In 2014, criminal Jeremy Meeks set hearts racing when Stockton Police
Department released the following photo of his mug shot on Facebook.
Meeks was arrested and eventually jailed for possession of a firearm,
which he’d had in the trunk of his car when he was arrested.
But
no one really cared about all that. All anyone cared about was the fact
that the Hot Mugshot Guy meme had been born, and it was glorious. Sure,
Meeks had done some bad things, but who could really be too annoyed at
that gorgeous face for too long? Plus, everyone deserves a second chance
in life, right?
Thankfully
for Jeremy Meeks, a second chance is exactly what he got. That’s
because, three years after he first rose to fame as Hot Mugshot Guy,
Meeks is out of jail and rocking the runway at New York Fashion Week.
Meeks
walked for designer Philipp Plein in front of a star-studded front row,
which was filled with the likes of Kylie Jenner, Paris Hilton and
Madonna. A step up from walking the corridors of a Californian jail,
then.
Last
year, Meeks told ABC that he had been putting in time at the prison gym
to be ready for his close-ups when his release date finally came. He
said: “I eat healthy. I do a lot of push-ups, pull-ups, dips, burpees,
and I stay very active.”
Meeks, who is a married father-of-two,
was released from prison in March 2016. He’s been signed by White Cross
Management, and it looks like his blossoming fashion career is going
from strength to strength.
Oh,
and he posed for a photo with Carine Roitfeld, which, as anyone who
knows anything about fashion will tell you, is kind of a big deal. She
used to be the editor of Vogue Paris, for anyone struggling to keep up.
As Hot Mugshot Guy has shown, becoming a major internet meme seriously pays.
