ON FAILING THE BECHDEL TEST, MODELLING DURING COVID AND MEETING FINN

She’s known to Kylie Minogue as “Charley from Clapham”, but I'm coming 
 to know her as Charley from Palmer’s Green – the London-born model, artist and transgender advocate whose evocative photobook, November 17th, chronicles her gender confirmation surgery in 2017; the day on which one of her many journeys began.

Before the book came out and she appeared in campaigns for Marc Jacobs, Nina Ricci and Paul & Joe, “Charley from Clapham” was best known as one of the world’s biggest Kylie Minogue fans. Between her and her mum, they have amassed around 250 concert T-shirts, let alone every book about the singer ever published, plus a handful of Kylie Barbies, boxed and unboxed. 

“My mum recognised that I was uncomfortable in my gender even before I
did,” Charley says. “She worked as an afterschool nanny for 25 years before I was even born, so she knew how little boys acted and she knew how kids feel in their bodies… and she knew that something was different.”

Around the age of five, Charley proudly managed to slip Kylie’s makeup artist a handwritten note to the singer, and in return received tickets to The Showgirl: Homecoming Tour. Famously, this tour happened after Minogue's battle with cancer, and as Charley lost her father to cancer soon after the show in 2007, it only deepened her connection with the singer. And as astounding as her collection of Minogue merch is, this is just one instance of Charley’s ability to form beautifully deep and expansive connections with people.

As girls sometimes (well, maybe often) do, Charley and I have both massively failed the Bechdel test within a minute of meeting one another. Speaking about her boyfriend, Finn, whom she met at a pre-taped GCDS runway show in Milan in 2020, Charley tells me how their meeting was a stroke of luck. During Covid, models were separated into small groups for social-distancing purposes, each with a specific time slot. “We lucked out as we happened to be paired in the same time slot for this pre-recorded runway show – and somehow I’d never met him before.”

“We hit it off straight away and then didn’t see each other again for two years,” she says. “And then when we did see each other again he asked me out, and everything happened from there.” When they finally started dating, years after that first meeting, Finn showed Charley a message he’d sent a friend on the day they met that said “I’ve just met the most amazing girl. She’s an artist, she goes to CSM [Central Saint Martins] and she’s a transexual.”

“It’s such an amazing thing to both be trans in a relationship. It’s not even 
 a mutual understanding – it’s way beyond that. There’s no explanation needed, there’s nothing to get past.”

ON DATING AS A TRANS WOMAN

For any young person in today’s social climate, dating is tough. But as Charley tells me, dating as a trans woman adds another dimension of complexity to something the world once thought was as simple as boy meets girl.

“Before I met Finn, dating was just a minefield, which most trans people can relate to. You don’t know whether someone is fetishising you, or if they’re gay,” says Charley, who swore off dating just before reconnecting with her now-boyfriend.

She tells me a story of meeting someone at an art gallery one night (“He said ‘I’m from Bermuda’, to which I said tell me more!”) who the next morning claimed he was tricked while scrolling through her Instagram and landing on the post about her book. Charley tells me how the experience taught her about the importance of disclosing one’s identity when dating. “Non-dis, when dating as a trans person, isn’t for the other person – it’s for you; it’s for your safety.

“I put myself in a lot of dangerous situations growing up because I didn't know how to protect myself, as do quite a lot of dolls who end up going into sex work out of necessity, because the unemployment rates for trans people are through the roof. Whether that’s based on how they look or sound, discrimination still exists in this world.”

THE TRUE BEAUTY OF WORKING IN FASHION

Although working in fashion has its own first-world trials and tribulations (mainly for stylist assistants lugging around suitcases the size of elephants), the way the industry has begun to open its arms to trans models in recent years is one of its most redeeming features. “I have a unique perspective on it,” says Charley. “When you’re in a position like this, people want to put you in a spotlight and lift you up because they're pushing an agenda. The world is full of opportunities for me right now, but modelling doesn’t last for ever. And the idea of going into the real workforce is just impossible.”

Living in a household with someone who has a shared lived experience makes everything a little bit better. “It’s truly a safe space just for us - except when he forgets to do the dishes,” she jokes. “Then I make things very dangerous.” 

