How Alex Consani’s Unstoppable Joy Is Redefining the Fashion World—and What It Means for Your Own Style Game
Have you ever wondered what it’s like to juggle the glitz of high fashion while keeping your feet firmly rooted in the everyday? Well, meet Alex Consani—a whirlwind of charisma and grit who’s rewriting the rulebook on what it means to be a modern supermodel. Picture this: a spring afternoon in Brooklyn, a casual meetup spot that’s anything but ordinary, and a conversation that effortlessly bridges the gap between runway glam and offbeat charm. From dropping her bike off for repairs to casually chatting over yuzu-ginger tea, Alex flips the script on celebrity, sprinkling humor and authenticity like confetti. But beneath the sunglasses and flawless pose lies a story of fierce determination, groundbreaking achievements, and an unwavering commitment to “doing it for all 50 of the other bitches” dreaming to be in her shoes. Ready to dive deep into the life of the fashion world’s new darling who’s as real as they come?
14 min readIt’s a cloudless spring Saturday in Brooklyn, and I am texting Alex Consani to find a spot to meet. We had planned to meet at a restaurant in Fort Greene, her new neighborhood (she just moved into a brownstone there), but she’s had a change of heart. She suggests a social-enterprise coffee shop called Peace Cafe, tucked away on an unassuming thoroughfare in Bedford-Stuyvesant, where she is tight with the owner and keen to visit, as she used to live nearby. “It’s owned by a really cute woman who turned the space into a coffee shop with community events,” Consani says. It’s closed, so we pivot again. “I need to drop my bike off to get fixed. Can we meet at Brooklyn Ball Factory?” It’s a neighborhood Japanese café, the sort that only the ones who know know about, on an otherwise sleepy street where Williamsburg meets Bushwick.
Consani’s entrance says a star has arrived. A black Suburban SUV pulls up to the café, and a driver opens the door. She pops out, hair pulled back in a chignon, Gentle Monster sunglasses capping off her supermodel-cum-It-girl air. Her limbs and eyes jostle for attention (incredibly long and piercingly blue, respectively). She offers a warm embrace before apologizing for the change in plans. Gesturing to the car, I ask if this is the usual way things go, now that she’s a supermodel. “I just have him because I had a job,” she says. “My bike that I need to get repaired is in the back! Girl, I am not that fancy!”
“Oooooohhhh, you fancy!” says Consani, eyeing my bag (a hard-earned Chanel, afforded only after months of saving) as we walk toward the counter to place our orders. “I tried to get some of Matthieu’s shoes. I thought they were on hold in Paris, but they said no,” she says, laughing. It’s somewhat comforting to know that even the model in the Chanel show can’t skip the lines at Rue Cambon.
Consani is wearing a mix of high and low. No, really: Hermès with dirty denim. It’s a new Kelly Pochette that she says she dropped into the ocean when she was in Jamaica. “It got taken out to sea, but it’s kind of fab. I jumped in after it and got Kate Moss-ified a little bit.” She also has a white Givenchy by Sarah Burton shirt that is designed back to front, slip-on Prada mules, and jeans from Icon Denim that she says she has “worn every day for four fucking years. They’re nasty. Don’t even get near, bitch!”
This becomes a through line of our conversation: an insistence on normality in a life that’s become increasingly extraordinary.
Beginning on TikTok, Consani exploded with viral videos of impromptu public dance breaks, absurdist antics, and lip syncs to her favorite rap songs. It’s behavior that would have been frowned upon in the decorous world of high fashion even a few years ago. But for Consani, those videos have been her meal ticket. She has nine million followers across her early account (@bannedbarbie) and the more current accounts (she toggles between @captincroook and @ms.mawma) and 4.3 million followers on Instagram. She is one of the world’s most sought-after models and was named 2024’s Model of the Year at the Fashion Awards, making her the first-ever trans woman to win the title. This year alone, Consani is a face of McQueen, Gucci, YSL Beauty, and Tory Burch. She has walked the runway for Chanel, Jean Paul Gaultier, Marc Jacobs, and the supermodel Super Bowl, the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show. She is also adding actor to her growing résumé, with roles in the upcoming A24 movie Peaked, directed by Molly Gordon, which features Laura Dern, Amy Sedaris, and Connor Storrie, and the next season of American Horror Story, the most recognizable series in the Ryan Murphy universe. But with every achievement I list off, she delivers a reply with just enough endearing self-deprecation to assure me that her feet are firmly planted on the ground. It’s a self-awareness that comes from a deep understanding and respect for the communities that got her there in the first place: her family, her friends, and the trans foremothers and fathers who showed her the way.
