There are times I get left completely dumbstruck in awe. I call such occasions “Magnum Moments“; when the world stops spinning around me and all my mind can register is the subject of focus. Since I chanced on Andrej Pejic… Man. I’m still at a loss for words.
This was his moment – cementing his place in fashion as the bride of the Jean Paul Gaultier Haute Couture Spring 2011 Show. Absolutely stunning.
And this was how it all began – Pejic was born in Bosnia on August 28th 1991. His famly fled to Serbia when he was two months old, then settled in Broadmeadows, Melbourne at age 8. His transition to Australia was allegedly a difficult one, in having to integrate with students who weren’t like him. But said adjustments were an improvement from Yugoslavian NATO bombings, and he insists that for all his physical differences, he was never bullied.
In 2009, Pejic was interviewed and instantly signed to Chadwick Models in Melbourne. “I knew at the time we had someone potentially very big on our hands. But it was in the middle of a meltdown, when advertisers wanted “strong men” to convey financial security. In times of economic prosperity, clients can afford to use people that are a little more interesting. We had this really interesting boy on our hands. So we thought, let him finish high school first,” explained Matthew Anderson, manager of Chadwick’s Melbourne office.
And so they waited for the economy to recover and for Pejic to graduate, before sending him to Paris mid 2010. It wasn’t long before he was booked to walk Jean-Paul Gaultier’s Fall show.
Pejic became a poster boy for Gaultier, but his debut was somewhat eclipsed by Lea T, Riccardo Tisci’s transgendered personal assistant.
In fact, a lot of people just overlooked Pejic as a woman!
But while the rest of the industry had a media circus about Lea T, French Vogue’s then-editor Carine Roitfeld promptly booked him for a spread. And so he began building his portfolio in the shadows…
And by the time he walked as the bride of Jean Paul Gaultier’s Haute Couture Spring 2011 Show, he had become more than a mere spectacle. By then, the fashion industry had already accepted him as a talented, versatile model in his own right.
Pejic’s moment was certainly well-timed. A lot of last year was about cultivating alternatives to the industry’s mainstream. A lot of the initiatives in the beginning, was naturally hype on a stick. Eclipsing the start of his career allowed Pejic to femulate his way to thorough gender neutrality. Because he skipped being an overblown spectacle, he further blurred androgyny. In fact, he’s one of the very few femimens whose modelling is absolutely about providing people with more choices. Which is a very big deal.
What’s truly extraordinary is that his work doesn’t indicate a boy who just happens to look like a girl, but someone whose physical sex is completely irrelevant to his beauty.
Pejic represents the success of the industry’s attempt to extend their standard of beauty. He also represents the displaced minority of his age group. While this was all probably completely unintential, the fact remains that the fashion industry is a much more beautiful, more progressively accepting place with Andrej Pejic in it.
What do you think of Andrej Pejic?
[Photo Credits: alisatvong, nicolechomeiling, modelslovemodels, jesuswassizeo, ftape, newsau, models, fyeahandrejpejic, smh, styleite]
