What does Andrej Pejic have to do to make the cover of Vogue Australia?

gazelle paulo/freak chic

Andrej Pejic’s first modelling job was a cover shoot – for Oyster’s 77th edition, back in 2008, flanked by a phalanx of male and female models. And while many cover tries never make it to page one, one of Pejic’s Oyster shots did, together with two of the women. It’s fair to say, however, that very few in the Australian industry knew who he was at this time and he was by no means the sole focus of the story. Fast track to August 2011 and Pejic has appeared on no less than eight international magazine covers in the space of six months: Zeit Magazin (February), Photo (March), Dossier Journal (Spring 2011), Citizen K (Spring 2011), Carbon Copy (Spring 2011), L’Officiel Ukraine (June 2011), Follow #5 and just this week, the very high-profile New York magazine, as one of four covers of the magazine’s Fall 2011 fashion special. Here is a photo gallery of all nine covers (best viewed on the blog): 

Debuting on models.com's Top 50 Men list at #40 in December, little wonder Pejic is now ranked the world number #19. 

So why haven’t Australian magazines been clamouring to get him on a cover back home? What an amazing coup it would be for Vogue Australia, for example, to be the first mainstream womens' fashion magazine in the world to do so, if only editor Kirstie Clements had the balls. 

Given that even Miranda Kerr didn’t make it to the cover of Vogue Australia until January this year – until after she had appeared on the covers of both Spanish and Italian Vogue, had married Orlando Bloom and was pregnant – frockwriter thinks there’s little chance of that happening.

Speaking of pregnancies, one of the more amusing anecdotes recounted in the  accompanying Pejic feature in this month's New York magazine was how Pejic attempted a little supermodel satire when arriving at Sao Paulo airport in June this year, for Sao Paolo Fashion Week.

Inspired by the miraculous maternity bounce-backs of supermods such as Kerr, who somehow manage to head back to work mere weeks after giving birth, Pejic had hoped to demonstrate he could do it in a day: arriving in Sao Paulo with a styrofoam baby bump, which he planned to jettison for the following day’s runway duties.

Pejic’s plan was foiled by Brazilian customs which asked him to remove the object, assuming he might be smuggling contraband. 

Once given the all clear, Pejic was reunited with his faux baby bump – and paraded it landside in this photo and video (above/below):