Riding Tides & Runways : Elias Black’s journey

Elias Black’s journey moves between global fashion campaigns and the freedom of the open ocean 

By: Leon Haasbroek & Elias Black

For many years of my youth growing up in Margate, I was drawn to the surf lifestyle, an escape into the beauty of creation and the rhythm of the ocean. It always struck me as a world slightly removed from the pressures of everyday life, a place where people seemed to exist more freely within nature. After moving to Cape Town, that fascination deepened even further. What became increasingly apparent to me was how many surfers, both men and women, possess the same effortless, natural beauty that we so often celebrate in the modelling world.

It sparked an idea: to bridge these two spaces, surfing and modelling, in speaking with Elias and learning more about his journey, it became clear that there was a far richer story to tell.

What follows are Elias’s own words. As a publication, we made the decision to publish his story exactly as he wrote it. His reflections on modelling, surfing, travel, and entrepreneurship capture a lifestyle that is both aspirational and deeply personal. It offers an honest look at how different passions can intersect and coexist within the modern modelling world:

It was 2013. I was twenty three, maybe a little younger in spirit than in fact, and had come to Indonesia on a surf trip with a vague but persistent idea to start a custom motorcycle company.

The plan was simple enough in theory. Build bikes in Bali, ship them to Australia, eventually send them farther afield. At that age distance did not seem like much of a barrier. The world felt open and improvisational.

I spent the first four weeks wandering the island, learning its rhythms the way you do when you are not quite sure what you are looking for but feel certain you will recognise it when it appears. Bali had that quality then, raw in places, disarmingly generous in others.

Toward the end of the trip I took a weekend detour with the man who would become my business partner. We ferried across to a small island off Bali’s east coast, Nusa Lembongan, a low green sliver surrounded by clear water and reef.

The place had a looseness to it. Days there moved slowly. Surf in the mornings, snorkelling and spearfishing in the afternoon, beers somewhere sandy and dimly lit after dark.

Something about that weekend clarified the idea we had been circling. By the time we headed back to the mainland we were convinced we had the bones of a business.

I had a flight to Melbourne in a few days. The plan was to return home, save some money, take out a modest loan, and come back to Bali to build Indo Custom Motorcycles.

On my final morning I was sitting in a small café, nursing a coffee and the mild hangover that follows too many farewell drinks.

Bali mornings have a particular light, soft and slightly humid, the air already carrying the smell of the heat to come. I remember sitting there thinking mostly about logistics. Flights, budgets, the uncertain shape of the year ahead.

Across the café two people were watching me. I did not notice at first.

They were Angie and Jasmin, creatives working together. Angie a stylist and former model, Jasmin a photographer. Eventually Angie walked over and tapped me lightly on the shoulder.

Would I be interested, he asked, in doing a test shoot.

It caught me off guard. I had done a single shoot once before, mostly out of curiosity, and had not thought much about it since. But something about the spontaneity of the moment appealed to me. It felt like the sort of strange minor detour that often becomes a good story later.

I told him I was flying back to Australia that night.

His demeanour shifted instantly, from casual to focused. Within minutes he had mapped out a small improvised plan for a shoot that afternoon.

At the time it felt like nothing more than a quirky way to spend my final day in Bali.

I could not have known that the encounter would redirect the next decade of my life.

The shoot circulated in small corners of the fashion world. A photographer named Wong Sim saw it and later came to Bali to shoot me.

Around that time I was deep in the process of building Indo Custom Motorcycles with my business partner Casper Willem. Life revolved around engines, tools, and late nights in a small workshop.

Then an offer arrived from an agency in Milan.

It felt wildly out of place against the backdrop of the life we had been building in Bali. Still curiosity won out. I flew to Italy and spent a season there casting and shooting.

At first I did not understand the scale of what I had stepped into. I knew almost nothing about fashion. Being called in to work with brands like Dolce and Gabbana or Philipp Plein felt strangely ordinary to me then, like something that simply happened to everyone involved in the industry.

But the environment carried its own pressure. The competition was relentless and the expectations narrow. You were meant to become some slightly improved, slightly thinner version of yourself every week.

After a while the experience lost its shine.

I returned to Bali with a kind of quiet relief and threw myself back into the motorcycle business.

By 2016 we had spent nearly three years building and exporting bikes for Indo Custom Motorcycles. Eventually we sold the company.

Not long after modelling found me again, this time in a different form.

I signed with an agency in Melbourne and approached the work with a lighter touch. The atmosphere was less severe than Milan had been.

I was bartending a few nights a week, working another job during the day, and spending as much time as possible surfing down the coast with friends.

Mostly I just wanted to make enough money to travel and chase waves.

In 2017 I flew to California to visit friends and meet a few agencies. The meetings were secondary. The real itinerary followed the coastline and the swell.

I surfed from San Francisco down through California and into Mexico’s Baja Peninsula.

From there the trip unravelled in a way that now feels almost dreamlike. Cuba, Nicaragua, stretches of Central America that blurred together in long days of travel and surf.

Eventually I found myself aboard a small single hulled sailboat moving slowly through Panama’s San Blas Islands.

