty’ who lit up the room with her smile,’ Hulse writes), then riding high from her Sports Illustrated swimsuit cover. Another fashion-world icon figuring prominently in Hulse’s life was Herb Ritts. ‘He was a fantastic human being and a great photographer,’ Hulse recalls of the late photographer. ‘I met him in Barbados while on vacation with my girlfriend at the time, Nathalie. She had a job with him with Mademoissielle at the Crane Hotel. When I went to go drop my girlfriend off, he booked me on the spot.’ The pair spent two weeks in Rome, eating Italian food, while on a Gianfranco Ferre shoot. But it was another iconic photographer who inspired Hulse to pick up a new hobby. ‘After I met Bruce Weber [in 1982], I started shooting with a camera,’ says Hulse, who began snapping portraits of people he met on his travels.   As the decade wore on, the supermodel existence proved not so super for Hulse. ‘There were two competing parts of me,’ Hulse tells the Post. ‘The introspective part [and] this jock who liked sports’What people don’t realize is that they think you’re doing great, traveling around the globe with the beautiful people. You have all this money and freedom. But there was this feeling for me of being uprooted and not having a sense of direction.’ His peripatetic profession, Hulse continues, consisted of ‘waking up in hotels and airports, not knowing where you were. You’d be someplace for a week and just getting to know everybody and maybe having a romance and then you’d have to leave again. I was a kid who never had any dreams of traveling the globe. I was happy as a pig in mud [surfing with his buddies]. ‘A lot of the traveling was pre-Internet, pre-cell phone,’ Hulse continues of his ‘incredibly isolating’ work. ‘I was in London doing a publicity stint for Levi’s in a really fancy hotel. They take you around in a limo. I was getting mobbed by teenage girls because I had done a Levi’s commercial famous in England. I had a $1,000 phone bill calling my mom back in the States because I was so lonely.’ Hulse missed basketball’s camaraderie. ‘You have an instant group of friends, a shared passion and battles to do,’ Hulse says. ‘You’re traveling for Cornell. I ended up in Europe playing pro-hoops after that, it’s the same deal.’   In his early 30s, Hulse hit rock bottom in a collision of promiscuous sex and drugs. ‘Depression is exasperated by stress,’ Hulse says. ‘The toughest time was when I had split up with my girlfriend and cheated on her and became this person I didn’t like. I was seriously considering leaving and joining a monastery in New York. I thought, ‘This world is too difficult, too lonely.’ I had this conversation with Bruce Weber. He said, ‘You can’t leave the business. Find your balance. You don’t have to run away, you’ll regret it later.’ I had already destroyed this great relationship. I had to take a hard look at myself.’ It took Hulse years to ‘find that sense of spirituality and connection in the world. I was burned out. I had given up hope. [Fashion models] are like superwomen. These are girls who have money and a hundred guys pursuing them. These are tigresses.’ At 36, Hulse met 24-year-old Katrina Olivas. She, too, was a model, and yet something altogether different. ‘She was down home from Texas, she had a spiritual core,’ Hulse says. ‘She wasn’t impressed by who I was. She had dogs, loved animals. Relationships, as we all know, are complicated. So it took a long time before we were together.’ After a bumpy beginning chronicled in ‘Sex, Love, and Fashion,’ Hulse married Olivas, now his wife of 15 years and the mother of his children. Five years into their marriage, the Hulses left Miami Beach behind (‘Too much of a party town,’ he says, ‘to raise our children there’) and built their nest in the Highlands. Hulse’s son, Cade, 12, goes to Paul Revere Junior High, while Halsey, 5, attends Marquez Elementary. ‘When we decided to move, there was one place where we planned to look: Pacific Palisades,’ Hulse says, adding that he had heard about the beachside enclave from many model friends: Andrew Smith, Nick Constantino, Brendan O’ Neil. Even a single Katrina shared a place on Hartzel Street with her peers. Hulse had only a casual familiarity with the beachside enclave since, on his numerous L.A. visits, he always found himself ‘stuck up in a hotel in West Hollywood. ‘And I have to say,’ Hulse continues, ‘as someone whose traveled the world, this is the once place to live. Where else on Earth can you have this sense of community?’ In 2004, Hulse had a brief tryst with TV starring in ‘Manhunt: The Search for America’s Most Gorgeous Male Model,’ alongside Carmen Electra. ‘I got to play the drill sergeant,’ Hulse says. ‘I thought I was going to become the next Tyra Banks, but Bravo was going through a regime change and we didn’t quite get the [ratings] numbers.’ Today, Hulse continues to travel and model, but at his own pace. ‘There’s a market for my look,’ he tells the Post prior to an Old Navy shoot. ‘I’m in my 50s but I’m still fit and turning gray. It’s funny when you see yourself in ads for Calvin Klein and Levi’s and Versace and now you’re the grandpa. The studly grandpa, but the grandpa nevertheless. I represent the idealized baby boomer.’ Hulse spends his down time with family, surfing and taking pictures, and he is currently working on his next book, a self-improvement guide. ‘I am finally the man I had always hoped I could be,’ the Palisadian writes in the last line of his memoir. But for Hulse, getting here, as readers will discover, was quite the journey. Bruce Hulse signs ‘Sex, Love, and Fashion’ on Wednesday, September 17, 7:30 p.m., at Village Books on Swarthmore. The reception will be sponsored by Pali Wine Company (www.paliwineco.com).