Fashion is on the crest of a new 'femimen' trend, writes Janice Breen Burns.Andrej Pejic is a slender, spectacularly beautiful blond, a softly spoken 19-year-old from Broadmeadows whose prospects in modelling, just a few years ago, would have been negligible. His ''look'' is the effeminate opposite of the lean, handsome, muscle-ripped male models more typically cast for ad campaigns and fashion runways since the late 1980s.
But, 18 months ago, Matthew Anderson, director of Chadwick Models in Melbourne, recognised a flicker of the future in Pejic. ''His beauty,'' he says, ''was extraordinary. He's also intelligent and it's amazing, really, that he survived growing up in Broadmeadows, that he's just so comfortable in his own skin.''
At the time, Blind Freddy could predict that, as a model, Pejic would not be cast to sell jackhammers or Y-fronts. But, Anderson recognised instantly that Pejic's ''femiman'' look was so jarringly feminine, so shockingly beautiful, it would intrigue fashion's most creative photographers, producers and editors. ''He probably wasn't going to be commercial,'' Anderson recalls. ''But it was a look that was really exciting, very interesting, very high fashion.''
There was an initial flurry of local interest in Pejic, including his walking in Melbourne's Spring Fashion Week shows, which the teenager juggled with VCE study. Anderson then packed him off to London, then Paris, then Tokyo, to test his theory. ''Andrej was definitely a calculated risk; we really weren't sure how it would work out. In the global financial crisis, a lot of commercial decisions were being made above creative ones and that meant the strong man, Chesty Bond-types were more likely to work.''
Pejic, however, was greeted with a certain joy. ''The photographers seemed to like my look,'' he says. ''They talked about the extreme androgyny and commented a lot on how thin I am.'' Since leaving his mother, brother and Broadmeadows home last February, Pejic admits he has lost weight, a fact that only intensified his angular beauty and appeal to stylists, who promptly plucked his eyebrows into elegant arcs, ran trails of shadow over his lids, straightened or waved his mane of pale hair and added a slick of lip colour or gloss to his soft, pillow lips.
''I don't mind that; I was happy with that look because I was always experimenting with it, even before I started modelling,'' he says. ''There are a lot of boys who look like me in the fashion industry, but they're not prepared to have it made intense like that.''
Pejic resolved to be one of the few who would, and it has paid off. He is feted on industry websites, including Japan's Vogue Hommes as modelling's ''one to watch''. During the menswear season in Paris in June, he walked in shows for Jean Paul Gaultier, John Galliano and Raf Simmons, among others. He says his appearance caused a fascinating unease.
''At first everyone thought there must be a blonde girl doing all the men's shows,'' he laughs. ''They asked Raf Simmons if he was doing women's wear now. They figured it out eventually.''
After Paris, the commissions accelerated.
Vogue Paris editor Carine Roitfeld, renowned for her razor radar, cast and styled Pejic for a spread in her August issue based on transsexual icons.
''Kate Moss dropped into that shoot,'' Pejic says casually, ''She said how beautiful everything was, and jumped around a bit.'' Later, Pejic was cast for an
Arena Homme Plus editorial, then by Italian
Vogue for its November issue, a spread called ''Venus in Furs'' shot by Steven Meisel and featuring two other ''femimen'' models, and by Turkish
Vogue for a 16-page spread, ''Androjen''. Fashion blogger Patty Huntington, of Frockwriter.com.au, says Pejic's body of work, particularly his commissions for three
Vogue mastheads, is probably unique.
''[I] can't think of any other time that a new Australian model has been so heavily showcased in multiple international editions of the world's best-known fashion magazine brand in such a short space of time,'' she wrote.
Matthew Anderson believes it is simply that Pejic, and another promising model he recently signed with an equally strong ''femiman'' look, James Varley, 21, have materialised at a tipping point in the global fashion Zeitgeist. ''Society and cultural values have changed, are changing,'' Anderson says. ''People - young, particularly - are more accepting of all kinds of sexuality and ways of life. It reminds me of the 1980s, when ambiguous sexuality was accepted and people weren't ashamed to show it and sell it.''
For Varley, the fast-talking, highly creative Melbourne University science student tipped by Anderson to follow a career trajectory similar to Pejic's, the rising relevance of ''femimen'' is also about a global groundswell of yearning and hope among his generation. ''What's androgyny? It's the middle ground. It's halfway,'' he says. ''It's unity, but still with individuality.'' He plans to waive his studies and filmmaking, if he has to, for a semester, a year, or more, to cash in on his evocative boy/girl beauty, hopefully in London and Paris.
''I'd like to do what Andrej's done,'' he says. ''I'm more of a rock dude myself; I've even got a bad teenage beard at the moment, but I'm shaving it all off for the androgynous look.''
