Givenchy's gender bender

mert + marcus via givenchy

With all the buzz about androgynous Oz model Andrej Pejic at the recent Fall Winter 2010/2011 menswear collections in Europe, it's been easy to overlook Givenchy's intriguing FW1011 womenswear campaign. It's not news - WWD reported it back in May - but alongside several high profile women, including Australia's Catherine McNeil (below), Givenchy creative director Tisci also cast his longtime muse, assistant and fit model, transsexual Lea T, nee Leo (second on the R, above). “She’s always been very feminine: superfragile, very aristocratic” Tisci told WWD. That was until Vogue Paris just published the following shot of Lea in its August edition. (warning NSFW).

paris vogue via the imagist, fashin

In an accompanying interview, Lea tells Vogue that it was Tisci who originally encouraged her to cross dress, suggesting she bleach her eyebrows and wear "drag queen heels" to a party one night.

The evening proved a "revelation", apparently prompting her subsequent decision to live as a woman, one that has not been without some pain, she reports, referring to discrimination faced out in public and also within her own family.

Lea is now repped by the Women model agency, appropriately enough, and since the publication of the Givenchy campaign, has been busy with bookings.

She is awaiting a "definitive intervention" (read sex reassignment surgery) which will "liberate her femininity".

Suddenly the womens collections and the mens collections seem to be blurring into one...

mert + marcus for givenchy via wwd