The biggest irony of Yassine Rahal's career is that he was originally discovered with cornrows.

The 26-year-old model (who was born to Moroccan parents in France) was walking down a Parisian street about four years ago when a magazine's creative director ran after him, grabbed him by the shoulder, and asked him if he'd like to shoot. But he only got to the set thanks to another chance encounter.

"Between the time he discovered me and the time I was supposed to shoot, I got a new number," Rahal said when we spoke to him during a break from shooting the shearling coats story in GQ's November issue. "But two days later, he recognized me again on the same street, with the afro, and told me 'This look is better.'"

Since that first shoot, the afro has become something of a calling card for Rahal, helping him secure spots on runways for Yohji Yamamoto, Haider Ackermann, and Tom Ford's recent see-now-buy-now show in New York City. (It also inspires his nearly 12,000 Instagram followers to leave comments on his posts like, "Hair goals," "I just imagine my fingers tangled in those luscious curls," and, "Marry me so we can have cute Moroccan babies.")

Luckily for Rahal, keeping his crown of curly hair in check doesn't take a lot of product. Read on to find out more about his maintenance regimen, the advice he got from Tom Ford, and why he thinks the world isn't as scary a place as the horrible things that have happened this year would lead you to believe.

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GQ: Let's talk about your hair. How do you keep your curls looking so good?

Yassine Rahal: I don't like a lot of product. I mean, I have my girlfriend's in my bag. She tells me, like, "You have to take care of your hair." My mom, too, she says, "Oh, you have my beautiful hair." So I put some olive oil, or an argan oil treatment once a week. And I've been very careful to comb through the tangles. I don't wash it every day. It's like a skin, basically. You have to take care of it every day, but not put aggressive product on it. So I'm trying as much as possible to use organic products.

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Do you spend more time working on your hair or your body?

Oh, definitely not on my body. This is something I should work on! I'm trying to get fat, actually. I have some little muscles. I've been doing boxing and basketball to take care of my body, but I'm naturally skinny. I'm trying to work on my body as much as possible.

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What would you be doing if you weren't modeling?

I'm a graphic designer. That's the other side of my personality. I really love graphic design. It's everything. It's geometric, it's mathematic, it's calligraphy. And it's also in the fashion industry. I'm really into this, so that's what I'm doing on the side. I'm not really that great—I'm not an artist or something like this, but it's really interesting.

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Considering how much you travel for work, do you ever get freaked out by the scary things happening all over the world right now?

I think the world has never been better than now. And this is something I think people should see: it's like, OK, we have war, and my heart is really painful about this when I watch the news. But we rarely see the great things that happen in medicine, the great inventions we have. So I think we need to have a better view and a positive mindset about the world. If you stay on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and you see all this bad news, you'll wake up one day and just want to shoot yourself. But Earth is big, it's beautiful. We have, what, 7 billion people on Earth? Can all 7 billion of us be bad? I don't think so.

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You just walked for Tom Ford. Did he give you any advice?

Actually, I was really impressed with him, so I just said, "Hi, how are you?" And he told me to keep confident, to trust myself, to feel the clothes. But I was nervous to be honest.

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He cast a lot of guys with big hair for that show. Why do you think the afro is so popular right now?

I notice a few models have a big afro and curly hair. But actually, I don't really understand why it's popular, because it's been around for a long time. It shouldn't be like, "Wow, that's amazing," Because it's my natural hair. I didn't do some, like, perm. I was born like this.

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