Runway renegades: surprisingly, gay and lesbian models find that even in a business dominated by other gays, it's still not safe to be out on the catwalk.

Dan Renzi, whose life as an aspiring gay model flashed across TV screens in 1996 on the Miami edition of MTV's The Real World, managed to parlay his 15 minutes of fame into a successful modeling career after the series wrapped. But his bookers kept going back to him with the same request. "They would pause for a moment," Renzi says. "Then they would say, `You're so...' and start waving their hands around in the air to signify that I was too effeminate. They were constantly telling me to tone it down."

Renzi says he lost at least four major jobs because the designers and photographers decided he was "too queeny" after meeting him. Renzi's case reflects the complicated boom-or-bust dynamics at work for gay and lesbian models in the fashion industry: Gay networks sometimes can launch careers, but openness about being gay can freeze models out of the most lucrative campaigns, usually run by conservative, mainstream advertisers.

The fashion industry is rife with rumors that some of its marquee models are gay or lesbian. New York City's gossip bible, the New York Post's "Page Six," frequently runs blind items recounting the same-sex escapades of the model elite. Top-drawer designers like Isaac Mizraw, Todd Oldham, and John Bartlett have come out and continue to do gangbusters business. By all accounts, openly gay people dominate the ranks of the photographers, stylists, and booking agents who control the fashion industry. Homosexuality is so common-place that a February 3 "Page Six" item that began "Even though he's gay and has a boyfriend, women are ga-ga for Gucci designer Tom Ford" scarcely raised an eyebrow.

Yet there is no openly gay supermodel, and that's no accident. While openly gay and lesbian models like Jenny Shimizu, Ryan Findlay, Rachel Williams, and Tim Boyce are well-respected, they are hardly household names. Despite the breathless hyping of supermodels like Cindy Crawford, Tyra Banks, Marcus Schenkenberg, and Joel West by the press and overwrought specials on the E! Entertainment Television network, the public may know the names of only a handful of the thousands of aesthetically endowed faces that adorn advertisements and strut down runways. Such anonymity makes it easier for lesser-known lesbian and gay models to be open with their coworkers. But for most, who view modeling as a springboard to Hollywood and fantasize about Crawford-like seven-figure endorsement deals, being publicly gay is not perceived as an option. "The rumors are one thing, but the actual concrete admittance in the mainstream press is something quite different," says Keith Lewis, president of the Los Angeles-based Morgan Agency, which represents some 425 models. "I don't think that we've got anyone in the top 10% of the earning field acknowledging their homosexuality."

In edgier campaigns, for companies like Diesel and Gaultier, the sexual orientation of models hardly seems to be a concern. Calvin Klein created the archetypal androgynous campaign for its fragrance CK One. A Klein scout found many of the models used in the campaign on the streets of New York's East Village -- including Stine (pronounced steen, short for Christine), who was freshly arrived from Copenhagen. The year was 1994. With short-cropped hair, not to mention nose and tongue rings, Stine didn't exactly fit the prevailing image of supermodel glamour at the time, but her gritty look and flawless porcelain face won her a featured role in the CK Khakis campaign. When Stine went to uber-photographer Steven Miesel's studio for the first day of the CK shoot, she was more preoccupied with the model antics than with disguising that she was a lesbian. "There were all these kids that they grabbed off the street," she says. "There was this huge buffet, and we were eating everything that we could get our hands on. Kate Moss was just sitting there sucking on a piece of cantaloupe for a half hour. I didn't feel the need to come out or not to come out. I felt like I was being presented as me. They let me do whatever I wanted."

Another rough-and-ready model, former garage mechanic Shimizu, similarly was cultivated by Klein when he met her on a casting call for an AIDS Project Los Angeles fashion show. Although she has thrived in the business, Shimizu believes she has lost work by being uncompromisingly out. "Everybody in the business knows I'm gay," she told The Advocate in 1995, "and I'm sure I haven't been hired for some jobs because of that, but I wouldn't know that for sure."

On the other hand, Stine seems to have found a steady stream of work without having to hide her orientation. She has, on occasion, had to change her look to get jobs. In fact, she's shot two covers, ironically enough, for Modern Bride magazine. "They wanted me to take my nose ring out, " she laughs. "My hair had grown out quite a bit, actually. It's just acting, though. It's a fun job. You have to be flexible. I encompass both sides: I can be very sweet and be hard. They are paying me to smile pretty, and they're paying me good." The editors did avail themselves of Stine's hard side in some photos. In one shot Stine, decked out in a full bridal ensemble, works under the hood of a car at the side of the road while her model husband looks on sheepishly.

