The phrase ‘completely self-made’ takes on a whole other meaning when used in reference to an icon like Amanda Lepore. After all, Lepore is completely self-made, literally. Born a boy, Lepore is now an international glamour girl, the poster pin-up for ho incredible a transformation one can undertake on oneself. She is a transsexual who transcends art, fashion, photography, film and now music, her look – and sound – unmistakably her own. And she’s more than happy to own it, so much so her freshly released second album is titled I… Amanda Lepore.
‘I started life as being a really unhappy little boy and I’ve become a really glamourous beautiful woman… one who just gets everything that she wants,’ Lepore explained down the phone from New York. She has just had dinner with Cazwell and his boyfriend at their apartment, and in the background you can hear the sounds of New York’s number one gay rapper doing the dishes.
‘The fame just really came to me,’ Lepore continued. ‘I did not set out to achieve it. I just wanted to be a really pretty girl. I wanted people to like and accept me. I was basically very shy, especially when I started working in clubs every day. I used to have to dance in cages, which really worked for me because it meant that I just had to look good and I didn’t have to socialise. So stuff really just came to me, like David LaChapelle, Cazwell and things like that.’
Of course, there’s a lot of work that goes into being Amanda Lepore, both literally and metaphorically. After all, her list of surgical procedures is astounding, ranging from breast augmentations to having her eyes slanted, rhinoplasty, her hairline pulled down, forehead lifted and even her brow bone has been reduced. She has had silicone injections to her brow, buttocks and hips, so much so that in Milan she is known as La Siliconia. Oh, and her lips – they’ve been enhanced with silicone too. And one mustn’t forget that she has even had a lower rib broken and pushed in. Then add all the time it’d take to look that amazing and to have hair that fierce and yes, a lot of work goes into being Amanda Lepore.
‘I had always admired pin-ups like Marilyn Monroe and Jane Mansfield; all those movie stars,’ Lepore said of the inspiration behind her outrageous aesthetic. ‘I also liked Varga pin-up girls, like really perfect pin-up girls who had perfect makeup and really feminine bodies. I really wanted to be like them a lot so I spent a lot of time watching old movies and looking at pin-ups.
‘I also loved Jessica Rabbit and the real sense of exaggeration that went into her. So I was inspired by a lot of bombshells and curvy brunettes but I wanted to be a bit more exaggerated. I guess I go to show that your mind really is stronger than matter… because I really do look like that.’
In the rise of Amanda Lepore, there are two names that feature prominently, both of which she has already mentioned. The first is that of David LaChapelle, photographer of the super saturated state that is America. LaChapelle has used Lepore as muse extensively, most famously taking photographs of her posing as both Marilyn Monroe and Elizabeth Taylor ala Andy Warhol. Most notably, however, LaChapelle created a Plexiglass environment for Lepore to live in for the opening of his Artists & Prostitutes exhibition, a set which floated on water and contained a nude Lepore wearing nothing but Plexiglass heels.
‘He really has incredible ideas,’ purred Lepore. ‘He’s really organised and really maps his ideas out. That and they are usually big budget things and he usually just puts everything into his pictures. And he really transformed me, I think, in totally different ways. He’d take me apart and make me into what he wanted to make me into. I was kind of a fantasy for him.
‘And he used to draw pictures that totally looked like me before we’d met. He used to draw pictures of girls who had bodies like mine and a face like mine so that when he met me, he was like “Oh my god, you’re the kind of woman I used to dream aboutâ€. So us meeting was this weird spiritual thing too, and I think we were lucky that the all the pictures we took together were successful and published because a lot of the stuff was really out there. So it was a magical kind of thing.’
The other name that is synonymous with Lepore is Cazwell, the openly gay New York rapper who – at this point of the interview – has done the washing up and is putting the pots and pans away in the background. She had hired Cazwell to perform for her at a birthday bash. Later that evening, while he watched Lepore party with other self-enhanced beauties Pamela Anderson and Jocelyn Wilderstein, he began penning a song in his head for her that would become her first single, Champagne. Now the pair have finished producing Lepore’s second album, I… Amanda Lepore.
‘I didn’t want to stick to one thing,’ she said of the rollercoaster of sounds contained on her new opus. ‘I wanted to give a lot of variety just so people don’t get bored, so I don’t get bored performing and so we can do different things with it. I always like music when everything is not like the same. I like the variation because I think it shows different sides of the person and the feeling. Music is such a feeling.
‘It’s a really solid album. I’m not embarrassed by it because I didn’t just throw anything in as a filler. Like, everything is good, really good. It’s not gimmicky just because I’m a trans* club person, it’s actually good music. You can’t knock it.’
So what advice does Lepore have for anyone wanting to make such a fantastic transition as herself? ‘To be patient. A lot of younger transgender girls I know off get breast implants too young and they end up with hard breasts. They end up having to do it all over again. I think it’s something that can’t be rushed and that you have to enjoy the whole experience. And you definitely have to do it not for anybody else except for yourself. It’s like a meditation kind-off thing… because it’s the mind that’s telling you to do it.’
I… Amanda Lepore is available now from iTunes.
***
