Top Model and activist. First trans model in the world who achieved top ranking in fashion. Always fighting for human rights at all levels.
Lea T was born in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. When she was one, she moved with her whole family to Italy, where her father, Toninho Cerezo, played in Rome Football Club, and where she spent her childhood and adolescence. After working as a model, at 25 she recognized her transsexuality, and she embarked on the path that in 2011 led her to the surgical reassignment of sex and her name change. At that time, she lived for a few years in Milan where she studied veterinary medicine.
Riccardo Tisci, as creative director of Givenchy, chose Lea as the face of the Winter 2010 campaign, and the supermodel agent Piero Piazzi, President of Women Management, launched her back into the industry. In August 2010 she posed naked for Vogue France. In December 2011 she appeared on the cover of Elle Brazil. Over the years she posed for top covers and editorials for Love Magazine, Grazia Italia, Dazed, S Moda and Numéro.
In January 2011 she was on the list of the 50 most requested models in the world, on Models.com. She appeared in campaigns for Philipp Plein (2013), Benetton (2013) and Redken (2015). Lea's first appearance on Italian TV was in 2011, on the program Le Invasioni Barbariche, hosted by Daria Bignardi on LA7. She became known to a wider audience in the fall of 2013, thanks to her participation as a competitor in on the show Dancing with the Stars, hosted by Milly Carlucci on Rai 1. Lea competed with the dancer and choreographer Simone Di Pasquale, she got to the final and she ranked 4th.
Lea took part in the opening ceremony of the 2016 Olympics in Rio. In 2019 Lea appeared in campaigns for Pantene and MAC, focused on diversity and she was in the Burberry campaign by Mert and Marcus. In 2020 she walked the Burberry show and she is the face of Donna Karan's perfume campaign. In 2020, the BBC included her in the list of 100 women who are changing the world.
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