Name… Age… Height… Sex: Androgynous. Fashion, with its
pioneering sense of the future and tendency towards subversion, has created a
new redefinition. The imagination of fashion designers is no longer constrained
by the need to design clothes strictly "for him" or "for
her". They can indulge themselves and work with androgynous bodies that have
the characteristics of both sexes.
Designers are now including mannish-looking girls and
emaciated, decidedly girlish gentlemen in their armoury. We’ve got used by now
to girls with angular chins, thin mouths and heavy eyes – but let’s start with
a forerunner of this twin beauty, Kristen McMenamy.
She was born in the USA in 1964 and posed endless times for
the cameras of many of the greatest photographers. Her first campaign, in 1984,
was for Jil Sander and Gerard Darel and she appeared in Vogue and Harper’s
Bazaarup until 2011, when she featured in i-D – she was “fixed” on the cover by
Josh Olins, her face foregrounded in a play of light and shade.
But it’s only now it seems that we’ve had perfectly balanced
androgyny. These slender reeds suggest what the male sex will be in the future,
with facial features that are increasingly less the product of testosterone.
Andrej Pejic and Martin Cohn |
This is an unconventional form of feminine beauty, one that
has reached its high point with two famous young men in female-oriented outfits.
These are the brown-haired (now peroxided) Martin Cohn and the blond Andrej
Pejic. Cohn makes cross-dressing easy. He said that at first he was constantly
annoyed by being taken for a girl, but then he learned how to laugh about it.
Between laughs, he’s appeared in V Magazine four times since
2009. He featured in Vogue Paris in 2010 and in the same year posed for
Gianfranco Ferré s/s. Now he’s a party boy doing the round of the clubs,
nonchalantly keeping his balance in a pair of high heels. Andrej Pejic though
has been a sensation: from whatever angle you look at him, he looks like a
girl.
Acclaimed by everyone as the next big thing, the only thing
that seems male about the Bosnia-born Australian is his first name. With his
platinum hair, small blue eyes and square jaw, the model – who’s just turned 20
– signed only last year with Storm Models, immediately attracting everyone’s
attention, with endless newspapers featuring him whenever they could.
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