Lea T’s catwalk revolt
This is Fashion Rio, Latin America’s signature fashion event for summerwear, and for weeks now the buzz has been building to just this moment. All night, sylphs in beach gear have walked the fashion planks, but they might as well be teasers for Lea. A dozen steps later, with a practised pout and a hip-check salute to the camera pit at the end of the runway, the 29-year-old model with a dragon tattoo on her pelvis owns the crowd. As the bleachers erupt in wolf whistles, who’d have figured that the hottest new face from Brazil is not a she at all?
Brazilian beauties are hardly strangers to the world of high style, but never mind Gisele and the Girl From Ipanema. The new sensation of the runways is Lea T, a transgender model who fell into the trade almost by accident and has been making outsize waves ever since. She has graced magazine covers, posed fully nude for French Vogue, and fled paparazzi. She donned swimwear for compatriot designer Alexandre Herchcovitch and strapped into a full bikini for Blue Man in Rio last week, to the delight of gawkers on Copacabana beach. That was her in a lip lock with Kate Moss on a recent cover of the French magazine Love, and on Oprah, in February, when she detailed how to flaunt the scantiest women’s gear without spilling secrets. She’s now listed No 42 on Models.com’s top 50 models. And to judge by the ruckus in Rio, Lea’s rise is just beginning.
