Richard Biedul was twenty-seven and a practicing solicitor at a City of London law firm when a model agent stopped him outside his office. He signed with Models 1 in 2011, worked both jobs for a few months, and booked Oliver Spencer, Brioni, and Berluti inside his first month.

Within six months he had left law for modeling full time. By 2015, he was the first male face of La Perla, fronting the launch of its menswear range alongside Liu Wen, Maria Carla Boscono, and Naomi Campbell. He had the premature gray hair, the beard, and the long English face fashion was casting for at the time, and he could wear a Savile Row suit the way it was cut to be worn.

Richard has stayed inside that tailoring identity for more than a decade. Canali, Etro, Richard James, Eton, COS, John Smedley, Todd Snyder, and J. Press have all returned to him for the same reason La Perla cast him in the first place, and British GQ placed him on its best-dressed list in 2017.

The second career has come through design. Richard has released three menswear collections with King & Tuckfield, a shoe capsule with Joseph Cheaney, and a collaboration with Hemingsworth, alongside creative-direction work for Barbour, Berluti, Mytheresa, and Tod’s.

Most models at this level of editorial work become faces of houses; Richard became a partner to them, the rare one whose own taste in tailoring has shaped the clothes other men are now wearing.