Perhaps the most compelleing, and exciting, notion typified by the popularity of gender-bending model Andrej Pejic is the world's reaction to him. While an anomaly like Pejic -- who is enjoying a career in which he slips into the guises of male and female comfortably and effortlessly -- may have once been greeted with shocked gasps and clasped pearls. But today, his laissez-faire stance on gender and sexuality is met with a general sense of indifference.

He is the embodiment of intersections. He is Australian and Serbo-Croatian, and walks in both men's and women's shows (famously closing Jean Paul Gaultier's Spring 2011 couture show in a fur-trimmed dress). "The truth is I have to work twice as hard to be taken seriously," he says, though he's stomped in high heels all over the narrow parameters of the chiseled male model. "Most male models have girlfriends, but backstage, when no one is looking, they like to pinch me," he says. Of his meeting with the Queen of England earlier this year Pejic wore a vintage leather Versace pencil skirt. "Let's face it, we all love a good queen," he says. "I went for a '90s Sharon Stone look. The palace was beautiful; I felt right at home."

Photo by Gavin Bond for Out