Last September, New York-based men’s designer Robert Geller requested a model to potentially cast in his upcoming show.
When the 6-foot-2 catwalker with a square jaw, large neck tattoo and gap-tooth grin walked into the room, it became apparent to Geller that he was actually a she.
“To be honest, when I saw her [modeling] card, I didn’t know she was a girl,” says Geller. “I only noticed when she was here.”
That model was 35-year-old Casey Legler, who says she’s often confused for the less fairer sex: “I get read for a guy. I think that’s always the first impression,” Legler tells The Post, with a soft delivery that belies her masculine appearance.
The long-limbed French waif fits the ideal masculine physical prototype so well that she made history in May by becoming the first woman signed to Ford Models men’s division.
While Geller didn’t cast her in the end, career-defining work has steadily come her way and her star has risen since Time profiled her in November. She recently shot a major (unnamed) magazine editorial for March, and will be featured in British retailer AllSaints’ spring campaign. And she finally made her debut at New York Fashion Week last night when she walked in designer Michael Bastian’s menswear show.
“Anything that creates a conversation is good for the industry,” says Richard Blandino, bookings director at GQ. “And people are talking about her, want to see who she is and what she looks like. She’s an original. The real thing.”
Two years ago, it was the gorgeous Bosnian-born male model Andrej Pejic who swept the fashion world as he sauntered down the Parisian runway in Jean Paul Gaultier’s couture show donning a wedding gown. The dead ringer for Karolina Kurkova then became the first known model at New York Fashion Week to do both men’s and women’s collections.
Now the pendulum has swung the other way with a new crop of gender-bending female mannequins donning men’s clothing for the camera and catwalk.
Dutch supermodel Saskia de Brauw starred in Yves Saint Laurent’s spring men’s campaign, and Tamy Glauser, a Swiss stunner with a shaved head, was in Givenchy’s January men’s show.
“It’s pretty clear that there’s a big wave of androgyny in the fashion … world,” says Kristian Laliberte, senior editor at Refinery29.com. “It speaks to where we are in fashion, there is such a fluidity between men and women in terms of dressing. ”
Legler’s foray into fashion happened organically. An elite swimmer who competed in the 1996 Atlanta Olympics for France, she moved to New York three years ago to pursue a career as an artist, and her circle of friends here includes art luminaries Ryan McGinley, Neal Beasley and Miguel Gutierrez.
This past April, her photographer friend Cass Bird cast her in a men’s shoot for the summer issue of Muse magazine.
“Cass said she had a friend at Ford that she was going to show the images to. She did, so I went in and met them, and, within a day, I was signed to the men’s board,” she says.
Her intention was always to model menswear, she says, though she’s enjoyed the few times she’s modeled femme looks: “I do know how to rock a heel. I really do!”
Today she’s wearing jeans, a distressed biker jacket and a woolly hat over her skater haircut. But at times she’s worn her locks long — and she has an affinity for dramatic tutus, which she wears during the summer months.
Her agent at Ford, Emily Novak, says she didn’t deliberate long on signing the barrier-breaking model.
“It was a no-brainer because Casey is not only beautiful and the perfect size for male modeling, but also because of who she is, an artist. She embodies so directly the meshing of art and fashion,” says Novak.
Though female models outearn men, the ability to bob and weave between the XY and XX chromosome can be more lucrative — simply because it can lead to more work.
Such is the case for Glauser, 28, who made her debut this past fall on the women’s runway for Vivienne Westwood in frayed pants and a straw hat before walking in last month’s Givenchy men’s show in black trousers and a vest.
“In the specific case of Tamy, we can easily imagine her in men’s or women’s campaigns, which brings her more potential opportunities,” says Steeven Kanoo, director of Ford Europe women’s division, which represents Glauser, also a former elite swimmer.
Both Legler and Glauser tell The Post that their male peers have embraced them even though they’re high-profile competition.
“They’re really good guys,” says Legler. “It’s been very easy. When I’m there with the guys, it just makes sense. I fit the clothes. The clothes look good.”
Glauser says she’s actually had more trouble at women’s castings.
“I remember at a casting once, a guy stood in the door to block my way and asked me what I wanted. He thought I was in the wrong place.”
Both emphasize that they are not pioneering this trend, which started long before Pejic burst onto the scene.
“None of this happens in a vacuum. I [was] ushered in with a huge history [of androgyny] behind me. [Fashion] celebrates, in a lot of ways, what is already happening,” says Legler, who calls herself as “queer as the day is long.”
Though her modeling career was rooted in Legler’s desire to explore her own art, she says she’s not shying away from any political statements.
“I’m delighted to be a part of this, which is about offering up another option within the beautiful context that is fashion. So there’s a celebration of hyper-femininity, hyper-masculinity and whatever lands in between.”