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World's first transsexual supermodel shakes up fashion

With one of the world's best-known designer names choosing a member of the transgender community as its new face, it looks like times really are changing.

French fashion house Givenchy has caused quite a stir after it announced that a transsexual model is working for the brand.

According to The Observer, Lea T, 28, who was a backroom assistant at Givenchy, is appearing in its fall/winter advertising campaign, as well as modelling for Italian Vanity Fair and posing naked for French Vogue.

The Brazilian, who was born Leandro Cerezo, said her ongoing transition from man to woman angered her Catholic family and brought her extreme loneliness, but she said the "war in her head" was worth fighting.

'She's a true goddess'

"The choice is between being unhappy forever or trying to be happy," News.com.au quoted Lea T as saying in an interview in Italian Vanity Fair.

The model, who is undergoing hormone replacement therapy ahead of a sex change, said her father, former soccer hero Toninho Cerezo, was unhappy about her transformation.

"She's a true goddess. She's always been very feminine -- super-fragile, very aristocratic," Riccardo Tisci, the creative director of Givenchy told WWD.