Simon Nessman was scouted in December 2006 during his final high school basketball season on Vancouver Island, signed to Mode Models in Calgary, and moved to New York with Major Management the following July.

His runway debut came in the fall-winter 2008 season, and the casting that solidified him as a high-fashion model came soon after, when Riccardo Tisci put him in Givenchy across 2008 and 2009. Armani Jeans followed with Takay in 2010, then the Emporio Armani fall-winter 2011 campaign Mario Sorrenti photographed.

In 2012, Giorgio Armani signed him to a multi-year contract as the face of Acqua di Giò Essenza, photographed and filmed by Bruce Weber, the campaign that placed him on global billboards. The same period saw Mario Testino shooting him opposite Karmen Pedaru for Michael Kors across six seasons of print and video work, and by 2017, he was fronting Polo Ralph Lauren under Josh Olins.

Simon belongs to the cohort of male models whose careers started in the late 2000s and still run through the same luxury rotation, the company of Sean O’Pry and Clément Chabernaud. Givenchy, Versace, Bottega Veneta, BOSS, Ralph Lauren, and Jacquemus have cast him across the years, and the Armani family has returned to him repeatedly.

Editorial work has run in parallel, from a 2010 Vogue Paris story Mert and Marcus shot with Ciara to a spring-summer 2025 Fantastic Man cover by Bruno Staub. He lives off-grid on Vargas Island in Clayoquot Sound, sailing out to bookings that have kept coming through nearly two decades, the rare male model who scaled his schedule down by choice and watched the houses keep calling.