Although there are an increasing number of stories of openly lesbian and gay models snagging such top assignments, there is usually a finger-wagger along the way who frets: Will a model's homosexuality be apparent to the public? Advertising executives, even if they are gay themselves, express the same worry about the bottom line. So it's no wonder that many gay models go to great lengths to conceal their orientation by doing things such as making up girlfriends when being interviewed in teenage magazines targeted at young women. "They fear that they may be perceived in a way that may limit their ability to do their job, which is to create images and fulfill fantasies," says Stuart Elliott, advertising columnist for The New York Times. Others follow the advice given Renzi to "tone down" their orientation by letting conservative advertisers believe they are straight.

Many openly gay or lesbian models have devised nuanced approaches to the problem. "Some advertisers are very conservative," says Gigi Stoll, 35, who has shot ads for Revlon, L 'Oreal, and Avon. "They have huge campaigns. You're being paid a lot of money. Sometimes you just keep it to yourself. But if it comes up, I'm not going to sit there and he about it."

Matteo, a 25-year-old Italian model who has been working in the industry since he was a child, says he left Italy because he found the homophobia in the business there too intense. Now working in Los Angeles, Matteo says, "It's much cooler here than in Italy, but you definitely have to keep it quiet. "

Those models who are the most open about their sexuality tend to be the ones with the least investment in modeling as a profession. Neil Tadken, 37, says that when he started working as a model in Los Angeles he was already "permanently out," as the founder of the Day of Compassion, an annual television event that arranges for daytime soap operas, talk shows, and entertainment news programs to deal with AIDS themes on the same day. Tadken, who works in a photography lab and has a recurring role on General Hospital, says, "I feel like there are people who try to reek manliness when I go for modeling calls. But I don't blame them if this is their bread and butter."

Jim Vellequette, 32, who began modeling full-time in 1994, several years after being diagnosed as HIV-positive, believes his illness has given him a healthy perspective on the business. "People in modeling tend to be the most insecure people," he says, adding that in confronting his own mortality, he's thankful for being forced to live a "bullshit-free" life. "I can go in there, and if I don't get a job, I know my life is going to go on," he says. "There are a lot of people out there who really want to be famous, and you see how unhappy they are."

Fame beckons most models, and many are endlessly searching for an angle that will catapult them ahead of the pack. Some gay and lesbian models use their sexuality to get a foot in the door. Models, after all, professionally trade on their sexual allure. But just how far ajar they want their closet doors may vary according to the occasion. By definition, modeling is superficial. Most gay models agree that during high-priced shoots, there is little call -- or time -- for coming out. "Being gay rarely ever comes up when you are doing a job," says Zoli Agency model Tommy Pluhar, 23, who is openly bisexual and in a gay relationship. "Everyone assumes that you're stupid. You don't talk. Very rarely do people engage you in conversation. They love to order models around. "

But it's after the cameras are shutterd, during evening parties and at the clubs where models congregate to schmooze with industry insiders, that the feeding frenzy for the models' sexual attention begins. "Male models -- whether you are gay or straight -- get hit on all the time by gay men at the parties," says Pluhar. "Art directors know that the models are there, and they want to be chosen by them. The models certainly try to ingratiate themselves. A lot of times if [the art directors] are gay men, they find it irresistible to be a little more tactile than normal, a little more effusive. Sometimes you have to take their hands off you and physically push them away. But you still have to stand there with your drink and finish the conversation."

The model casting couch, however, is a much greater problem abroad, where codes of acceptable business behavior -- not to mention sexual harassment laws -- are significantly more lax. When young models are being groomed by agencies, they generally are shipped off to Milan to build up their books -- folders of photographs and tear sheets from advertisements and fashion shows. "New York is a lot more professional than Milan," says Pluhar, who spent the fall 1996 season working in Milan. "What you have in Milan is a group of very inexperienced -- ofter straight out of high school -- unworldly, hot young men. A jlot of people who have the power in Milan are aware of this. "

At clubs and parties young models are hauled into VIP lounges where they are plied with drink and drugs. "A lot of times the art directors of the magazines will get a table of guys together and wine and dine them to see who gives them the most response," says Pluhar. "That person will get the job. I've seen it so many times. These guys are just 20 years old, but one thing that they are keenly aware of is money. I'm sure a lot more happens than I actually know about. "

Such sexual politics are often easier to negotiate for gay male models, who are used to receiving unwanted sexual attention from other men, than for their straight counterparts. "Fashion is a very gay place to be," gay model Ryan Findlay, 27, told The Advocate in 1997. "I honestly think it's harder for a straight kid to work in it. When you're standing there with your shirt off and some gay photographer says, `Oh, you're gorgeous, gorgeous,' a straight guy might have trouble with it. When you're a gay man, your response is more like, `Really? Why, thank you!'"

