Alex Consani is the world's most successful transgender model, breaking glass ceilings in the fashion industry with an ease perhaps available only to someone who looks like the beauty ideal the industry itself created. She is a Gen Z princess and a near-perfect embodiment of woke culture, gender fluidity and the renewed triumph of thinness.
Consani is beautiful, tall, fair-skinned, extraordinarily slim and emphatically blond. In an industry that is progressive and conservative at the same time, she is easy to market as the poster girl for anyone eager to demonstrate just how forward-thinking and subversive they are.
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Alex Consani walks in the 2025 Victoria's Secret Fashion Show
(Photo: Mike Coppola/Getty Images for Victoria's Secret)
Modeling without a trace of self-importance. Alex Consani
(Illustration: Erez Amiran)
Has the fashion industry really changed the rules of the game, or has it merely widened them enough to admit everyone who still fits the familiar beauty ideal? As it turns out, stale cultural conventions, much like empires, fall slowly.
Grace Ling ensemble at a Netflix event, 2024
(Photo: John Nacion/Getty Images)
Sheer fabric and a mini at the Teen Vogue Summit, 2024
(Photo: Phillip Faraone/Getty Images for Teen Vogue)
Multiple slits at the premiere of 'A Family Affair,' 2024
(Photo: Emma McIntyre/Getty Images)
Her journey to fame
Consani was born in California in 2003 and began modeling at age 12 through an agency specializing in transgender models. During the COVID lockdowns, she became a TikTok personality with comedy videos, helping her break into fashion not out of nowhere but as a kind of social media star.
Backstage at the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show, 2024
(Photo: Slaven Vlasic/Getty Images for Victoria's Secret)
On the runway at the H&M show during London Fashion Week, 2025
(Photo: Tristan Fewings/Getty Images)
By 2023, she had become a runway queen, walking for Versace, Mugler, Ferragamo, Coperni and, really, who hadn't booked her? In 2024, she was named Model of the Year at the Fashion Awards in London, becoming the first openly transgender woman to win the title. A year later, she found herself walking in Victoria's Secret's high-profile comeback show, making her Met Gala debut and landing her first solo Vogue cover. Mission accomplished.
At Gucci's spring-summer 2026 show
(Photo: Vittorio Zunino Celotto/Getty Images for Gucci)
At Chanel's spring-summer 2026 show
(Photo: Vittorio Zunino Celotto/Getty Images)
She is beautiful, but not the most beautiful. Nor is she the only transgender model starring in fashion. But she brings personality and that secret ingredient that makes her stand out: She is funny, uninhibited and deliberately goofy, with not a trace of self-importance. In some ways, she is an early-career Cara Delevingne taken one step further.
At the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show, 2025
(Photo: Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for Victoria's Secret)
At Michael Kors' fall-winter 2025-26 show
(Photo: JP Yim/Getty Images for Michael Kors)
Her Allure cover with model Anok Yai, in which the two appear nude in a kind of black-and-white human yin-yang, is almost an allegory for woke culture: It turns legitimate discussions of sex, gender, race and identity into a flawless aesthetic composition that resembles an AI-generated image.
Alex Consani and Anok Yai beside their Allure magazine cover, 2025
(Photo: Bryan Bedder/Getty Images for Allure)
How does she dress?
Like a 6-foot Amazon who stepped straight out of mythology and was handed access to every coveted brand in the world. She knows every trend and checks off everything on the current list of viral fashion hits. And yet her look is not detached from the tradition of iconic blondes of the past.
In a Gucci dress at a gala event, 2025
(Photo: Frazer Harrison/Getty Images)
In a Conner Ives dress at Paris Fashion Week, 2025
(Photo: Kristy Sparow/Getty Images for The Business of Fashion)
She is part Uma Thurman and part Grace Kelly, translated and upgraded for the current decade. Even the bleached eyebrows that have become part of her signature look since they were whitened for a Versace show nod to 1990s supermodel Nadja Auermann.
In a Roberto Cavalli dress at a Swarovski event, 2025
(Photo: Maya Dehlin Spach/Getty Images)
In a Jean Paul Gaultier dress at an event at the Louvre Museum, 2026
(Photo: Francois Durand/Getty Images)
The combination of classicism and contemporary edge is evident in everything she wears. At the Metropolitan Museum of Art gala in New York last year, she wore a pale, side-slit gown embellished with 33,000 Swarovski crystals.
In a Swarovski dress at the Met Gala, 2025
(Photo: Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images)
In a Gucci dress at the Met Gala, 2026
(Photo: Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for The Met Museum/Vogue)
For her Model of the Year win at the 2024 British Fashion Awards, Consani wore a printed Union Jack scarf winding over and under a rigid flesh-toned corset by designer Dilara Findikoglu, known for dresses that look as if they are one movement away from coming apart.
In a Dilara Findikoglu dress at the British Fashion Awards, 2024
(Photo: Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images for BFC)
In an Alexander McQueen ensemble at the British Fashion Awards, 2025
(Photo: Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images for BFC)
At Gucci's latest cruise show, she looked like a high priestess in a sheer black robe dress paired with a regal statement necklace. She stayed in the Gucci mood, with a twist, when she changed into a shimmering silver disco-style tube dress by the brand.
In a regal cape at a Gucci event, 2026
(Photo: Ilya S. Savenok/Getty Images for Gucci)
Plunging neckline at a YSL Beauty event, 2026
(Photo: Noam Galai/Getty Images for YSL Beauty)
Consani brings her own touch to clothes when modeling for McQueen, Jean Paul Gaultier and even Chanel's more restrained tweed classics. First and foremost, above everything else, Consani is simply an excellent model.
At Tory Burch's fall-winter 2026-27 show
(Photo: Slaven Vlasic/Getty Images for Tory Burch)
Tailored look at a YSL Beauty event, 2025
(Photo: Victor Boyko/Getty Images for Yves Saint Laurent Beauté)
In her everyday life, away from runways and red carpets, she is what might be called a "TikTok girl." Unlike Instagram stars filtered into perfection, TikTok personalities tend to cultivate accessibility and a measured kind of realism. Consani accordingly favors boyfriend jeans, tank tops and sneakers. And though these are essentially the unofficial uniform of the "I just threw something on and left the house" cult, on her they naturally look like a fashion shoot.
In an H&M sweatshirt backstage at Michael Kors' fall-winter 2025-26 show
(Photo: Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images for Michael Kors)
Looking ahead
At some point, people will stop calling her "the transgender model" and start referring to her simply as a supermodel. That will happen when gender identity stops being an issue and a subject of debate.
Backstage at Marc Jacobs' fall 2025 show
(Photo: Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for Marc Jacobs)
In the fashion world, which knows how to identify and celebrate bold social changes even while drowning in sexism, that will probably happen sooner than expected. In the meantime, Consani herself is acutely aware of the transgender struggle for recognition and takes an active part in the conversation around it in an effort to raise public awareness. She has also spoken publicly about the trans models who broke barriers before her and made space for her career.
Bleached eyebrows at a Pandora event, 2025
(Photo: John Nacion/Getty Images)
In a Michael Kors dress at the Council of Fashion Designers of America Awards, 2025
(Photo: Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images)
Applause or a barrage of tomatoes?
Consani moves effortlessly between being the least try-hard woman in the room and striking a supermodel pose while being squeezed without complaint into a Gaultier corset. She does so from the difficult position of someone who is always expected to prove herself and, for now, she is pulling it off flawlessly.