A bucket on his head and a stool around his neck, Shaheel Shermont is a pastiche of fashion shows, and it’s hilarious!

We’ve seen them on Instagram for three days: videos homemade, made no one knows where, except that we can make out a kind of backyard. Seven “real”, as they say now, which show a young man parading like a supermodel, and using the well-known codes of exercise, namely a proud air, an extreme seriousness, an ultra-fast walk. The young man wears incongruous outfits but which make a look, and again this is what fashion in general does.

But, crucial point: all these outfits are made with the means at hand. Shaheel (because it’s him) has put a stool around his neck, corrugated iron serves as a strapless dress, and he tries a bucket as a dingo hat, etc. It’s hilarious because screaming truth. Indeed, not only does this show a slightly absurd side of many fashion shows, but it joins an unexpressed perplexity that we all have in front of certain looks from the shows.

If one had bad spirit, one would say that it denounces the excesses of the designers. But make no mistake, as mocking as the video may seem, there’s no malice in it. It is his strength. It has the comic power of a Buster Keaton sequence, and comes from a boy free enough to allow himself humor where no one else does.

In recent days, speculation has been rife about the origin of these videos. We read a lot that they were the work of students from a fashion school. Many people leaned towards the Saint Martins School, in London. And when I say ” a lot “it is ” a lot “as Shaheel Shermont’s pranks went viral in ten days.

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It took me about two hours to trace the thread, and I ended up identifying the author of this pastiche. So his name is Shaheel Shermont, and he lives in Fiji. At 24, he lives with a (large) family. After working as a travel agent, he works part-time in real estate promotion with a passion for humor, via good-natured videos on Tik Tok.

What went through his mind, in Shaheel, to suddenly become interested in shows taking place thousands of miles away and having little to do with his daily life?

Well recently, he has seen “real” and “stories” where we saw people parading with unusual objects (notably Loewe and JW Anderson). He took it as a game and decided to do the same, in his own way. At first, it almost went unnoticed, even if it aroused the enthusiasm of his friends. But the fifth video literally “exploded”, resumed in the United States, India, and soon all over the world. First of all, the fashion world is an international bubble. And then, even in the most isolated places, the images of shows arrive, sometimes like ubiquitous pastilles.

Honored by art critic Jerry Saltz

Shaheel Shermont certainly could not have foreseen such success. He discovered in amazement an entire article about him in a major Fijian newspaper. Yesterday was in El Pais, Spain. On Instagram and Tik Tok, where the number of his subscribers has just increased tenfold, Shaheel takes the trouble to write a message to apologize for not being able to answer everyone:

“I would like to make something clear. I’m not a celebrity and please don’t talk to me like I am one… I’m happy that my videos have such a large audience and happy if it can give me opportunities, but I’m the same “me” as before. Don’t think I’ve become arrogant if I don’t answer right away. “.

I contact Shaheel Shermont via Instagram. He is amazed that a French fashion critic is interested in his videos. I send him a few questions to which he answers me with playful voice messages:

“I’m fairly new to Instagram, only been a year (two years on Tik Tok). On Tik Tok, a lot of people make videos where they pretend to be models but it’s always in the first degree, I wanted to add a kind of comic twist to it all. I’m very far from the fashion world, so it’s simply amazing to hear that I’m describing something that exists because, in reality, I don’t know anything about it. »

This is probably exactly why these videos are so popular. They are funny and pure, schoolboys and tender, creative and modest. Renowned art critic Jerry Saltz, Pulitzer Prize winner, even split an Instagram post with these words: “Better than a lot of what you see in art biennales”. And he is so right! In short, the world is changing.