With the tip of a forefinger, the host and executive producer of Canada's Next Top Model touches one perfect arch on his chiselled face as if it's a brushstroke on a precious oil painting. "This side of my eyebrow is a little spiky," he continues solemnly. "So I trim that to match the other."
Tyranny of the Esthetic would be a better name for his work. Mr. Manuel is symptomatic of the cultural preoccupation with surface. He is prickly about which physical attributes are real and which are not, perhaps because so much is enhanced or fake.
Like his hair: an eraser-top of silver spikes. "The silver-white hair came from a superhero character," he explains in a business-like fashion. "Now it's in my contract: I can't change back to my natural [dark] hair colour. I have to do it every two weeks to keep it up." His smooth face displays little consternation about the demanding maintenance routine and no concern that he may be moving into the decidedly uncool territory of becoming a caricature with a shtick. Fashion, real fashion, that is, is always about change.
But then, he is all about the business of beauty: You are not the sum of your parts. You are your parts.
Consider the obsession with perfection on the popular and multiaward-nominated TV show America's Next Top Model, where Mr. Manuel rose to prominence as creative director and producer alongside host Tyra Banks, and on its counterpart, Canada's Next Top Model, launched last year. The models are celebrated for a certain turn of calf, slant of eye, height of cheekbone, length of neck, arch of eyebrow.
What becomes interesting is not the women's beauty, although that is lovely to observe. It's the naturally frizzy and ungroomed humanity of people who possess such perfect shells that fascinates. They cry. They obsess. They squabble. They are a beautiful mess.
They have not learned to control every aspect of their image package. Mr. Manuel, on the other hand, is a master of detail. He doesn't smoke or drink alcohol. "People say it's because I don't like to be out of control, and I'm a bit of a control freak, but that's not the reason," he explains. "I like to enjoy and be fully aware of what's going on, and if I'm having a good time, I want to remember it," he says.
He refers to himself several times in the third person, and the management of his brand extends to his personality, which he seems to have polished for the perusal of onlookers.
He pushes forward his background like an annoying salesman in an expensive boutique. First, he gives the genetic background of his exotic look. His father, who hails from South Africa, is of Dutch and Malaysian ancestry. His mother has Czech and Italian bloodlines.
Both are accomplished. His father is a renal specialist and associate dean of medicine at the University of Toronto. His mother is a teacher. Mr. Manuel and his younger sister, who is a doctor, grew up in Scarborough, on the outskirts of Toronto, after the family immigrated to Canada from the United States.
As a teenager, attending high school at Dr. Norman Bethune Collegiate Institute, he focused on traditional academic routes. Even though he papered the walls of his room with fashion advertising, watched Fashion Television and organized fashion shows at school, he devoted himself to achieving high grades so he could go on to medicine.
He was also a gifted lyric tenor, he tells me. A member of the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir, he was "actually the youngest performer ever hired" for vocal parts in ballet and other productions at the Hummingbird Centre, he says. Once a month, he would travel to New York to coach with the assistant conductor of the Metropolitan Opera. Later, at New York University, he enrolled in both music and science courses as he tried to determine which path to take.
He doesn't like to be interrupted in the telling of his biopic. "I am trying not to digress," he bristles, when asked to expand on his time at NYU.
He would rather talk about how fate intervened in his life, in both happy and painful ways, to help him find his career. The good part was when he was asked to help his voice coach with a photo shoot. His hobby had always been the art of makeup, so he offered his services when she went to the studio of Christian Steiner. "Do you know you're very talented?" the photographer told him, he recalls. "I was very naive," Mr. Manuel offers as explanation.
But it wasn't until he had a painful illness in 1996 that he settled on his future career. "I woke up one morning and couldn't move my legs." He had sacroiliitis, an inflammation of the sacroiliac joints in the lower spine. "I was in wheelchair for three months ... It took me seven months to learn how to walk again. But during that period, I knew right away that I was going to be normal again, even when the doctors weren't sure. I decided I would do what I really wanted to do. I would follow my passion."
Soon, he was getting involved in more than just makeup as he began to act as art director on various projects for stars, including Imam and her husband, David Bowie. In 2002, Tyra Banks, whom he met and befriended in 1997, called him to work on America's Next Top Model. "We had no idea it would be so successful," he murmurs with a brief flick at humility, adding that the appeal of the show, he thinks, is that viewers can see inside "an elitist and cliquish world" that excludes those with average talents, physical and artistic.
Mr. Manuel doles out mentions of his accomplishments like they are favourite possessions from his closet. Which is very full. Last year, he started a makeup line, called Manual Override, which arrives in Canadian stores next fall. He hosts the Style Network's makeover series Style Her Famous. For award shows, including the Grammys, the Emmys and the Oscars, he has worked the red carpet as a fashion correspondent on E! Network. "I have pretty much travelled the world," he point outs. "And I have worked with so many creative visionaries from Richard Avedon to Herb Ritts to Francesco Scavullo."
His tendency to accessorize himself with details from his résumé and inspirational tales of determination is understandable. Mr. Manuel is attuned to celebrity culture, where image is the most lucrative commodity.
Any hint of criticism he does not wear well. For the Oscars this year, he critiqued outfits by using what became known as the "glam-o-strator," a version of the sports world's telestrator. Mr. Manuel used his to point out bad fashion plays. It was widely mocked.
"I only used it once, and it was not my idea," he huffs.
Earlier, he told me that he counsels others to remember that they have to separate self from brand. "You have to look at yourself and say, 'There's Jay Manuel, the brand, and there's Jay Manuel, the person, and in both regards, when people praise Jay Manuel, the brand, that's not you, and when they tear down the brand, that's the brand, not you, either."
However, he doesn't say how to fix the image problem when, in real person, the man becomes the cartoon, complete with sculpted action-man body, silver hair, blindingly white teeth and scripted bubble quotes.
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