How Fabio got the last laugh

Fabio is nobody’s fool, says Karl Taro Greenfield in Details. To detractors, the Italian-born model is a running gag—a metrosexual whose bulging muscles, capped teeth, and flowing hair are practically a parody of beefcake. But the joke is on those who mock him, Fabio says, because he was always in on it himself. “I was using the industry. I used the fashion industry, the whole business, for money, for chicks, for a lifestyle. But I never let them use me.” Now 48, he says that he was “a testosterone machine” during his heyday. “Oh my God, I was going through models like crazy. I would be at [clubs] and there they were, 200 of them, all lined up. I could choose.” Fabio says he now has just about everything he wants—a five-bedroom house in California, a collection of rare cars and motorbikes, and five dogs. “And the chicks,” he adds. “I still get the chicks.” Mostly, he dates would-be actresses. “They’re always complaining about their work, or how they are not working. About this casting or this part they are hoping to get, and I have to say, ‘Come on, you’re a f---ing waitress.’ I don’t say that, but I think that, you know, because I’m a gentleman.”

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