Fashion: Marcus plays a strong suit

AFTER Linda, Marcus. A superman model, Marcus Schenkenberg, has been selected to follow Ms Evangelista's phenominally successful advertising campaign for Marks & Spencer. The retail giant hopes that the star male model will do for suit and underwear sales what Ms Evangelista did for print leggings last autumn.

True to the male modelling version of the fairy story, the Swedish-born Schenkenberg was discovered roller-skating on Venice Beach, Los Angeles. Before he could stop to catch his breath, the photographer Bruce Weber had him posing in a shower without so much as his underpants in a campaign for Calvin Klein. (This ad campaign, also starring Carre Otis, included an entire 117-page magazine given away with Vanity Fair in the US.)

Since then, Schenkenberg has let his long hair hang loose in advertising campaigns for Valentino, Nicole Farhi, Jasper Conran and Harvey Nichols. He slicked it back for M & S.

'We chose Marcus because his look is so contemporary,' says Carol Richardson, press spokesperson for the high- street retailer. She would not be drawn on how much Marcus was being paid, but took a sharp intake of breath at the suggestion that his pay packet might match the pounds 20,000 Ms Evangelista allegedly received last year.

But if the fee wasn't so high, perhaps the man who has on occasion been worth dollars 3,000 ( pounds 2,200) per hour has worked out some cunning deal for additional payment in kind and will never be short of Y- fronts for the rest of his life.

(Photograph omitted)