Anira Orlando agreed to participate in an interview, with the purpose to illuminate the issue of gender diversity in the fashion industry, with special attention to the danish fashion industry.
Anira Orlando was born and raised in Aarhus, where she through her first 20 years felt oppressed in her own body, caused by a feeling of being born as the wrong gender. Anira was born with the Y-chromosome and was christened Anir.
As Anira moved to London in 2015, in an age of 20, she felt for the first time that she was “welcomed” and could be one hundred percent herself. In London, gender diversity and acceptance of it is more prevalent, and she was, as a result of this culture, able to start her transition from being a boy to become a woman.
Anira is today an influencer and has in addition worked as a model for the fashion house Stine Goya. As a model for Stine Goya, she was one of the frontrunners for the “House of Goya” campaign, which was a campaign that used exclusively black LGTB people.
The questions were prepared with the aim of gaining an understanding of how she experiences gender diversity issues in the fashion industry and in society.
To begin the interview, it is particularly relevant to get a definition of Anira’s view of herself in the gender diversity debate:
“I don’t see myself as a gender activist, but it comes to me naturally to me. What I do, how I dress, talk and behave, is an active statement in itself. My Instagram is very queer and “see me” where I clearly show my standpoints, but I’ve never participated in any movement or organization to shed light on the topic, even though I hope I will some day!”
After reading an article about Anira from 2018, where she highlights how there is a clear problem with acceptance of gender diversity in the culture at the time, it is interesting to hear if she thinks it has gotten better since then:
“It is the exact same today as it was then. Every day I meet people who have an opinion on how I dress. I constantly get comments like "it's too much you have to show consideration, go home and change clothes". However, I keep preaching that I am an adult woman and I decide for myself what I want to wear and who I want to be.”
Anira mentions that it is not only strangers who have opinions with how she dresses and behave, but also her closest friends.
“The worst is when it is some of your own friends. There are still some in my group of friends who are commenting on my clothes if they think it is too challenging or they don’t think it’s decent in relation to the arrangement we are going to. It was hard in the beginning, but now I’ve learned how to stand up for myself. People are not forced to hang out with me, and if some people can’t handle me I always ask myself the question; “do I want to lower myself and fit into the crowd, or do I want to stand firm and be myself?”.
Anira explains how there is a huge problem with many people in Denmark, who finds LGTB people interesting and therefore wants to hang out with them. As a result of this, Anira has lost many friends, after she suddenly found out that they have only been with her because of her exterior and not her interior.
By her experience of being a transgender in the fashion industry, she has also experienced the huge difference in transforming from a boy to a girl and a girl to a boy.
“It is a general thing that everyone just knows, that being a “girly boy” is more unacceptable than being a “boy girl”. Masculinity is a plus, as well as strong and macho. However, every man wants a feminine girl and they think it is sexy to look at, but they shame femininity at the same time when it comes to their own gender. “Be a man” and “you are a pussy” are widespread expressions.”
Anira thereof distinctly means that it is a cultural problem, that people still can be against gender diversity. This is where Tone Policing definitely is expressed, as people has a tendency on only seeing the exterior factors, throughout for example being a boy dressed in a skirt and thereof comment on and illuminate this, instead of seeing the interior factors, and thereof the real factors.
Even though Anira see a problem with gender diversity in both society and the fashion industry, she explains how the fashion industry is a place where one can truly unfold and experiment with boundaries:
“The fashion industry is a fantasy world, where there are several loose ends. Unisex fashion has especially helped the industry to loosen the established reins, and today you can dress more as you want. There is a larger universe in relation to dress when it comes to both men and women, compared to everyday life. Today it is also easier to dress more alternative as a man compared to before, where it was primarily suits and ties.”
As Anira explains how the fashion industry is freer in general, she points out how the danish fashion industry is way behind:
“There is more focus and more need for LGBT people when prideweek is coming up, which is widly fucked. It is so typical for Danes to use LGTB people during that period, and then they are forgotten the rest of the year.”
With this expression, it was naturally to lead to a question, that asked Anira how she saw her collaboration with Stine Goya and whether she thought there was a commercial intention behind:
“I one hundred percent believe that there were some underlying intentions with that campaign! I think there’s so much tactics behind using black LGTB models in a campaign as It goes in and steals the audience or that’s it’s some kind of an X-factor. It’s not a coincidence at all!”
As a consumer, you could look critical into Stine Goyas campaign and think that they’ve done it to obtain some kind of diversity capital, and thereof they’re intentions is defined by Tokenism, where a company only make an effort to a particular thing, to obtain a better image. On the other hand, Anira looks on Stine Goyas campaign with a positive mind and as a win-win situation:
“I feel like you should not just look at it as a negative thing. One should turn it around and turn it into something positive. It may be that the fashion houses get something out of using dark LGTB models in a campaign, but at the same time we also get to put ourselves in focus through that campaign. We also come into the public eye, we also get a kind of foot into that world. I see it as a win-win situation.”
By interviewing Anira it is clear that there is a cultural problem in acceptance of gender diversity in society as well as the fashion industry. Even though Anira takes a positive standpoint with Stine Goya’s campaign where they used exclusively black LGBT models, it is distinctly shown through the interview, that there is a problem in the fashion industry by using Tokenism and thereby making use of particular models in order to achieve diversity capital from the consumers.
Anira was thankful to express herself and shed light on this topic throughout this interview, as it of course means a lot to her.
By Julie Strand