[…] Others, like Ryley Pogensky, a party promoter who was born female and now identifies as “gender queer,” have not.
As he puts it in the catalog: “What is between my legs is not thoroughly who I am. If gender is black and white, I’m gray.”
The idea for the campaign was hatched by Dennis Freedman, who is in charge of Barneys ad campaigns and was formerly the creative director of W magazine, where he oversaw envelope-pushing features that included showing the designer Tom Ford with sex toys and Brad Pitt nearly naked.
In an interview, Mr. Freedman said that the campaign was a chance to create awareness of a community that has in many ways been left behind as gay men and lesbians have moved further and further into the mainstream.
“I was exquisitely aware that in the last decade, the L.G.B. communities have made extraordinary advances, and the transgender community has not shared in that progress,” Mr. Freedman said.
The fashion world has not been terribly quick to embrace transgender people in imagery, although there are exceptions.