Daniel Morel From Poverty To The Catwalks

2024 Author: Steven Freeman | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 08:15

In recent years the Dominican Republic has become the land of the most popular models and the favorites of the most prestigious designers. Girls like Lineisy Montero, Hiandra Martínez and Luisana González, among other Dominicans, have walked the most important catwalks in Milan, Paris and New York and have graced the cover of the most important magazines in the world, including Vogue. That is why the Caribbean island is now recognized for being the cradle of models and all thanks to the vision of Sandro Guzmán, who has the expert eye to recruit young people who he knows will be very successful abroad. Your new discovery? Daniel Morel, a young man of 19 years who is 6'2”in height, comes from one of the poorest towns in the country -El lemon, Samaná-,and who in his first season participated in the shows of Valentino, Dior, Givenchy, Hermès, Louis Vuitton and other prestigious brands.

“I really don't believe anything that is happening to me. I never imagined that this would be so magical. Now I feel like this is my world,”Morel told us of his first experience in Paris and Milan. When I walked my first show for Versace, there were many photographers outside and they wouldn't let me walk. It was then that I was able to understand what was happening to me. I had never taken a plane and arrived in Milan for the first time direct to a clothing test, looking for the address and going to the agency alone without knowing English, I committed myself to God and everything has been a success. Good news day by day. It is something divine”.

The young man, whose father works in agriculture and his mother is a housewife, and who grew up in absolute poverty, now savors the honeys of success and is emerging as a great promise in the fashion world.

“A photographer who was in Samaná sent me a photo and I thought it was retouched. [Later] Daniel wrote to me and I asked him to take a photo outside his house with natural light. [It was] when I was able to realize good skin and that sculptural body,”Guzmán exclusively told us, who from that moment on set out to make him a star. "We signed it, we started working on it and it was like a fairy tale for the male version."

Had it not been for the photos that reached Guzmán's hands, Morel might not have left his town leaving behind the precarious conditions in which he lived and the story of his life would be very different. Today the young model is signed in the important agency Next Models and became the first Dominican to walk for fashion houses such as Valentino and Dior, among others.

"He is very poor. I told him, 'bring what you can with clothes, the rest we buy in the capital'. He brought two jeans, two flannels, a shirt and some very battered tennis shoes. We went out and bought him all the changes for the castings and we put together all his looks for Europe,”Guzmán confessed. "It was a moment when I realized the great work we do because these boys come from the bowels of the people [and] from extreme poverty."

However, the precarious conditions in which he lived did not prevent his discovery. Nor did they affect his incredible physique, much less his interior.

"[His] body is handmade, it looks like a handmade statue. Her skin is perfect, and her smile is that of an angel. But the most important thing is that it is beautiful inside, it is as if he had been raised in a place without evil,”said the famous scout. "That is not seen much in the neighborhoods of our country. That innocence and magnetism touched my heart."

See below some of the parades in which Morel has participated.