Desmondo Bootle did not decide to become a model. A photographer approached him and he assumed it was a setup. He was shy, not photogenic, and said yes for one reason only.
“I honestly decided to give it a try because the photographer was super talented,” he says, “so I thought it would be cool to get free photos. I never imagined modeling could be a career for anyone, especially not for me.”
Four years later he was in a Calvin Klein campaign. Then Nike. Cartier. Rimowa. Baha Mar. Atlantis. The kind of run that makes people assume a certain kind of life sits behind it.
Desmondo is a civil engineer first, and he will not let you rank it any other way. He was the top engineering student at the University of The Bahamas, pulled there by something specific. He grew up between Cooperstown, Abaco and Landrail Point, Crooked Island, where the mailboat ran late and drinking water meant catching rain.
“Life in small communities like these didn’t afford me many of the conveniences that a child in Nassau would have,” he says. “But watching how my family handled these challenges taught me true Bahamian ingenuity. I learnt early on in life that where there is a will there is a way.”
That is the whole engine. He grew up knowing exactly what his islands lacked, and engineering was the way to go about fixing it. Roads. Bridges. The unglamorous infrastructure that decides whether a settlement grows or empties out.
Then both careers took off at once, and everybody around him started asking which one he would drop.
“I have never seen anyone else do it,” he says, “but maybe through a little delusion, I decided that I can be the first, and so I will just figure it out and create a way.”
The schedule is unforgiving. He beats his engineering deadlines to manufacture hours, sometimes arriving before nine to buy back time, then goes straight into a shoot with nothing in between. Neither career carries the other. Each one funds the discipline the other needs.
“I think engineering has made me a better model,” he says. “Engineering teaches me to be sharp, focused, and hardworking. These skills translate very well into modeling.”
Nike is the one that still gets him, because his father raised him on Michael Jordan VHS tapes and that logo belonged to superstars only. But the campaigns are not the point anymore. London is next, and he is going to build connections he can bring home, convinced Nassau can be the top island luxury and nature destination in fashion.
The endgame is not a cover. It is a system where Bahamians own what gets built on Bahamian islands.
“Kill that mindset,” he says, to any young Bahamian who thinks this is not for people like us. “Bahamians can be anything we want to be. Just look at Sir Sidney Poitier. His story fuels mine, and any Bahamian can do the same.”
