While Fabio became a 1990s pop-culture icon for his appearances on some 1,300 romance novels, it took him a while to realize the impact of his modeling career.
Fabio — born Fabio Lanzoni in Milan, Italy — had been working as a model for brands like Versace and The Gap when book publishers came calling and he began to be booked for photo shoots to appear on the cover of books. The results are instantly recognizable and always feature the model with his long hair blowing and muscles glistening.
In an interview on PEOPLE’s PEOPLE in the ’90s podcast in 2021, he explained how he had been posing for the romance novel photo shoots for about a year-and-a-half before he realized anyone had even seen the photos. And the moment of recognition occurred when he was at a Miami nightclub and three romance novel fans approached him.
“Three girls come up to me and they go, ‘Oh my God. You look exactly like the guy on our books.’ And I’m like, ‘Honey, that’s a great pick-up line.’ Like, ‘Oooh I like you, I’ve never heard that before,’ ” he laughed.
He continued: “And they go like ‘No, no. Trust me It’s no pick-up line. You like exactly like the guy on my books.’ I was skeptical. I had no idea because I was thinking [they were just taking] pictures. So I didn’t know what they were doing [with the pictures] after.”
“So at that point, one of the girls goes, ‘Well how long are you going to be here?’ I said, ‘I just got here.’ She goes, ‘I live about 20 minutes from the club. I ‘m going to go home, pick up all my books, and I’m going to come back and show you, I’m not lying to you,’ ” he continued.
“So I guess they left, they went to the house and [brought them back.] So they came back like, ‘Look, look.’ And I go like, ‘Oh my God, that’s me.’ The first time when I saw those books … I remember this one and that one and that one. And I go like, ‘Yeah, that’s me. That’s weird.’ ”
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At romance novel conventions later, Fabio — now 65 — would find himself swarmed by fans.
“It was crazy, I went to one of those, and I was like, ‘That’s it. I’m done.’ They wanted to take a picture with me and there was always the one pinching my butt. That’s inappropriate but listen — I’m from Europe, I’m a man. I can handle it. It’s no big deal.”
“They want to be that woman on the cover,” Fabio added of the fans who would attend the conventions. “They wanted to be in the picture with me and they thought they would be the heroine.”
Asked what he thought he meant to the fans, Fabio said, “Movies sell fantasy — books, even more. Because when you read the book, you really have your own fantasy, and not the fantasy of some director or producer. And so it gets even more into your consciousness. These women are very, very into the romance novel … to the point where it’s really in their psyche.”
“Worldwide, you have so many women who are not happy with their relationship, not happy with their life,” he continued. “They want to escape their reality and this is their escape. And it’s a very healthy escape because they don’t hurt anybody.”
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