According to her mother, Lisa, even when Consani was in the womb, she was making her presence known.
“When I found out I was pregnant—she’s my firstborn, and I had heard people say, ‘Oh, it feels like butterflies,’ and it was like a disco party every night in my belly,” recalls Lisa. “She came out at 4:20 in the morning, four hours into the sign of Leo. And from there, it was just all energy, just on.”
When I recount this story to Consani at the café, she laughs between sips of yuzu-ginger tea. “She felt me strutting in the womb!”
Consani was born in the quaint Northern California town of Petaluma, in 2003, to mom Lisa and dad Anthony. Her brother, Ted, was born a few years later. Lisa says Consani was always pushing the limits: “She would be flying around the deck on this tricycle, coming within millimeters of falling off and going down the stairs, but she had full control. She would take it right to the edge. She was always that kid who challenged the norm.”
“I was so behaviorally challenged when I was a kid,” Consani says. She recalls, in detail, her dad dressing her for a German Christmas bazaar called Kringle Fest and her resistance to the traditional German boy costume her parents had chosen for her. “I would wear the hat with the little feather and the overalls, the lederhosen, and there was a time it was a physical fight to get me out of the house. But we would go to Target, where Zendaya had a Shake It Up Target collaboration, and, bitch, I would run that!”
In middle school, one of Consani’s friends got a camera for her birthday and the two fooled around taking photos. “They looked like album covers,” Lisa says. “I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, this is amazing.’ And the mom was encouraging me. She’s like, ‘Oh, Alex could be a model.’ And I was like, ‘Yeah, whatever. She’s in sixth grade!’”
Figuring out how best to support Consani as a young trans girl took precedence. “I think my dad had a lesbian friend growing up, and my mom didn’t really have any queer people in her life at all. And she went to Catholic school,” Consani says. “It definitely took a lot of maybe unlearning, allowing themselves to be more open to the conversation of what that meant, because I’ve always been a girl. It’s never been a question.”
Though Lisa and Anthony embraced Consani’s identity, Lisa recalls that “puberty was tricky. Everybody’s body does weird stuff in puberty. We sort of hunkered down at home, and we were just like, ‘Okay, what do you want to do?’ And for a long time, she kind of just shelved [the modeling idea]. I remember her doctor saying she’s going to be at least 5 foot 11. No matter what, even if she’s on these cross hormones, she’s going to be tall, so I knew there was a possible future there.”
At 12, Consani signed to an agency that pioneered the representation and platforming of trans models called Slay, which also represented actress Dominique Jackson and model Arisce Wanzer. “It was super important and magical. I mean, slightly problematic, but the concept was fab,” she reasons. “There were a lot of really beautiful moments and memories that came out of that.”
Becoming a model helped Consani affirm her identity. “For someone like me, it was kind of an escape, being hyperfeminine, and exploring what being a woman was to me was really a fashion kind of experience [first],” Consani explains. “I had the luck of coming upon a group of people, like Dominique and people at that agency—there were so many amazing women that really gave me the foundation to be who I am now.”
Consani quickly outgrew the local fashion scene in Los Angeles, signed with IMG Models, and made her runway debut for Tom Ford in 2021. For how strong her off-runway persona is, she is a true chameleon on the runway. She is able to embody exactly what is required of her: French coquettishness at Chanel (“I don’t know many other shows where every single girl is so excited to do it”), sensual side-to-side sauntering at Tom Ford (“I love Haider Ackermann. I mean, it’s sickening!”), or a ’90s pump down the runway at Gucci. (“Demna is my sis! He casts his shows like movies. Genius!”) Consani can do it all. She takes on her role as model almost as the script of the day, asking: Who am I becoming today?
“There is something immediate about [Alex’s] presence. The moment she enters a room, the world seems to lean in and embrace her energy,” says Tom Ford creative director Haider Ackermann.
“Alex is a master of her own craft,” adds Seán McGirr, the creative director at McQueen. “Aside from being an incredible friend, she commands the space with incredible presence, grace, and humility. She understands the power of empathy, always being authentic.”
