New York Magazine’s biannual fashion issue has arrived, and with it came an encouraging industry-wide frenzy about cover model Andrej Pejic. This time around, Pejic is not only receiving attention for his looks but also for what he has to say. It’s kind of momentous, as if a star was born—one that, as Pejic puts it himself, doesn’t get out of bed for less that $50 a day. (A far and ironic cry from Linda Evangelista’s famed similar claim about her $10,000 minimum.)
The androgynous model has been on a rapid rise to fame since Sarah Doukas started marketing him as a woman, Carine Roitfeld styled him in Fendi, and he walked Jean Paul Gaultier’s runway. He embraces his gender-blending look, saying, “It’s not like, ‘Okay, today I want to look like a man, or today I want to look like a woman’; I want to look like me. It just so happens that some of the things I like are feminine.”
What seems to have struck readers positively is Pejic’s amusing personality. He relieves tension with punch lines like, “My whole life is controversy. What can I do? I’m like Britney Spears!” He’s surprisingly hilarious and confident—not to mention, successful—for a 19-year-old.
Pejic is no stranger to controversy. In May, FHM ran a story online that referred to Pejic as a “thing” and later took it down. In the same month, Pejic covered Dossier shirtless, and the magazine got censored at both Barnes & Noble and Borders. So, does the praise Pejic is receiving from New York Magazine mean the mainstream is ready to embrace him as an icon? We’ll have to wait and see. But if his career takes a turn for the worse, he’ll tell you, “I’ll come back with a sex tape…I’d bring in latex, make it really fashion, really artsy.”
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