Meet the Diverse, Unexpected New Faces of Fashion

“I’m all about the macho guy with the transgender person on his arm,” says Kevin Amato, the influential photographer and casting director largely responsible for fashion’s recent embrace of fluidity when it comes to race and gender. It’s an issue he’s championed and popularized through his work with brands like Hood by Air, using what were once unusual methods: Rather than prowl the gender-divided boards of modeling agencies, Amato enlists any and everyone that catches his eye — usually on Instagram and in the Bronx, the “pure, uninhibited, and overlooked” neighborhood where he lives. In his new book The Importants, out this month by Phaidon, with an afterword by Rick Owens, he captures them on camera. Whether they’re fresh-faced discoveries or bigger names like Shayne Oliver and Luka Sabbat who he helped establish, everyone possesses a little of the unexpected.