Portrait Session with David Vaicekavicius (Canada Day Special)
I met David Vaicekavicius 3 years ago at a casting call in NYC. He was a friendly, easy-going kid with a confident swag, and he was hired to model for our upcoming lookbook shoot. A few months later, I ran into him again at another shoot where he asked the production crew if it was cool to spark up a joint. It was funny to me because I suspected that he was stoned anyway. I remember during that shoot he was big upping London and expressing his concerns about the chicken being yellow at his local bodega. Fast forward to present day, I caught up with David in East London and confirmed that he was in fact stoned for both of our shoots, and that he’s still suspect of the average New Yorker’s diet.
It was Canada Day, and to celebrate it, we decided to smoke up the studio with a little help from his cousin. It was a fairly big studio, but soon it had become filled with marijuana smoke. While our makeup artist was concerned about getting contact high, David and I proceeded to catch up. His mother had recently moved to my hometown of Vancouver from Calgary and he had obtained his Canadian citizenship. He went to visit her, and of course, smoked some BC Hydro during his stay. He then told me about how he was rejected for having ‘ugly hands’ from a well renown jeans company’s campaign. We glanced at his hands then laughed about it. Smoke was everywhere: I haven’t been this stoned in a long time, and it reminded me of how I used to be high all the time growing up in Vancouver. So the obvious question came up about whether he ran into any trouble with smoking weed in the industry. He did. Supposedly, David had a lucrative e-commerce gig with a big name brand, but they had cut him off because of his public broadcastings of his weed smoking routines through social media. David remains optimistic about his stance on the matter but had toned down showing it on social media.
Around my tenth ice cold glass of water, our portrait session came to an end. Dave and his cousin headed back to West London for some more chill time, while I went to a barbeque with some Canadian comrades in London. It’s always a good time hanging with David Vaicekavicius, and to do it in another continent was surreal. More to come from this kid; he had just come back from shooting campaigns in Seoul and Berlin. And as for this…many more sessions to come.
Photographed by Choi David // www.choidavid.com // @choidavid420
Grooming by Rhian Webster // www.rhianwebster.com
Featuring David Vaicekavicius
New York Model Management/Premier Model Management (London)