But in all seriousness, their north London flat has become a necessary respite from the world outside, and a place to foster their individual artistic growth.

“Back in 2017, the waiting list for trans healthcare adult services was two to three years. When I was growing up they still had trans hormone blockers for under-18s. But since 2024 it’s basically become illegal to privatise or to support any kind of trans care for people who are underage. Children can be taken away from their parents for receiving any kind of care. I was just extremely lucky that when I turned 13, blockers became legal for teenagers, and when I turned 18 is when they got taken away again.”

“I only had to go through six or seven months of puberty, because you have to start changing before you get on blockers to make sure that you are uncomfortable with the changes you’re noticing in your body.” She falters before describing the weight of guilt on her shoulders for getting what she wanted and needed, knowing that some teenagers today experience a puberty they don’t align with. “There are teenage trans kids who are going to have to wait to turn 18 before being put on a public healthcare waitlist for another seven years… I can’t imagine.”

But by holding on to gratitude, especially for her mother, her rock from her Kylie days through some of the hardest moments of her life, Charley can see that she really only received the care that she deserved as a human being. She has since started paying it forward, supporting her community and creating art that soothes and speaks to those who weren’t “lucky enough” to come of age when teen trans healthcare was legally accessible.

These days, she stays busy working on a new project, inspired by an intense exchange of letters she and a correspondent mailed back and forth during the pandemic.

ON ‘KNOWING YOU’

“It’s called Knowing You, and is built from emails exchanged between myself and another queer artist, Tom Giles. We’d never met before, and set the rules that we shouldn’t meet until the project was over, and that with each email we’d ask a question, and answer the question posed in the previous email.”

“I don’t know what happened with the last book, to be honest. Making it was such an overwhelming experience and I want to distance myself from it now and make lighter work. I don’t even feel like I created the book – it just sort of exited my body because it needed to happen. In the future, my work is going to focus on beauty not pain.”

She tells me she wants to move away from November 17th and create work that’s “lighter”, and which she can personally distance herself from. “I want to focus on what’s beautiful about being trans, rather than the pain,” 

Charley says, shifting back and forth on her stool. “Hosting the launch event was beautiful – to have so many people showing support – but when all of a sudden 300 people are seeing these images of me in such a vulnerable state, that only I’d seen for the last five years… it’s terrifying.”

“With pain you can meditate or smoke a joint but you can’t escape. You make a decision and spend the next two years in extreme pain while recovering, and prove it was the right one. Plus, my mum, my absolute star, wouldn’t let me waste £17,000.”

Tom and Charley started Knowing You at the beginning of lockdown, and 
 corresponded over five years about the most intimate parts of themselves, discovering not only the “unique commonalities between a gay man and a trans woman”, but also revealing the deepest and most unsettling parts of themselves.

“We found so many common links within our identity as the project progressed, and it became so evident why there’s such a community within queer people – this understanding we have before we ever saw each other or heard each other’s voice.” Something that could perhaps only be done in a setting as truly suffocating as being locked inside one’s house.

“It’s a record of intimacy, of distance, and of finding connection – of building a world within a virtual space that doesn’t exist except for in these emails,” Charley tells me. “It’s a book that's been built from 10,000 words over 20 emails exchanged between 2020 and 2025, and we’re turning it into precious archival capsule with different layers of elements.” 

Fifteen of these “boxes” exist in total, a few of which have already been snapped up by Tate Modern, Tate Britain and the British Library. They represent a key part of British history, experienced through a modern queer lens – a look into the nuances of young Britons today during one of the most socially oppressive periods in modern history.

Like so many of us, Charley’s journey of self-exploration is ever evolving, explored both internally and through the lens of a camera, a notepad and the eyes and voice of the community of creatives within which she has found her place, and a partner with whom her identity needs no explanation.

Well before 2017, and well past 2026, Charley is cementing herself as a dedicated human, trans woman and artist who believes in the beauty that comes with the pain of realising one's truest self.

What were they going to do 

— rip the camera out of my hands? 
I don’t think so.