But straight males are no longer a beleaguered minority in the fashion world. In fact, industry insiders say, since the early '90s there has been a sharp decline in the percentage of male models who are gay. Many attribute this phenomenon to commercial photographer Bruce Weber, who has made a cottage industry of scouting for young straight men in rural America. Although Weber is known for shooting his subjects in homoerotic poses, the end result, ironically, comes across as all-American. This new cult of straight male beauty has led to a growing market for high-fashion products aimed specifically at the heterosexual male population.

"The fact is that there are fashion ads that are aimed at gay men. Other fashion ads are aimed at straight men. Still other ads are aimed at all men," says Michael Gross, author of Model: The Ugly Business of Beautiful Women. "I know that there are advertisements in men's fashion magazines that to me as a heterosexual male are sending signals that say, `These are not clothes for you.' You are not going to see an aggressively heterosexual male walking around in a pair of leather hot pants. Period." This trend may lead to even further inroads by straight males into the modeling industry. "My guess," says Gross, "is that the gay audience would be more willing to be sold to using straight male imagery than the straight male audience would be using gay male imagery."

Even though fashion trends have decidedly favored an unmanicured masculine look in recent years, photographer Greg Gorman observes that this is equally damaging to the legions of overcoiffed straight male models. "I've seen it happen on a shoot when people say, `This model looks too gay,'" he says. "But the models who look gay today often are straight, and the ones who look straight are gay. It's more pigeonholing by stereotype than by actual sexuality."

Despite the remarks of several models contacted for this story who believe it necessary to hide their sexuality, Gorman says it would be much worse if those models moved on to acting. "In the world of fashion and photography, I personally find it to be much more open and less closeted than the entertainment business," he says. "But no matter how open society becomes, there's always going to be a certain amount of closetedness." For his part, Gorman notes, "A model's sexuality never enters into the decision-making process one way or another. I cast somebody because I like the way they look, and they can do the job."

In the world of women's fashion, imagery that capitalizes on the concept of "lesbian chic" seems to be all the rage. "We call them `lezzie shots' when we all pal around in a group," notes Stoll. What's more, images beyond the ads themselves have helped to promote the idea that lesbians dominate the female modeling world. In 1990 supermodels Linda Evangelista and Christy Turlington were snapped straddling each other on the famous swing at the Manhattan hot spot The Roxy. In 1995 Rachel Williams very publicly dumped her restaurateur boyfriend in favor of British rocker Alice Temple. Williams and Temple even posed for a spread in Vanity Fair.

This year's highly praised HBO film Gia, about the troubled life of late-'70s cover girl Gia Carangi, documented Carangi's difficult relationship with her female lover.

But the lesbian models interviewed for this article contradict the notion of rampant lesbianism in the fashion world." In my 11 years in the business," says Stoll, "I've been all around the world, and I have known very few gay female models." Stine, for one, says that while she doesn't know any other lesbian models personally, the stereotype of the sexually experimental waif may not be too far off the mark. "While I don't hang out at the models' bars where all of these things supposedly happen, I hear that a lot of models who are straight and have boyfriends will go out and get drunk, fool around, and kiss each other," she says. "You're around a lot of beautiful women, so it's not hard to imagine something going on. When it happens, I'm always like, Where was I?"

Model author Gross offers some of his own theories about why bisexuality may be common among female mannequins. "My impression is that bisexuality is more prevalent [that lesbianism] at least in part because it's fashionable, and models are always fashionable, " he says. " Models tend to be treated very, very badly by men. Models often have reason to distrust men. Models see the worst side of men. Therefore, I think you have a very fertile ground for the encouragement and nurturing of a sexuality that either excludes men or is bisexual."

Gross notes there is also a power dynamic at play, since much of the female modeling industry is controlled by aggressively heterosexual men. "When you say `openly lesbian,' that seems to be excluding the men. That means, `No, honey! You can't watch, and you most certainly can't join in.' That would mitigate against the fantasy."

The harsh reality remains that models who are uncompromisingly out will lose work. There will always be advertisers who believe that an openly gay or lesbian model will alienate some element of their market, however small. The relentless glare of the celebrity spotlight ultimately will force a gay model seeking superstardom to do the dollars-versus-integrity calculation. "Being out requires an act of principle," says the Morgan Agency's Lewis. "It's a life choice. A model has to be willing to say, `If I'm going to get ruled out of a campaign because I'm not ashamed of who I am, then I don't want that campaign. The money is just not worth it.

One model who arrived at this conclusion is Dan Renzi, who left the runways for a more fulfilling job as administrative director of a gay and lesbian health project in Kansas City, Mo. "I have no desire to apologize for my natural behavior," he declares. "Looking back, it's ridiculous that I ever did."