The Sweat Club

The website is based on the idea of The Sweat Club. Each style of underwear is represented in a room within the club. The front (index) page is the entrance to the club. Back in May 2008 (two months prior to launch date) we started to hammer out this concept and how we wanted the site to look. Men doing manly stuff in a makeshift secret club for members only. A cross between Mad Max and The Fight Club.

It was about that time we received an email from Michael Alago a photographer based out of NYC. He had seen the Yannick and Travis shoots we had put out as teasers and was interested in shooting for us. If any of you are not familiar with his work, check out roughgods.com.

Realizing he was a perfect fit to photograph for the website we managed to secure him to come to Vancouver. That is after he had finished working on the new Cyndi Lauper CD (yes, he is in the music industry too. A man of many talents). There are a million stories we could tell surrounding Michael’s visit to Vancouver.

Since this was going to be a huge shoot with several stages within one location, we wanted more than one photographer. Nuno Silva came on board as did Harry Leonard. Nery Monzon joined as stylist and brought his team of…gee dunno how many girls to apply makeup. When there is a male underwear shoot there is never a shortage of girls who want to apply makeup (or boys for that matter).

Now came the fun part, models models models. We needed at least 7 guys. So lets go down the line.

Yannick – of course our most famous Sweat Man was going to be there. We told him his scene was the outdoor tub where the guys clean up after dong whatever they are doing in the Sweat Club. Being the sport he is, Yannick stripped down Naked for Michaels camera and went right down into the tub. Funny we never did see those shots. We will have to ask Yannick about that.

Travis – our good sport jockstrap man. When we told him he would be posing with a motorcycle he did not care what he would be wearing as he just wanted to be near the bike. We got some great shots of his derriere and that huge lions tattoo on his back is ultra sexy.

Trey – he answered an ad we had placed on craigslist. We met him for coffee one morning to discuss the shoot and boy did this guy make us laugh. He comes to Vancouverfrom Texas and still maintains those sweet southern gentlemanly mannerisms. In fact I think he kept calling us sir. He was perfect for the Fighter Brief as he has the body you would expect to see in the ring.

Darren – we picked Darren from a local modeling contest. We loved his chiseled face and boy is he a smart whip. Being a smaller guy we dreamed up the idea that Trey would be teaching Darren how to fight in the Sweat Club ring. I wish I had a camera on his face when he was introduce to big Trey on set that day. Enough said.

Joe – Aussie Joe is a friend of our trainers. He had recommended him and sent us a few shots from some other shoots. I recall asking my trainer if Joe had any tattoos and he said “yes, some little girly one”. We hired Joe without meeting him in person and we never regretted it for a minute. A nice guy, amazing body and really he had allot of fun that day. He was also a big help in moving the borrowed gym lockers around set for his scene in the Sweat locker room.

Tom – our Sweat Club bouncer. We had already shot the bouncer pics a few weeks before this but we thought what a great idea to have the bouncer giving an initiation to the Sweat club tattoo to Trey. We got ourselves a real tattooing gun, and well the shot speaks for itself. We keep it framed in our living room.

Robert – he has been a friend for several years. It took a few phone calls to convince him to model but somehow we managed to persuade him to do it.

Chad – he came along with Yannick to the set that day. When we saw him we thought we night as well strip him down and slap on some Sweat as well. He did an amazing job in the arm wrestle scene and we were very happy he came along. Not as happy as Michael though who grabbed Chad along with Yannick and shot them separately across the street at another warehouse.

That pretty much rounds out the models. At times it was chaos with us running back and forth between shoots as they were simultaneously going on. Someone kept getting us coffee, no idea who she was but I guess we were paying for her to be there.

The arm wrestle scene was a concept deep in our heads and the end result was really pure genius on Nuno’s part. As per usual we gave him the basics of how we wanted it to look and he created a masterpiece.

One last thing about the shoot. The woman that owned the warehouse was there the entire time, but not really paying much attention to the goings on. At the end of the day. Harry Leonard asked her if she wanted some shots for her office of the hot guys in her warehouse. To which she replied “I am not that into beefcake” .

Tuesday we release our brand new 2009 Christmas shoot pics - check it out here.