Andreja Pejic Lands Her First Vogue Feature; What Does It Mean For The Trans Community?

Very few models, whose names have floated in the media for less than a year, usually land their own feature in the pages of a glossy monthly — but Andreja Pejic has. While we were officially introduced to Andreja last July, prior to that we knew her as Andrej, and as we see in the May issue, she becomes the first transgender model to tell her story to Vogue. We’re quite familiar with Pejic's journey thus far — from her early start as a model, the moment she walked the runway in a Jean Paul Gaultier wedding dress, New York Magazine's “Prettiest Boy In The World” cover, and now the upcoming documentary that’s been funded with the help of Jared Leto. But, as Vogue points out, the acceptance of Pejic into the fashion industry as a woman means more than just a personal victory for the Bosnia-Herzegovina-born, bold-browed beauty. “We’re finally figuring out that gender and sexuality are more complicated,” Pejic told Vogue, who notes that she was urged by an agent not to opt for gender-confirmation surgery for fear that she would lose her ability to model as both male and female. “It’s better to be androgynous than a tranny," Pejic claims one agent told her.  Furthermore, as the Vogue writer points out, Pejic’s transformation is just part of the larger current discussion of gender fluidity in the fashion industry. In the past year, Proenza Schouler invited a male model to walk in their fall ’15 show, female models walked in Hedi Slimane’s men’s fall show, and retailers have confirmed that customers are no longer shopping by gender, but rather by the designs they find most compelling. Of course, having a platform to speak and equal opportunities for work means that Pejic and other transgender models have more hope of long-lasting change within the fashion industry and not be part of a passing trend. (Vogue)