There was an unusual sight on the runway at Fashion Week 2013 in October 2013.
Muscular, covered in tattoos and standing just short of 180cm, model Alex Minsky stood out among the taller clotheshorses dotting the catwalk at the annual fashion festival at Marina Bay Sands.
But what really made him stand out was the carbon fibre and titanium alloy leg that extended from his right knee.
The 24-year-old American, a former Marine, had to have his limb amputated after his convoy in Afghanistan was hit by a roadside bomb four years ago.
The 2009 accident, which also severely injured his jaw, right arm and brain, left Minsky in a coma for 47days.
“I had to relearn everything,” he tells Urban in an interview the day before his runway debut, recalling how he had to teach himself basic functions again.
Getting fitted for his leg was “exciting”, says the Los-Angeles based model, because “if it meant I could get a leg back, I didn’t mind being the cool guy with the robot leg”.
He was honourably discharged from the organisation he had joined when he was 18 years old and awarded the Purple Heart.
But Minsky struggled with his new life and, deeply affected by the loss of his younger brother from a drug overdose, he fell into a depression and turned to the bottle for solace.
The majority of the tattoos that decorate most of his upper body and arms have something to do with his brother, he adds.
“It was really selfish and really stupid of me,” he says candidly, of relying on alcohol to get him through that time. After getting several charges for drink driving, the courts forced him to get sober and he realised he might be able to do something with his life if he stopped drinking.
Minsky discovered
The naturally athletic eldest son of an administrative assistant and cable technician, who used to play football and swim during his school days, turned to exercise for distraction.
“Working out centres me,” he says. “It’s almost a form of meditation where I tune everything out and think only about being in that moment.”
It was while sculpting his body that he was “discovered”, the way models are in the stories they tell.
Photographer Tom Cullis, who attended the same gym as Minsky and who has shot for publications such as Cosmopolitan and DNA magazine, spotted him and asked if he had ever modelled.
The 80kg Minsky, who sports short brown hair, has brown eyes and an easy-going smile, describes his initial reaction as a quick “no, thank you and goodbye”.
Fashion model Alex Minsky is back on his feet
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