Life on that boat had a rhythm I had not known before. We anchored during the day, surfed or spearfished when we could, and sailed at night or in the early morning wind.

Some evenings dissolved into rum and bonfires on small islands. Others were spent leaning over the side of the boat trying to keep dinner down in rough seas.

We found waves no one had named yet.

I ended up naming two of them. Razors, after being torn open by live coral on the shallow reef, and Geishas, after the captain’s son applied so much surf zinc to his face before surfing that he looked like a Japanese geisha.

The water there was impossibly alive. Reef fish flashing like broken mirrors, manta rays sliding through deep channels, the occasional shark drifting by with calm indifference.

Some creatures were so absurdly beautiful I caught myself groaning into my snorkel.

Storms rolled across the horizon with theatrical violence. From my narrow bunk I would watch lightning tear open the sky while rain hammered the deck above.

Afterwards we would rinse ourselves in the sudden abundance of fresh water.

That trip changed something in me.

I could not explain exactly how. But the ocean felt different afterward, larger, older, less predictable.

Eventually we docked in Colombia. I spent a month wandering through Medellín before returning to California, catching a few final waves in Long Beach.

After four months away I flew back to Australia with a clearer sense of direction.

If I wanted to live and work in the United States I needed to qualify for an O 1 visa, officially an Alien of Extraordinary Ability. The title sounded absurdly grand. In practical terms it meant building enough credibility in my field to justify the application.

So I worked.

Then just as things were beginning to line up the world stalled.

In early 2020, weeks before I was meant to leave for the United States, COVID shut everything down. Melbourne closed almost overnight.

I was juggling work as a strength and conditioning coach at a boxing gym where I also fought, running nightclubs, and modelling when the jobs appeared.

It quickly became clear that waiting out the pandemic in Melbourne was not the move.

I packed my truck overnight and drove north to Byron Bay.

Life there simplified almost immediately. Warm water, waves within minutes, a quieter pace.

I landed a job as CMO for a small startup and signed with a new agency in Sydney. While Melbourne remained locked down, New South Wales was open and I worked constantly, flying to Sydney every couple of weeks for shoots and saving money for the moment international travel returned.

The move changed everything.

My modelling career picked up real momentum. Social media followed.

By 2022 I was back in Los Angeles signing with LA Models.

That year I also made my first trip to the North Shore of Oahu. Winter there has a gravity that every surfer feels sooner or later. The swells arrive with frightening authority, marching across the Pacific before detonating against the shallow reefs.

I stayed with friends for two weeks and tested myself against waves more powerful than anything I had ridden before.

In 2023 the pieces finally fell into place. My O 1 visa was approved and I moved to California. Work took me across Greece, Germany, Turkey, and Spain. I signed in New York with QUE Models.

That same year another idea quietly resurfaced.

For a while I had been fascinated by the potential of mushroom extracts in sports nutrition. Adaptogens that might support focus, endurance and recovery.

The concept drifted around in my head but never quite found the time it needed.

Then a friend mentioned that someone from Byron had just started a company built around that exact idea.

A few weeks later I was sitting across from Nathan Tanner discussing the marketing side of his business. By the end of that conversation he offered me an opportunity to join the venture.

That company became Bytropic Nutrition.

Running it pulled me deeper into the creative side of production. After years of standing in front of the camera it felt strangely energising to step behind it, planning shoots, shaping campaigns, and watching ideas evolve into real images.

I have since produced large campaigns for Bytropic Nutrition and had the chance to work with brands I had quietly hoped to collaborate with for years including Issey Miyake and Giorgio Armani.

There have been a few moments that felt like odd loops in the story.

One spring I was back on Oahu, surfing heavy swells by morning and scouting volcanic rock pools by afternoon for an Issey Miyake campaign.

Later that year I travelled to Ibiza to produce a campaign for Armani, choosing the island’s stark landscapes as the backdrop.

Seeing that campaign spread across screens and accumulating millions of views gave me a new appreciation for what a fully realised idea can become.

For now I am living abroad again, currently in Cape Town, South Africa. I am modelling, producing content, helping run Bytropic Nutrition, and surfing whenever the swell lines up.

Soon I will head to New York for a few months before returning to Australia for winter.

Looking back it still amazes me how much of this story traces back to that quiet morning in a Bali café. A casual conversation. A spontaneous photo shoot.

Sometimes a life shifts direction not with a grand decision but with a small almost accidental moment, one you barely register while it is happening.

For now though a few more waves and the occasional billboard feel like more than enough adventure.

With Elias’ feature, we have boldly merged the worlds of modelling, surfing, and luxury lifestyle. This collaboration marks the beginning of something new within our editorial space. Inspired by the success of this intersection, I will now embark on a dedicated series of surf features over the coming months, exploring the many facets of surf culture as it exists within the global luxury landscape.

From cultural influences and destinations to the personalities shaping the industry, these upcoming stories will allow us to explore the world of surfing through a refined and editorial lens. This is only the first step in that journey, the start of a new wave of storytelling I am incredibly excited to share with you.

Let’s ride it!