Scrolling down WaPo, I saw a photograph and immediately said "That's a man!" And, of course, it is. But he's a "cover girl." Whatever. 🙄

Do you know how many actual women would kill for this kind of potentially career-making opportunity? But the magazine decided to give it to a guy.

The passport she got to make this trip, she noted, misgendered correctly listed her him as male.

Fixed it for them.

Can you manufacture overnight fame?

(I can't access archive sites at work -- if someone else can provide an archive, please do so, and thanks!)

Text of article:

When newly appointed i-D editor Thom Bettridge was pondering who should appear on his first cover of the fashion magazine, acquired in late 2023 by the supermodel and business magnate Karlie Kloss, he landed on an unorthodox idea.

Rather than finding the actor, musician or influencer who reflects the moment, as some editors spend months attempting, or pairing an attention-grabbing personality with an unconventional photographer to manufacture social media virality, as other editors often strive to do, Bettridge wanted to spotlight someone who, decades from now, accepting an Academy Award or a Grammy or finishing their sure-to-be best-selling memoir, could say, “And remember when little old unknown me was on the cover of i-D magazine?”

“It just didn’t feel like any idea got me so excited, as far as celebrities,” said Bettridge, drinking a Coke Zero in a Paris cafe. “That was how we came across it: seeing the old issues and saying, ‘Oh wow, there’s 17-year-old Rachel Weisz.’”

I-D, Bettridge said, has a history of “anthropologically searching for style in the world, rather than searching for a style within fashion.” Founded in 1980 by the British impresario Terry Jones, the magazine has an ethos of counterculture and DIY, and of prioritizing and prizing style, in the broadest and most audacious terms, over the insular world of fashion. (Jones sold the magazine in 2012 to Vice, from whom Kloss — under the auspices of Bedford Media, which she owns with her husband, Joshua Kushner — acquired the publication.) In addition to Weisz, Naomi Campbell (in 1986) and FKA Twigs (in 2012) have also appeared on or in the magazine before they were household names. Both Campbell and Twigs appear on two other covers for Bettridge’s debut edition, which is dubbed “The Unknown Issue.” The magazine will publish biannually.

The idea was to put their finger on someone before their moment, rather than hold a mirror up to the world as readers or fashion followers believe they want to see it. “That level of spontaneity feels really special,” Bettridge said. “So many magazines are just so worried about engagement.”

To find his star, Bettridge partnered with Jennifer Venditti, the casting savant behind “Euphoria” and “Uncut Gems” who discovered Hunter Schafer. “I was interested from an almost anthropological point of view: What is the experience of a young girl?” Venditti said. They solicited audition tapes and received nearly 800. “Instead of looking at these magazines or looking at these films to find who you are, [the idea is] seeing them as a reflection of the beauty of humanity,” Venditti describes as her approach. “You see someone else shining in their authentic self and then do the same for yourself. Rather than, ‘I want to be this person.’”

After a round of callbacks, they landed on Enza Khoury, a trans 18-year-old from Chagrin Falls, Ohio, who studies at her school’s performing arts academy and dreams of being an actress.

Why Khoury? “If I had to explain it in words, I could feel her confidence and the ownership in her uniqueness,” Venditti said. “She’s like this whether we put her on the cover or not.”

Khoury, indeed, has star quality. Strikingly beautiful and enthusiastically curious, she has a bright, old-fashioned charm that recalls the innocence of David Lynch’s heroines. She uses social media infrequently and had only 800 Instagram followers when i-D first posted her cover. “I thought of it like playing a character,” said Khoury, of posing for the photo shoot. “You have to be a bit delusional. But eventually you’re not delusional anymore. You’re just correct.”

“There’s this side of Enza where she always knew this would happen,” said her father, Adam Zimmerman, who had accompanied her to Paris. Earlier in the day, they took in the spectacles of the city; Khoury was visiting Europe for the first time. “We went to the top of the Eiffel Tower, and I think we got scammed,” she said. “But we thought: ‘That’s okay. We’re just so happy we get to be here!’”

We were seated in her hotel lobby, waiting for a car to the Balenciaga show. What was she looking forward to at her first fashion show? “Ooh!” she said, her eyes lighting up. “I’ve never seen a celebrity before!”

Khoury has the optimistic glimmer of fate, of destiny. At a dinner to celebrate the issue, held at Rick Owens and Michèle Lamy’s minimalistic lair, she and her father looked on admiringly at the fur chairs, mechanical art works and a pair of dancers duct-taped together with swans on their heads — things that even fashion insiders would describe as eccentric. The next morning, after staying out until the wee hours listening to Naomi Campbell DJ at Silencio (a club designed by Lynch), she was bright-eyed at the Kiko Kostadinov show. She was now in the celebrity-fashion grind. Was she feeling jaded?

“What’s that?”

Over it, cynical. “Oh, no way!” she yelled. “I had the best time. But my feet are killing me.”

After the show — “Sooo pretty!” — she changed from a colorful sweater dress into a bathing suit with an enormous cutout at the chest and a low-rise pleated skirt, by the viral sensation Miu Miu. (“This outfit is my least favorite,” said her father.) She stepped out of an Uber in front of the Miu Miu show, and, like ravenous insects, dozens of cameras appeared within as many seconds. She posed like a pro, and when a handful of photographers asked her name, she flipped her long brunette hair behind one shoulder and said, “Enza.”

Later that day, she signed copies of the issue at Dover Street Market Paris. Had she practiced her autograph? “Every day,” she said. “When I write my name.”

“My only option is for me to believe in myself and have hope,” Khoury had said the day before. The passport she got to make this trip, she noted, misgendered her as male. “If I didn’t have hope — well,” she paused, her eyes flashing with worry. Then she giggled. “If I didn’t have hope, I don’t know what I would do.”