The world's first Asian male supermodel

The strong jawline, the "blue steel" brow and the manly forearm. Meet Godfrey Gao, the Taiwanese actor-turned-model, newly named face of Louis Vuitton and world's first Asian male supermodel.

Gao, who lives in Vancouver, is already famous in Taiwan, having starred in popular TV dramas, but the Vuitton campaign will be a fast-track towards becoming an international household face. Aged 26, he joins an elite corps of Asian models who are making waves on the fashion scene. Chinese model Liu Wen has become the face of Estée Lauder and is currently the 10th highest-paid female model in the world, while Shu Pei has recently debuted in the Maybelline cosmetics campaign. At the end of last year, US Vogue featured a photograph by Steven Meisel that featured eight top Asian models, but the shoot was criticised for tokenism because it grouped the women together rather than giving them prominence in separate editorials throughout the magazine.

The fashion industry is increasingly looking to China as its future. LVMH, the parent company that owns Louis Vuitton, is enjoying huge profit gains as a result of the label's growth in Asian markets. Yesterday Burberry was also celebrating soaring profits and predicting that its annual results would top the City's expectations thanks to phenomenal revenue growth in Asia Pacific, with China credited for setting the cash tills ringing the loudest.

With recent reports suggesting that Chinese men now spend more on luxury goods than their female counterparts, the casting of Gao is a welcome, but not surprising, change. If Chinese men are splashing out their yuan on designer bags, then modelling them is surely the next logical step.