Interview | International Model Ryan Taylor

I met up with Ryan Taylor ( VNY ) at the Nomad Hotel lobby in NYC to catch up and see what he's been up to. It's common place to read about models who are musicians or skaters but there are a few out there that are taking matters in to their owns hands with an entrepreneurial spirit. Find out about Ryan and all the adventures his embarking on when he's not in front of the camera in this exclusive interview for Adentro Style.

Photo by Alejandro Brito

Where are you from?
Toronto, Canada

Relationship status-
Currently single, recently currently single

Any plans for the summer?
That's a tricky one. I'm actually going to go with some friends and family from Canada out west to Vancouver Island and we're going to do a 2.5 week hiking trip in the middle of nowhere. Kind of like the west coast version of the Appalachian trail. It's supposed to be very beautiful. I've never been to British Columbia before except for the Rookies which is completely different from what you get in the coast. It will be nice to see it.

How long have you been modeling?
10 years, I started when I was 15 years old. I haven't been modeling the whole 10 years. I took off 4 years and went to college and did some other stuff here and there  Closer to 5 years doing it full time.

Louis Vuitton SS12

What is one of your most memorable photo shoots or projects that you've done as a model?
The one that always sticks out in my mind was an editorial, I want to say it was for Details Magazine. This was a long time ago, about 2007. We were shooting in Tenerife an island off the coast of Africa and we were shooting in a crater of a volcano. It looked like mars, everything was red it was one of the most striking landscapes I've ever seen. The team was amazing and we had a lot of fun. I had never been anywhere close to Africa before at that point in my life- it was a wonderful experience.

United Colors of Benetton FW 2009

What do you do when you are not modeling?

When I’m not modeling, the rest of my time is taken up working on a tech startup, (Bookt) that my partners and I  launched a few months ago. It's basically a communications tool for models and agents. The software focuses on making the casting process easy for models. It automatically puts their castings, jobs, and call-backs into an simple and easy smartphone app. Bookt also calculates casting wait times, provides models with Google powered directions, and helps models keep track of their income with a “quick” bookkeeping feature. This solves many problems agents have had for years. In addition, Bookt provides agents with notifications when models have arrived at their castings, increasing accountability. Agents commonly claim that 20% to 30% of their models don’t go to castings. That's a lot of lost potential income. I'm really excited to work on this project and we have a lot of really valuable features coming in the future. 

How long have you been working on this project?
I've been doing this now, full time for 6 months. The project has been going on for about 13 months. Right now it's available for download and it's free! We're already with a couple of big agencies and close to 1K users. we are currently exclusively in NYC but we plan on branching out.

Bottega Veneta SS13

Where else do you see this App taking you guys?
I see it branching out in so many directions because it's applicable in so many different industries.

Is there anything else that we should know about you?
I love adventure, traveling and back packing, new experiences. I'm the kind of person that would rather climb a mountain for 7 days then go to any club in NYC- that's my cup of tea. Jumping out of a plane, doing whitewater rafting, I feel alive when I'm doing that kind of stuff.