Our Dream Job

I think it is natural to dream of being a glamorous model walking down the runway, for one woman the dream came true.

Top international model Andreja Pejic to walk for Smith & Caughey's fashion show
Stuff
March 15, 2017

Iconic New Zealand department store Smith & Caughey's has scored a major fashion coup with this week's announcement that top New York-based model Andreja Pejic will walk in their 'Last Friday' show on 31 March.

Pejic, who has modelled for many of the world's biggest designers, is also famous for being the most successful openly transgender model.

Born Andrej, Pejic fled with her family to Serbia at the outset of the Bosnian war, settling in a refugee camp near Belgrade before emigrating to Melbourne as political refugees when she was just eight years old.

Initially celebrated as an androgynous model and walking in both men's and women's runway shows in 2011, in early 2014, Pejic underwent sex reassignment surgery and came out publicly later that year as a transgender woman, marking her transition from androgynous model to female model.

The first openly transgender model profiled by Vogue in its May 2015 issue, the 25-year-old said in her interview that she was determined to show that there was more to her modelling career than "cynical stunt casting".

"It is about showing that this is just not a gimmick."

Little girls dream about being a fashion model, so did many of us but for us we had to hide our dreams. I remember seeing Christie Brinkley, Lauren Hutton, Brook Shields, Cheryl Tiegs, Twiggy… well maybe not Twiggy and wanting to be like them but I knew it was impossible. But now our dreams are possible.