Taking the Modeling World by Storm: Rain Dove

Model Rain Dove, currently crushing it in a new Sisley campaign, is making a lucrative (and impactful) career out of blowing up stereotypes. At 6'2" tall, with wide shoulders and strong features, she is a cis woman who moves easily between genders. For the past several years Dove has been doing so in the most public way possible, in a series of runway shows, in print campaigns and through social media, for brands big and small.

But Dove is more than a pretty face. A graduate of UC Berkeley with a BA in genetic engineering, her goals include furthering the dialogue about gender identity. She's making that happen not only by speaking out about it as she did in a recent Ted Talk, but also by simply showing the world what it means to be gender fluid.

Beyond the Binary

Dove, who grew up in small-town Vermont, says she "didn't intentionally challenge gender stereotypes" as a youth. "I wore what I wanted to wear, and I looked how I looked, and there was just no way around it. I was tall and muscular, and at one point I had very short hair because I had lice, but I never was confused about my gender as a kid."

After high school, Dove headed to Colorado to work as a wilderness firefighter. Colleagues believed her to be a man, and she went with it, living for nearly a year as one. Then it was off to Berkeley, where a lost bet on a football game led to Dove auditioning in San Francisco for Calvin Klein underwear.

Just like the firefighters, the honchos at the cattle call initially thought she was male. Before Dove knew it she was strutting down the runway in men's underwear, her size DD breasts hidden under a voluminous shirt.

Blowing Up Big

Since 2014, Dove's career has skyrocketed. She's been featured in Vogue, Elle, Marie Claire, Cosmopolitan and Harper's Bazaar and for major brands including Dove, Goldwell and Kenneth Cole, for which she modeled both men's and women's shoes. She's walked New York's Fashion Week and Oakland's Queer Fashion Week. She's promoted labels like Vivienne Hu, Chromat, and Rochambeau, as well as brands that push gender boundaries, including PLAYOUT and TomboyX. The topless shots of her on the beach with fellow androgynous stunner Cory Wade for menswear line Ace Rivington became the stuff of legend two years ago.

But according to Dove, her success has not been easily won. "High fashion has constantly challenged the status quo and crossed the border between what it's acceptable and not acceptable to look like. It's always been a world that allowed us to take the human expression a little bit further than it's ever gone before. The problem is commercial fashion - the ready-to-wear fashion world is a lot more conservative because they're not about art, they're about sales."

"The first year was really difficult because I found out the industry is not very open or diverse on a commercial level. I didn't realize that I would be so fetishized," Dove reflects, "but essentially whenever I do an ad it's Sarah McLachlan music in the background and everyone's like, 'you're so brave to walk out of the house looking like you do and fucking who you fuck.'"

Change is Coming

Sisley's new campaign, which stars Dove and other models representing a wide spectrum of gender expression, is different. Not only is it rare for a campaign to focus on fluidity, but the creators of it also took the time to sit down with their models and educate themselves about the genderqueer community.

"Fashion doesn't use a lot of education because it can get in the way," says Dove, "so that was special. The clothing is also very attainable; it's not this fetishized clothing... in fashion, people don't know how to separate trans and gender non-conforming culture from drag culture. They just can't slap you in a pair of jeans and a jacket - they need to do David Bowie makeup on your face and feathers. And these people were like, 'let's just put you in clothes you'd wear every day.' Sisley has always been good about having campaigns that reflect where we're at societally and I'm very excited about it."