10 Androgynous Models We Love

Andre Pejic

Martin Cohn

Lea T.

And of course, there's Jenny Shimizu in the list. 

Full list at fabricmag.

Exclusive Interview: Supermodel Jenny Shimizu @ The Seattle Lesbian

TSL: You attended California State University, Northridge on a basketball scholarship. We had no idea over here that you were such a sports enthusiast. What else might your fans be surprised to know about you?

JS: I wasn’t actually planning on going to college and then I registered late and my dad went down and asked if I could try out for the basketball team because I had been playing basketball my whole life and had done really well. They told me to go down and try out and I did and was made a part of the team. I was on the team, but didn’t get to play for the next four seasons (one year) but it was great because I didn’t have to miss out on a full year that way.

TSL: Your androgynous look was what initially paved the way to your famous introduction to fashion mogul Calvin Klein. How did that come about?

JS: I wasn’t really planning to do that as a career and was definitely caught off-guard. I wasn’t really prepared and didn’t even have a passport or anything! I had to pack up a small bag, go to New York, get a passport, and then the rest is history. The next week I was on a plane to Milan on my way to meeting Gianni Versace.

TSL: I imagine you have many interesting stories under your proverbial belt regarding that time in your life as a young model.

JS: Oh, yeah [laughs]. I have many, many stories. When I look back in hindsight, I can definitely see that I never said “no” and I never turned anything down that scared me. I took the opportunity to do everything. I made myself available for the projects that came along and never let fear get in the way.

Read the full interview on The Seattle Lesbian.

Crutches? HA-HA!

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An AfterEllen Interview with Jenny Shimizu

Out model Jenny Shimizu was famously discovered while working as a mechanic in California. It's been two decades since she's become a well-known face, and she's taken on major ad campaigns, acting, a judging role on reality TV and a fashion line. Now Shimizu is going behind-the-scenes to become an agent at Women Direct Modeling Agency.

Shimizu recently took the time to answer our questions about her new career path, which she happens to have a lot of experience in already.

AfterEllen: What made you decide to make the jump from talent to agent?
Jenny Shimizu: As an agent, I kind of get to bring together the best choices I've made; I have a wealth of information about this business and moved back to New York a year ago and had opportunity to learn how to become an agent. Initially I wasn't sure it was going to be a proper fit; the business is very difficult on both sides. I'm really glad i did it though, because just the fact that I can pass on everything I've ever learned about the fashion business and work with people I have connections with from being a model and now I am getting my girls to work for them.

AE: When do you start at Women Direct?
JS: I became an agent as of January, which, it usually takes two to three years before you start booking clients but I was really on the fast track because of my history of being a model so my connections worked out and I was able to move up really quickly; it only took about six months.

Tell me about Women Direct and what made you choose this agency over others.
JS: Women Direct is a really great company and very respectable. They are one of the top agencies in New York so I have a lot of ties with this company already; so very familiar. They are also a smaller "boutique" agency, which I really like.

Read the full interview on After Ellen.

The Tao of Jenny Shimizu

Everytime I look at this photo, it gives me a feeling of absolute zen.

I have made it my computer's desktop wallpaper.

( via )

Damiana Plays Bingo with Linda Simpson, Murray Hill & Jenny Shimizu

Jenny Shimizu, Bingo enthusiast? Who woulda thunk!

Jenny Shimizu guest stars in 3Way Episode 11 "Friday Night Dykes" PART 2

This series is actually pretty funny. Who else recognised Jill Bennett from Dante's Cove? She's an out lesbian, go Jill!

Jenny Shimizu guest stars in 3Way Episode 11 "Friday Night Dykes" PART 1

Skip to 8:06 for Jennylicious-ness.

Jenny Shimizu T-Shirts

You know you want 'em. Go get 'em.

Jenny Shimizu interview on CherryGrrl.com

"I do not own a TV and I haven’t had one in years. I find it to be very addictive. The value of reality TV might be that we get off on living vicariously through characters we normally would not meet.

"I’m impressed by anyone who succeeds in this business and manages to keep sane. I have so much respect for Ellen, Portia and people who generate inspiration and goodness."

"Readers will be surprised to know that I am in bed by 10 pm almost every night.  Earlier, if I have a lover."

"I don’t really want a reaction from people. All I want to do is be myself and be an inspiration to be comfortable in your own skin."

Read the full interview on CherryGrrl.

Jenny Shimizu for Vogue Italia, 1993

Magazine: Vogue Italia, 1993
Photographer: Steven Meisel

Jenny Shimizu's agency at the time: Elite

Source: Unknown

Jenny Shimizu at the GMHC Fashion Forward 2010

Jenny Shimizu is ageing, if at all, very, very gracefully.

( via )

A glimpse of Jenny Shimizu on the Kenzo Spring Summer Menswear 2011 Preview

The high-fashion designers are making clothes for the androgyns again. Fashion goes in cycles.

Skip to 1:35 and 5:23 for Jennylicious-ness.

Jenny Shimizu on Curve Mag, September 2010

"The first big lesbian supermodel is still raising pulses"

And raises pulses she does alright.

