Will Chalker

Will Chalker is a British model from East Sussex who became one of the defining male faces of the early 2000s. His arrival coincided with greater recognition for men in a profession whose most famous names had traditionally been women. In 2004, he became the first man nominated for the model award at the British Fashion Awards.

He entered modeling in 2000, leaving a job in construction. In a 2015 interview with DA MAN Style, Will confirmed that he had been working in the trade when he was scouted. Sport was another part of his life before fashion. He took up boxing at seventeen and later kept it as a form of fitness. Asked how he approached the different identities required by advertising clients, he described modeling as an acting job, a matter of being able to change for the role.

An early Yves Saint Laurent campaign placed him in Tom Ford’s fashion imagery. In January 2004, he opened and closed Ford’s final menswear show for Gucci. Later that year, his British Fashion Awards nomination put him alongside Lily Cole and Eugenia Volodina. The recognition made male modeling itself part of the fashion conversation, with Will among the people giving the profession a more recognizable public face.

Family life subsequently became part of his work. In a 2019 DA MAN Style interview, he recalled posing for a story at home with his sons, keeping the day playful for them. He also spoke about the lack of control models face early in their careers and the bookers whose belief can change their prospects. For Hunter’s fall 2020 campaign, he appeared with his wife, Chloé, and their children, bringing his own family into the advertising.

His career has continued into his forties, with Mango’s fall-winter 2025 outerwear imagery and Paul & Shark’s fall 2026 campaign giving him central roles. The latter cast him alone in Charlotte Lapalus’s photographs at Casa Corbero in Spain, more than two decades after the runway appearances that first established his name.