Adam Selman, EVP and chief creative officer at Victoria’s Secret & Co., takes it one step further. “She has built an empire,” he says, adding that she makes it all “look fun and carefree, when anyone who has worked in this industry knows it’s anything but.”
Fashion has no shortage of beautiful faces, but Alex and her peers (Anok Yai, Paloma Elsesser, and Mona Tougaard) represent the new generation of supermodels—the ones not just walking the runway but cultivating platforms, building communities, and leading with personality. They are regulars at the Oscars, they make music-video cameos, and they are on the Met Gala hosting committee. People don’t just want to see them, they want to know them. “I’m having fun,” says Consani. “I’m doing it for all 50 of the other bitches that would love to be in that room.”
“Some models are just a pretty face and hate the work. You could give mystery all you want, but ultimately, there’s a powerful sentiment to seeing somebody really enjoy what they do, right?” Consani continues, “Not to shade anybody else, but there are girls who just do not know how to model. They’re not enjoying the art of it. I think that to really enjoy and be good at your job means being able to take a step back and appreciate every side of it.”
Consani is close friends with many of her peers, but she found a mentor figure in Mariacarla Boscono, who has been modeling for nearly three decades. “I don’t have the lessons and the stories of life. I don’t know how it works in the same way Mariacarla does,” Consani says. “I’m still learning.”
Boscono, though, says Consani is “a never-ending inspiration.” “We’ve talked until the morning. We have so many shared experiences,” Boscono says. “To me, having something to say, to talk and being able to listen to others, is one of the greatest human qualities. Alex has it. She has a great heart!”
We are tucked in a corner of the café’s outdoor seating area. Our conversation is continually interrupted by Consani’s followers. First, a passerby lets her know he’s a huge fan. Then a group of friends whispers, heads swinging around as they walk past, upon recognizing her. (“Yes, that’s her, dude!”) And at a nearby table, Brooklyn locals Siang and Amita interrupt us mid-conversation: “We heard so many people stop, and we thought, ‘Wait, should we know who she is? Is she famous?’”
Consani swiftly replies, “I’m on TikTok!”
I am struck by her insistence that she is simply a TikToker. “In Paris, they definitely know me more for modeling, but in America it’s definitely TikTok,” she says. “It’s a privilege that people even care to take a picture with me. That’s why when someone asks me for a picture, I’ll be like, ‘Yeah, but what’s your name? Do you live here?’ This is my favorite type of interaction. I think for me it only gets stressful when people just come up and just ask for my picture. Because I’m like, ‘I am a person.’ No shade. I love to talk. I love to chat. I want the tea.”
Consani has seen a shift in who is approaching her. Earlier in her career, it was fellow trans men and women; more recently, it’s been their parents, concerned for their safety and their diminishing rights in Trump’s America. “It’s been really affecting me,” she says. “They say, ‘I support my child because of the stories that you’ve told about your parents supporting their children and how much that has shaped you.’” Her visibility as a trans person with a platform has her asking how she can become more of an active advocate. “It sucks now because the political situation in this country is going against everything that I’ve had. I had the ability to get medical and gender-affirming care that allowed me to transition, and that, in turn, validates my transness. I’m considered more acceptably trans than someone who just transitioned, even though we’re the same type of trans, just because I visibly appear more understandable to people,” she says. “The support that I’m giving people is really about letting them do what they want, but you can’t even let your children do what they want anymore.”
Consani says she’s glad there’s a growing awareness around “protecting the dolls” but thinks there’s a bigger conversation that needs to be had. “I know people that have reached out and they get a suicide help number,” she continues. “I’m like, ‘Girl, that’s not doing shit.’ There isn’t really an ability to converse positively about experiences. What I will say about the trans community as a whole and what I think is so special is that no matter what privilege you have within it, whether you’re Black and trans, white and trans, rich or poor, you’re still trans. Ultimately, you’re seen as trans people before anything else that you are. And I think, not to diminish anyone else’s struggles, that it’s a really beautiful connection that [trans] people have.”
Brooklyn Ball Factory is an archetypal East Williamsburg scene, full of young, attractive creatives. I ask Consani if she’d ever approach someone. “Yeah. I don’t give a fuck,” she says. “I’ll be like, ‘Hey, what’s your name?’ Whatever. And if they’re not into it, then that’s fine, girl. I move the fuck on. I have moments to make, baby. I got things to do.”