That Effortless Cool

The original CK 1 stance. I mean has cool ever been this effortless?

The blur between boy and girl...it's a cyclical obsession that always spins back into currency at least once every decade. Well there's going to be a looooot of that for Spring 2011 which is why TI was inspired to go into the Spur files from December 2009 and pay tribute to the fabulous uniqueness that is Jenny Shimizu via this excerpt. Jenny is now working as an agent at Women Direct and even though I know I'm supposed to be having thoroughly professional conversations with her I can't help being a little bit of a groupie in her presence. I mean has cool ever been this effortless? All hail!

Read the full interview on The Imagist.

Jenny Shimizu, by Jenny Risher

© Jenny Risher Photography

Jenny Shimizu + Susi Kenna: Poster Couple for the 21st Century

( via )

Rodarte, the book.

It's "a 144-page coffee table crusher". Created by sisters Kate and Laura Mulleavy, in collaboration with Catherine Opie and Alec Soth, featuring Jenny Shimizu.

( via )

Available from September 2010.

There's a story behind every Jenny Shimizu tee

I didn't want to create a T-shirt line and then charge $100 for a T-shirt, which is kind of normal now. I'm down to earth and I wanted it to be about me, too, not a greedy, weird T-shirt line.

( via )

She'll be opening up to the Asian market real soon, so keep your eyes peeled.

Jenny Shimizu Online

For the latest JS news and upcoming merchandise (yes, you heard that), there is Jenny Shimizu Online.

There's even little snippets of JS trivia, and photos found nowhere else, like this one of an 11-year-old Jenny & her Yamaha, in the summer of '78.

( via )

Now that such an awesome (and official) site exists, we're not quite sure what to do with this site now. Ideas?

Closing the John Bartlett show

John Bartlett on his choice closer:

I closed the show with Jenny Shimizu, who’s really a muse for me. I love her style. I love what she’s about. She depicts the kind of woman that I am dressing. It’s no frills, no high heels, no beading, no ruffles. That is my motto.

( via )

Jenny Shimizu, by Michael Crook

photo by Michael Crook

( via Cause+Effect )

Jenny Shimizu contributes to Logo's Legacy Campaign

On her hesitation and eventual agreement to go to New York to model:

When you think more of "we" than just of "me", the fear goes away.

On being a "Japanese, tattooed, lesbian, super-short, mechanic":

You don't need to fit in a mould to be successful. 

( via )

Jenny Shimizu is on Twitter

It's not (yet) a verified Twitter account, but you can be pretty sure it is the real deal.

American Beauty

Date: May 2008
Publication: Audrey Magazine
Author: Paul Nakayama


The Ducati-riding, tattoo-bearing ’90s beauty icon may seem intimidating, but as Paul Nakayama discovers, there’s definitely something about Jenny Shimizu that's hard to resist.

It’s a brisk Sunday afternoon, and I’m sitting nervously at the Casbah Café in Silver Lake, a hip part of Los Angeles, Calif., waiting for Jenny Shimizu to arrive. 


I’m nervous because I was told that Jenny can be intimidating, and the last thing I need is to ask the wrong thing and get my ass trounced by a supermodel. 


Before I could hightail it out of there, I see Jenny just as she steps through the doorway and removes her motorcycle helmet, revealing medium-length hair. I was sort of expecting her signature buzz cut, but she is wearing her motorcycle leathers. I sheepishly raise my hand, and I’m surprised to find her beaming with a smile and waving back.

While she’s getting tea and settling in, I take the opportunity to study her. There’s something about her that strikes me, and it’s not just her elfin features. I decide to reserve describing her for now.

While I remember the famous Calvin Klein ads in the ’90s where Jenny with close-cropped hair is dressed in a white tank top, jeans and tattoos everywhere else, I didn’t know much else about her. She humors my amateur attempts at research, and we talk about her childhood.

Catherine Opie's 'Girlfriends'

All together, “Girlfriends” shows Opie continuing to explore the hidden territories behind constructed facades. Looking at her pictures can be uncomfortable, not because of their confrontational content but because they reveal as much about the beholder as the beheld.

( via )

I'm quite fond of this sweet, portraiture-driven exhibition. Opie's new body of work, portraits of friends and lovers of the 'butch-dyke' persona, is elevated by an array of square-format b&w prints from her archive, never before printed before now. The latter acts almost diary-like, recalling Opie's ties to the S&M community in LA and San Francisco from the early '90s, and some of its subjects (like the riveting Pig Pen) recur in the new series, nearly 15 years later. Among the portraits include a regal k.d. lang against a Canadian wilderness, Jenny Shimizu in leather on a pristine white-sheeted bed and Idexa, tattooed and barechested, crouching on a rock. But I kept going back to Pig Pen, from her almost waifish figure in '94, wearing a play-piercing 'crown of thorns' for a performance in Mexico City, to her tanned, mature figure in '09, a thorn-wrapped heart tattoo emblazoned on her chest. ( via )

“Girlfriends” is on view in New York City until 24 April 2010 at Gladstone Gallery, 515 West 24th Street.

More on this here and here.