Behind the All-Transgender Barneys Ad Campaign

You’ve probably heard about the awesome Barneys New York spring ad campaign called “Brothers, Sisters, Sons & Daughters” — it’s beautiful, shot by Bruce Weber, and features 17 transgender models. Autostraddle talked to some of the people involved:

Many of the models still approached the project with apprehension. Pogensky explained that although he was intrigued by a major retailer wanting an assemblace of all-transgender models, it also shot up red flags. “I had this image in my head,” he told me, “of a bunch of designers and a creative team looking for the next big thing. How can we shock the world, they were saying. Who can we use?Ah ha! Tr*nnys!”

His fears weren’t actualized during the shoot. “I realized that this team of people had not only done their research, but also really cared about transgender people,” he told me. “All of them, and I do mean all of them were fucking amazing. There was no misgendering, there were no awkward questions, everyone was amazing.”

This rocks, and here’s to the day when “no misgendering” is expected and not notable. More at Autostraddle, and on a similar note, here’s an old interview I did with Arisce Wanzer.