“I feel like my creative output really began two or three years ago,” Te Manahou Mackay begins as we speak over the phone. The 26-year-old model and creative is in a moment of creative expansion – between beauty campaigns for MECCA and Jean Paul Gaultier, collaborative art projects, walking the runway for Nicol & Ford, and a growing body of deeply personal work. Having spent nearly a decade in the industry, Mackay’s focus is shifting from being the subject of images, to shaping them.

She reflects on the evolution of her work: “I’ve been in the fashion industry for a while, but I never took on a storytelling role until about three years ago, when I started to build and meet a community of creatives that I really had a strong collaborative relationship with. So, I’ve been enjoying doing that a lot more and having more of a voice in the projects that I do.”

Before that voice found its full expression, Mackay was already immersed in fashion. “I started modelling to begin with when I was 17 years old, but I didn’t really start doing it full-time until I was 19.” Her gaze, shaped as much by image-makers as by lived experience, is deliberate. “Helmut Newton was a big influence on my way of seeing. Bruna Volpi was also quite influential in my way of articulating how I see things. Her and I collaborated on some things when I was younger, and she really taught me how to talk to creatives and put what I see onto paper.”

In recent years, Mackay’s practice has turned inward. “The key meditation that most of my personal projects have been about over the last year has been my journey and coming to terms with the objectification and sexualisation of the transgender body,” she tells me. “That has been what most of my personal projects have been about, and what I’m thinking about writing, about creating.”

Her process often begins in introspection. “The initial idea for me always comes from something that’s happened in my life, or some idea that I’m exploring,” she explains. “When I was younger, I used to be an idealist and used to write a lot about utopia. But I think as I’ve gotten older, it’s gotten a little darker.”

That tension – between self-connection and distance – remains constant. “I feel like I’m in a constant state of flux between feeling so connected to my soul, and then there just being so much between us. Life just puts things between you and yourself. It feels like I’m on a constant journey of removing those obstacles between me and just being.”

Her grounding rituals are elemental. “The forest. I grew up in New Zealand, so being in lush greenery really makes me feel like I’m at home. And a physical transformation – doing something different to my hair, or tweaking something – makes me feel… I think it’s probably a control thing, but like I’m in control. Also writing. I love to write. And just being with friends.”

For Mackay, fashion and beauty are portals to identity and performance alike. “Sometimes I see fashion and beauty as a vessel to really get in touch with who I really am, and to explore something within myself. Sometimes you’re a completely fictitious character. But I think even the fictions we create are a reflection of who we are inside.” Her style philosophy is simple: “Be fabulous? Yes, always serve a look. I don’t get the point of getting dressed if it’s not to look amazing.”

She speaks about fashion as language. “I’ve always thought of fashion and aesthetics as your first sentence in dialogue with the world. You can tell people where you are, how you feel, how to treat you—all without having to open your mouth.”

Among her career highlights sits The Leopard, a project realised with prosthetic artist Julian Dimase and frequent collaborator Vy. “It was just, to me, the best of the best all coming together," she says. "It was fun, and it was crazy, and there were eight hours of hair and makeup. We all went into this little universe together.”

She tells me she imagined the Leopard Woman “climbing the corporate ladder, hiding who she really is behind beautiful, opulent clothing… until she decides that conventional life is not for her, and she takes off all her clothes and reveals that she’s... different. She drives away with her handbag and her jewels on a motorcycle.”

But looking ahead, Mackay is intent on scale. “I wrote a short film called The Pursuit of Being," she tells me. Another project she developed in collaboration with Bruna Volpi a few years ago. "We spent a really long time building out the visual universe of that… I would call it a prose short film.”

When I ask about a potential release for it, she simply tells me, with an air of assurance, "When it's when it's the right time, it'll come to life."

As for what else is planned for her next chapter? “Hopefully, more ease. More courage in my own way of seeing and creating more autonomously. I think it's really easy to lean on all of your friends perspectives and second guess everything that you do. That’s what I hope for.”

PHOTOGRAPHY Tom Hearn

FASHION Thomas Townsend

MODEL Te Manahou Mackay

HAIR Linda Ha

MAKEUP Soraya Boularas

PHOTOGRAPHER'S ASSISTANT  Joel Lumbroso

Feature image: PRADA dress and shoes.