2023 SI Swimsuit Rookie Lauren Chan Pens Vogue Essay on Coming-Out Process

The model will make her debut in the SI Swimsuit Issue in May.
Lauren Chan

Lauren Chan.


SI Swimsuit’s newest model, Lauren Chan, is a fashion industry veteran. She’s worked as a fashion writer for Vogue and Interview, in addition to being a fashion features editor at Glamour. The Canadian model and 2023 rookie makes her debut in the SI Swimsuit Issue next month.

Chan, who used her SI Swimsuit rookie announcement as an opportunity to publicly come out as gay, penned a powerful essay for Vogue on her personal evolution.

“Looking deeply at my relationship with fashion—as a consumer, a clothing brand founder, and a model—helped me realize that my identity had always been steeped in queerness,” Chan wrote, noting that she often felt uncomfortable in overly feminine fashion.

She added that, instead, “modest, structured, menswear-inspired pieces” were her comfort items. As her confidence grew and she began to better understand her identity, Chan noted that these days, “I find myself wearing things to signal that I am part of the queer community.”

The model credits therapy, peers and LGBTQ+ content creators with helping to better understand herself. She noted that her SI Swimsuit debut comes at the perfect time, when she’s now “as comfortable in my skin as I am in a string bikini.”

“Being in the pages of SI is something that the old, closeted version of me would have panicked at the thought of,” she wrote. “But I drew confidence from the fact that SI Swimsuit has celebrated talent like Ashley Graham, Leyna Bloom and Maye Musk.”

Meet Lauren Chan—read the 2023 SI Swimsuit rookie’s full feature profile here.

Make sure to follow SI Lifestyle in Google News!


Published
Cara O’Bleness
CARA O’BLENESS

Cara is a trending news writer/editor for Sports Illustrated Swimsuit. A passionate writer and editor with more than 10 years of experience in print and online media, she loves storytelling and believes that words have the power to change the world. Prior to joining the team, Cara worked as a writer and editor across a number of content verticals, including food, lifestyle, health and wellness, and small business and entrepreneurship. In her free time, Cara loves reading, spending time with her family and making her way through Michigan’s many microbreweries. She is a graduate of Michigan State University's School of Journalism.