Dominican Designer Lives As A Woman

2024 Author: Steven Freeman | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 08:15

When she was 7 years old and her name was Hernán Lander, she heard in her native San Francisco de Macorís, Dominican Republic, a fairy tale that changed her life forever. "A girl who took care of me made me a story that said that at the end of the rainbow there was a goblin with a pot of gold that fulfilled a wish for you," says the now 35-year-old designer. “She asked me what I wanted and I told her to have a vagina. They told me it was a boy and I said it was a girl”.

It took twenty-five years, but today Hernán has given way to Hannah. “I have dreamed about it a lot. It is who I am,”says Lander, who lives in New York. “Before, I had to take care of the way I spoke, acted, I had paranoia. Now I am happy in my woman's body”. Since 2016, she has not only exchanged her pants for fitted dresses, she has also invested more than Hannah and with whom she has been in a relationship for more than a year. "It doesn't make me feel like she's a man, I see her, I feel like a woman," says the 25-year-old Dominican from Lander, who gave her an engagement ring in August despite some criticism from her surroundings. "I love her as she is. I have never been with someone like that. I don't know how I'm going to feel with the [surgical] process, it has me a little bit in shock”.

This is exactly how Lander's mother was when she confessed what she would do. “I asked for my only son as a boy and they gave him to me for a time [only]. That has been the most difficult thing for me,”confesses Reina M. Antigua, who thanks to her fast food business in the Bronx helped pay for her daughter's studies at the prestigious Parsons School of Design in New York and also for medical expenses. of his transition since, until now, Lander has not wanted the financial assistance that some entities could have provided for his transition. "It is hard, but seeing how beautiful it looks, that she wears anything and it looks nice … it came out to me. The girl came out very smart and dedicated."

In fact, he has not stopped working and is preparing the new designs for the clothing collection of his brand Hernan Lander by Hannah Lander. Once recovered from her operation, the designer hopes to appear for the second time at New York Fashion Week. "Of course I am afraid, but the need to feel in my own skin is greater than fear," says Lander, who has consulted a psychologist to help her in this period of so many changes. “I have dreamed about it a lot. When it is [operated] it will be an 'already'. It is what I am and I think I should be."