What's more fun to model — menswear or womenswear?
Andreja Pejić: I was always drawn to more-feminine things, so I felt a lot more comfortable in women's clothes and enjoyed them more. But there's something really cool about dressing as the opposite gender, too. So I've enjoyed both.
From your experience, how does treatment differ between male and female models in the industry?
AP: Female models are at a higher level in the industry. . . . Obviously womenswear is a bigger business, and marketing in womenswear is taken a lot more seriously than menswear, so women definitely dominate. There's also a lot more money on the line. Where there's money, there is more objectification, too.
How did you first get into modeling?
AP: I identified as transgender from a very young age, but it's not something I shared publicly — not with my friends even, just with my family. To model both men's and women's clothes wasn't something I set out to do. I knew I was going to be androgynous, but I didn't know the type of career I was going to have. It was really the stylists who saw my look and decided to play around with me and put me in dresses and suits. It gave me the opportunity to express myself. It's something you can really do when you are young.
