Gender-blending: Sexual ambiguity in fashion
Designers' fixation with sexual ambiguity is reaching new extremes, with an explosion of frank and unsettling images of androgyny. Is there beauty in blurring the boundaries, or has it gone too far?
By Alex Fury
Monday, 14 February 2011
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/fashion/features/genderblending-sexual-ambiguity-in-fashion-2213735.htmlLea T is a model in demand. After fronting Givenchy's last two campaigns and gracing the brand's latest pre-fall lookbook, she jetted off to Sao Paulo to open the brand's fashion week before moving on to the New York shows.
She's also the cover star of the latest issue of Love, super-stylist Katie Grand's bible of cool – paired with Kate Moss, no less. It's the standard "hot model of the moment" story. But with one unexpected addition: Lea T was born Leandro Cerezo, son of Brazilian soccer hero Toninho Cerezo, and is still undergoing gender reassignment.
Lea T isn't the only signifier of fashion's current fixation with transgender chic. Andrej Pejic is the male mannequin name to know – whippet-thin, pouting under a cascade of blond hair and with a disarming similarity to the female model Erin Wasson. Jean Paul Gaultier was certainly impressed: he cast Pejic as the keynote model of his autumn/winter 2011 menswear show, "James Blond" (Pejic's locks are a Harlow-glow shade of peroxide).
