Some politicians have skeletons in their closet. Iowa’s Democratic governor-elect, Rob Sand, has a Prada coat in his.
At least metaphorically.
While attending Brown University, Sand, a state auditor who was elected governor on Tuesday, balanced his studies with runway modeling in Europe.
He walked in shows for design houses like Number Nine, a culty Japanese label, and made repeat appearances on the Prada catwalk.
So booked was he that at one point Sand, an Iowa native, skipped voting in the state’s caucuses because he was in Milan modeling, according to a 2007 Newsweek article that referred to him as a “typically overscheduled twentysomething.”
After publications like Vogue caught wind of Sand’s glamorous past life this week, his transition team leaned in, releasing a $32 T-shirt that reads “Rob Sand My Model Governor” on his website. (A representative for Sand confirmed that the governor-elect had worked as a model in the 2000s but declined to answer further questions.)
It wasn’t a talking point on the campaign trail, though, as he tried to turn the governor’s seat blue after 16 years of Republican leadership.
After all, a backstory of modeling expensive coats in Europe doesn’t exactly ingratiate a politician with voters whose top concerns are rising costs. Sand’s luxe-seeming past in Milan could’ve made him appear out of touch with Iowa constituents, who spoke of anxieties about gas prices, groceries and housing at campaign events.
Sand promised to lower prices, target corruption and invest in education and highlighted his background as a former prosecutor. But he also tried to paint himself as a different sort of Democrat — “not redder or bluer, but better and truer.” He did not want Kamala Harris or Joseph R. Biden Jr. to campaign for him, and he talked up his love of hunting and fishing.
Sand, a 44-year-old father of two, retains a lanky physique and angular jaw, but his personal style betrays none of his fashion past.
In his tucked-in shirts, Carhartt zip-up jackets and hats embroidered with Iowa’s state outline, Sand dresses for maximum presentability and little memorability.
After his stint as a model, Sand returned to Iowa and pursued a career as a prosecutor. In 2018, he was elected state auditor as a Democrat in deep-red Iowa and caught some national attention, including a New York Times profile in 2019. Still, the article noted “he does not like to talk about how he briefly modeled in Paris and Milan.”
Sand did chat about what he called his “college job” this May on an episode of “Entry Level,” a podcast hosted by the Iowa-born comedian Brooks Wheelan. On the episode, Sand shares that a woman working at a photo store in Decorah, his hometown, put it in his head that he was photogenic enough to model.
“Everything is expensive in college,” Sand said, so he sent some photographs to agencies, including IMG, which he said signed him. (The agency does not list him on its website, and it did not respond to a request for comment this week.)
“I assumed that that was a business where you made a lot of money,” Sand said. “Turns out that you can if you’re a woman — the men don’t get paid particularly well.”
He did, though, make “a good chunk,” he added. He went to Milan three times and to Paris twice, he said, and met Ralph Lauren and Richard Avedon.
“I got to travel and meet interesting people, and it was a crazy experience,” Sand said on the episode. “There has to be a great joke in there about going from chicken catching to modeling to politics.”
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