Alex Consani Isn't a Nepo Baby, but She Wants to Live Like One

Reported by Harper's Bazaar.

Alex Consani has been rewriting fashion's rulebook since she was twelve years old. In 2015, she became the world's youngest transgender model after signing with her first agency in Petaluma, California — a kid doing homework between castings. A decade later, the résumé reads like a highlight reel: IMG Models at 16, a Tom Ford runway debut in 2021, and by 2023, a fixture across the season's biggest shows. Then 2024 happened. She became the first transgender model to win the British Fashion Council's Model of the Year award, walked the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show alongside Valentina Sampaio, landed spots on both Forbes's 30 Under 30 and Time's Time100 Creators lists, and co-hosted the Met Gala. She's also fronted campaigns for McQueen, Gucci, YSL Beauty, and Tory Burch — and is now adding acting to the stack, with roles in A24's Peaked and Ryan Murphy's next American Horror Story installment.

The Closet, The Cart, The Philosophy

According to Harper's Bazaar, Consani appeared on their The Good Buy podcast, where she broke down her approach to shopping with a specificity that's almost architectural. She's hunting for the perfect pant. She catalogs what's missing from her wardrobe — the wrong-colored bolero with too-short sleeves — and files it away until she finds the exact right version. "I'm a very critical shopper," she explained. "I put things on and I'm like, 'Do I really need it?' Most of the time it's no." Her repeat buy? The Row loafer, every two to three years, worn until they're done. Her dream buy? Matthieu Blazy's Chanel — specifically the Métiers d'art collection, which she described as the kind of fashion that gives her actual chills.

What runs underneath all of it is something more interesting than taste: it's the complicated psychology of being the first financially successful person in your family. She's candid about the guilt that comes with spending on herself, the instinct to treat everyone else before turning that generosity inward. "I'm not a nepo baby, I worked for where I am now," she said — a sentence that doubles as both a disclaimer and a declaration. The goal for her apartment? That guests walk in and assume old money. The reality? A Goodwill bowl on the shelf.

Her style is in genuine transition, and she's self-aware enough to name why. The hyper-femininity that defined her earlier aesthetic wasn't purely personal — she acknowledges it was partly a response to external pressure to perform a specific kind of womanhood to feel valid. She's past it now. A T-shirt and skirt. A trench coat with a deliberately wrong-feeling Prada heel. Style inspirations that have migrated from people to objects — she'll clock a beautiful chair and build an entire outfit around the energy it gives. Early Destiny's Child glamour, '70s Saint Laurent in Marrakech, Paloma Elsesser always. A woman learning, in real time, that she doesn't have to explain herself.

The most original voices in fashion aren't the ones performing confidence — they're the ones honest enough to show you the work it took to get there.

Read the original at Harper's Bazaar.