Kévin Légolane Ingolo

I’m Kévin Légolane Ingolo, I’m French, I come from Paris and my roots are from Congo, Kinshasa.

I am a model based in Bruxelles, and now living between Paris and Bruxelles with my boyfriend Jasper. 

I am using my second first name “Legolane” as my artist alias, which was also the first name of my grandfather - following the congoleese culture, the grandson takes the name of his grandfather. I started modeling at 17 after a shoot in Paris with a photographer that was offered to me by my cousin as a birthday present. I had no idea about this job and world but an agency signed me just after the shoot as they saw potential and 10 days later I was doing my first modeling job and had the opportunity to meet Kanye West.

14.05.22 : DJ Set featuring JEPP

 It started as a game, I was doing castings and I was curious to meet new people. At that age, you are exploring the world and also yourself so I was super happy to explore a new world and meet new people. It was a journey super exciting and scary at the same time because I wasn’t really secure about myself, I wasn’t totally OUT and I didn’t have at that age gay friends or gay people around me. 

With modelling I literally arrived in a world where to be gay was more than “normal”. 

I learnt to love myself and also to know myself better, I gained confidence at that moment, during the first years. 

The weirdest thing at that moment was that when I started that job,  I could openly hear photographers, casting directors or hairdressers, for example,  talking about the fact that they were gay but not a lot of models were openly out (myself included). 

Some of them even didn’t want that people know about it, to protect their image and also to have the straight white male cis look who were the standard in the past for a large number of clients. 

Regarding myself, I think I was out maybe one or two years after starting, I needed time to develop myself and to get to know myself better. 

When I started, I think I didn’t really have inspirations, except Naomi Campbell obviously haha. 

I think I was just there doing my stuff, I didn’t really have a representation of myself. At that time, not a lot well know models were looking like me, Black.  Today everything changed, you can really see the Black representation, I mean look at the last VOGUE UK cover!

You can also see on runways different body types, or see on a huge billboard a trans model in a major campaign for Calvin Klein. Now successful models also speak about gender identity or personal struggles, it’s very inspiring and interesting to see how this industry has changed. 

Now I do have real influential role models as Alton Mason who is doing a lot of major campaigns and bringing more than beauty but also passion and dance into his art. He is also using his voice for the black community.

My inspiration is not only models but it can also be a photographer as Rafael Pavarotti,  Fashion Redactors as Edward Enninful for the Vogue UK  or also Artistic Director as Virgil Abloh.

I recently worked with the team of Stromae for his last capsule of his brand “Mosaert”. I really loved meeting him and working with his team. I found on his collection all the universe that you can see when he is on stage, it was really inspiring to share this with them and to be the image for this collection.

One of my favorite experiences was a campaign for the brand Christian Louboutin in Paris, Christian is a legend for the world to me and it was the first time that a brand asked me to dance and also changed my hair color.

Upcoming Projects

Regarding my next projects, some shootings are already planned for different e-commerce websites. I am also still working with Louis Vuitton as a Content Editor. 

I’m working on a special project with my boyfriend Jasper for his musical project JEPP. 

He is a singer and we wrote one song together for his first EP. We had this idea for some months and it was really nice to create art together, to share those moments and to see the final result. I hope you will like it as we do when it will be released further this year.