Consani says she’s not dating anyone. “I like to fuck more than I like to date,” she says. I assume, though, that a supermodel has no problem getting a date. “Girl, nothing,” she says. Not even a DM? I challenge her to look, offering to help go through them. Nope, nothing! “Going through them would be a good video,” she says. “I do have a Notes list with my types, though.” She whips out her phone and talks me through it: “DL [down-low] events planner. European soccer player. Female firefighter. Chef. Son or daughter of a family who owns a hotel chain. Kids of the Rosewood owners…call me!”
Consani would like kids, but right now, between modeling, acting, and ambitions to bring her own stories to life, it’s not a priority. “Girl, I got a lot going on,” she says. “Definitely by the time I am 35, though.”
Consani talks a lot about eras: her sober era (she says she’s recently stopped drinking) and her “experimental” era, stylistically (she just splurged on a bunch of Dario Vitale’s one-and-done Versace collection) and in her life. It’s what’s led to her actress era. That begins with Peaked, which has just wrapped. She gushes about the experience: “I’m so excited. It’s such an amazing cast of people.” Unlike modeling, where she’s at the top of her game, this role was hard-earned. She sent in her audition tapes and was on hold until she was confirmed. “I love to feel humbled,” she says. “I could always learn more.”
It’s not that she thinks she’s learned everything there is to know about fashion. “There’s this feeling in fashion where you get to a certain point and it’s like everyone’s asking you about it,” she says. “But I’m still 22. I started working in high fashion in 2021. I’m not Kate Moss or Mariacarla. And I think it’s nice to remind myself of that, because you can get all jaded when people around you are always expecting me to be, like…on.”
Consani credits being around so many creative people in fashion as part of the impetus to branch out. “I’m directing, I’m writing, maybe singing, maybe dancing, girl. You never know,” she says. “That’s the energy I want to be able to create.” Right now, she fits acting jobs around her modeling gigs and is being more selective in what she chooses to take on. “Listen,” she tells me when I ask how she has the time. “I’m a dedicated-ass bitch. And trust, I’ll be going out tonight with the lines in my hand. Don’t get that twisted. The only lines I’m doing are the ones on the acting script.”
She’s excited about American Horror Story in particular. “It’s big,” she says. “Hopefully gives me a little bit of… range.” She adds, “You can either devote your whole pussy to fashion, or you could just take a step back and think about what you want to do. American Horror Story is definitely going to be a life-changing experience.”
I ask Consani if she will ever stop modeling.
“Never, bitch,” she says without hesitation. “Always going to be on a motherfucking runway. It forever has my heart. But I think that it gets to a point where you think, ‘I want to do things specifically for me.’”
Influencer Quenlin Blackwell, Consani’s close friend, is a fellow Gen Zer finding fame with the same sort of humorous videos that made the model a star. She describes their friendship as one that started online but flourished in real life. “I feel like her growth on the internet is because of her comedy, but her growth in the modeling industry is because of her groundwork, footwork, and hard work,” Blackwell says. “She’s someone who works relentlessly and is just so professional. Whenever I see her walk, I’m like, ‘Bring back the word super. She is a supermodel.’”
Part of Consani’s appeal is that she’s not too cool to be excited about her success. And that, in turn, makes her cool.
Fashion is run by gatekeepers who tend to keep the industry overly serious. Consani’s continued domination of fashion instead shows how she chooses to enjoy the ride. She’ll take the trip, wear the outfit, walk the fashion show, and make a hilarious TikTok about the whole thing, bringing us all along to experience it too.
“I say, why not ask for a bartender on your rider? Why not ask for an ice cream truck to come to the shoot? All these things make it fun, and everyone enjoys it,” says Consani. “I feel like I’ve definitely gotten to a point in my career where I’m more respected because I have fun with it. Because you can be so serious and strategic all you want, but at the end of the day, it’s a very fickle industry. Everyone is very like, ‘What’s in now? What’s not in now?’ But having fun is always going to be in. Period.”
This story appears in the Summer issue of Harper’s Bazaar.
Hair: Shiori Takahashi for Oribe; makeup: Thom Walker; manicure: Chisato Yamamoto for Essie; casting: Anita Bitton at the Establishment; production: the Arcade; set design: Tilly Power
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