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10 Unique Models Revolutionizing The Fashion World

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Ten models are proving that high fashion’s rulebook on beauty just got rewritten.

For decades, the modeling industry ran on a narrow formula: young, thin, able-bodied, and predominantly white. By late 2015, a wave of models with vitiligo, albinism, androgynous features, and non-sample-size bodies had started landing campaigns for brands like Diesel, Kate Spade New York, and Lane Bryant — proving that skin conditions, age, and body type weren’t disqualifiers, they were selling points.

• Winnie Harlow, who has vitiligo, went from an America’s Next Top Model cast member to the face of Desigual and Diesel’s Spring/Summer 2015 campaign.
• Diandra Forrest became the first female model with albinism signed to a major global agency, appearing alongside fellow albinism model Shaun Ross in ad campaigns and music videos.
• Ashley Graham, a size-16 model, broke through with the 2015 Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue and Lane Bryant’s #ImNoAngel campaign, pushing to retire the term “plus-size” entirely.

Vitiligo and Albinism on the Runway

Winnie Harlow’s path started on America’s Next Top Model, where her vitiligo — a condition that causes patches of skin to lose pigment — first put her in front of a national audience. She turned that exposure into an international modeling career, landing Diesel’s Spring/Summer 2015 campaign and becoming one of the most recognizable faces tied to Desigual. Rather than concealing the condition with makeup, Harlow built her entire brand around it.

Diandra Forrest followed a parallel track with albinism, a genetic condition that limits pigmentation in skin, hair, and eyes. She became the first female model with albinism signed to a major global agency, and her campaigns and music video appearances put her in the same conversation as Shaun Ross, the male model who’d already been normalizing albinism in editorial fashion. Together, their work moved genetic pigmentation variation from a novelty to a recognizable category within high fashion.

Androgyny Redefines the Casting Call

Swedish model Erika Linder built her career on refusing to be boxed into one gender presentation. She fronted campaigns — including work for Tom Ford and JC Jeans Company — shot as both a male and female model, sometimes within the same campaign cycle. That flexibility made her a go-to for brands looking to sell clothing without leaning on a fixed gender aesthetic, a shift that ran directly against decades of casting that separated “menswear models” from “womenswear models.”

The Fight to Kill the Word “Plus-Size”

Ashley Graham’s breakthrough came through two high-visibility placements in 2015: the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue and Lane Bryant’s #ImNoAngel campaign, a direct jab at Victoria’s Secret’s Angels marketing. At size 16, Graham used that platform to argue the industry should drop the “plus-size” label altogether, framing it as a limiting box rather than a description.

A model is a model, and that’s just how it should be.

That argument — that sizing labels do more to segregate models than describe them — became the throughline for how Graham discussed her own career in interviews around the swimsuit issue’s release.

Age Stops Being a Disqualifier

Style icon Iris Apfel, then 93, starred in Kate Spade New York’s Spring 2015 campaign alongside supermodel Karlie Kloss, plus a separate run of ads for jewelry designer Alexis Bittar. Apfel’s presence in campaigns built for a younger customer base signaled that fashion houses saw commercial upside in casting outside the usual 18-to-25 range, not just symbolic value.

Winnie Harlow’s arc says the most about where this all points next: a reality-TV cast member with a skin condition agencies once considered unmarketable ended up as a marquee face for two international denim and streetwear brands within a couple of years of her television debut. If ANTM alumni like Harlow keep landing campaigns that size, the show’s casting directors have every reason to keep looking for the next contestant nobody expects to book Diesel.