The other day we were at RVCA with Danny Fuller, and I asked him about Chanel.

Danny is a model with the Ford agency and he’s the face of Chanel Homme Sport right now, which you know if you’ve flown international and walked past a Duty Free, or gone into Saks Fifth Avenue, or basically kept your eyes open in any fashion district anywhere this year. It’s an enormous campaign.

Danny explained how he landed it. A friend had called to say some huge fragrance brand from Paris needed a surfer type, someone just like him, so Danny went to the casting.

Danny: It was funny, the first time I went to go meet the people was in LA and there were all these, like, “surfer dudes” on the beach. And it was just such a fucking joke. Because there are so many people in LA who are “model/surfers” in a sense, and all these guys were on the beach, and they looked like they just bought the board at a garage sale. They were all like ripped and oiled, it was just ridiculous.

They told us what they wanted us to do, like, “Walk into the water, walk back up, and then give us a few words about yourself.”

And I think this honestly got me the job, I went in the water, walked up, and they were like, “OK, tell us your name and a little about yourself,” and I was like, “Danny Fuller, and…I actually surf big waves for a living, which is more than I can say for the rest of these fucking clowns out here.”

They were just like, “OK…” Completely thrown off. It got back to the director and she loved it.

That director has an Oscar for The Hurt Locker and she recognized. Here’s the commercial they made together. Danny figures another model might have drowned on the job anyway because the day they shot it was 8- to 10-foot Hawaiian, so it’s all for the best.