Skater and model Efron Danzig doesn’t like to stay tied down. You may find the pro skater in Paris, fresh off a Paris runway show.
You might catch a glimpse of Efron Danzig in New York, skating up at Tompkins Square Park for a few hours, before finding her chain-smoking menthols outside a Lower East Side gallery as the sun begins to dip over Canal Street. Sometimes you can even catch her moshing in a basement of a DIY punk venue in Philly, or in upstate New York for a small respite from the bustling chaos of being one of N.Y.C.’s most loved faces. Wherever you find 25-year-old Danzig, in whatever context you may run into her, the effect she has is always the same: an ephemerality and radiance that come from her affable charm mixed with a no-holds-barred attitude, a combination that will leave you feeling awestruck—and maybe even a little in love.
Born in Manhattan and raised between New York and Philadelphia, Danzig has an evolving sense of place and identity that is inexplicably tied to the vibrancy and comforting disorder of urbanity. Philly in particular, where she lived between the ages of 10 and 22, played a crucial role in the earlier formation of Danzig’s internal compass and penchant for taking unconventional paths. “It’s a very subversive place that’s bred how I think and feel about things, which I’m grateful for,” she says, attributing her scrappiness and her love of menthol cigarettes to the city’s influence. In Philly, Danzig played in punk bands, created art, and built a following while skateboarding. “Skating gave me such a good community,” she says. “You just get to be around people who you love, like, all the time.” It was also in Philly that Danzig began her transition, coming out as one of the first prominent LGBTQIA+ skateboarders on the scene.
It takes a lot of grit and backbone to break into the skate world for more reasons than one: Not only does it require physical commitment and patience, it has also notoriously been a boys’ club. Nevertheless, Danzig came up in that world through sheer talent and an unapologetic sense of self, gaining traction while simultaneously paving the way for other female and LGBTQIA+ skaters to feel more empowered in these spaces.
“It’s important to take up space in stereotypically male-dominated scenes as well as companies. It’s also equally as important to have something like Unity,” Danzig asserts, referencing the queer skating collective founded by Jeffrey Cheung and Gabriel Ramirez in California in 2017 that aims to promote LGBTQIA+ representation and space within the culture.
“I started shooting a lot of photos around two years ago. Before that I’ve just been trying out a bunch of stuff. It was like sculpting different forms of art making. But what’s really stuck with me is photography.”
“We were really the first generation,” Danzig observes. “Now you go to Tompkins and you’ll see more girls than even last year and I always get hype when I see them.” Currently, Danzig skates for William Strobeck’s collective, Violet, and continues to be one of the more recognizable names on the New York skate scene, even doing some design work for Supreme last year.
While skating is a huge part of Danzig’s life (she started when she was 10), it’s not everything. “I’ve had numerous injuries on and off that sort of made me try to focus on other things,” she says. “Like, how do I express myself or what else brings me joy? Because with skating, you can’t always do it and you can’t do it forever. So it’s nice to find other outlets.” These other outlets include, but are certainly not limited to, writing, modeling, making clothes, and more recently, photography. “I started shooting a lot of photos around two years ago,” Danzig says. “Before that I’ve just been trying out a bunch of stuff. It was like sculpting different forms of art making. But what’s really stuck with me is photography.”
Recently, Danzig published a book of photography, Diary #1, which contains more than 100 pages filled with photographs of friends and private moments of her life in New York. “I wanted it to feel like a diary entry,” she says. “Where you’re like, ‘I woke up and I cooked eggs. I went to this person’s house. We smoked a spliff, we walked over here, we did that. I went to this show. I took the train home. I ended up at this person’s apartment in their bed.’ I wanted it to really just feel like that.” Danzig cites Nan Goldin as a major inspiration for the project, not only visually but also in mindset. “Nan would show someone a photo and if they didn’t like it she’d rip it up and I’m like, oh, I fuck with that mentality. The person in the photo should like the photo.”
Given that the book contains many of Danzig’s friends and the people she’s met since moving to New York, there’s a vivacious yet fiercely loving treatment to the photos that encapsulates her richly textured world, as well as a playful gentleness that reflects the way she navigates the places and people around her (of course she’s a double Leo). “The people I’ve met here have been very inspiring to me. I found a really good community and I’ve learned a lot from the people and my friends,” she shares. “People in Philly can be kind of tough, but in New York there’s a lot of love, which I can really appreciate.”
“I used to play in punk bands in Philly, so walking in shows is the only form of live performance I do nowadays. But modeling is not necessarily something you can do on your own. You have to get cast and picked, so it’s out of your control.”
Becoming a runway model wasn’t necessarily what Danzig had in mind when she came to New York in 2022. But it has become another creative frontier that occurred organically, though it’s one that doesn’t always offer the same freedom and individual control as photography or skating. Since moving two years ago, her modeling career has taken off at an impressive rate. Last year she walked for Balenciaga in Paris and was on the cover of both Office and Pop magazines. Since then she has worked for brands such as Collina Strada, Marni, and Eckhaus Latta, to name just a few.
“I definitely love doing shows, it’s fun to perform,” she ruminates on her runway experiences. “I used to play in punk bands in Philly, so walking in shows is the only form of live performance I do nowadays.” While appearing on runways may provide a similar echo to those gigging days, she points out: “But modeling is not necessarily something you can do on your own. You have to get cast and picked, so it’s out of your control.”
Still, the interplay of performance and world building that music and modeling share has helped Danzig explore other facets of self-expression as well, such as personal style. “I’ve gotten to wear a lot of different types of clothes through modeling, so it’s definitely opened my eyes to what kind of clothes I like and what I look good in,” she says. She describes her style as anything she feels most comfortable in, and points to growing up on the punk and skate scenes as huge sartorial cornerstones.
Her transition, too, has played a significant role lately. “I’ve started dressing a bit differently because I have a body to dress, you know? I would be insecure [modeling] before, because I’d be like, oh, I don’t have an ass. But now I do, so I’ll wear something to show it off.” As she should.
Danzig embodies a new wave of trailblazers shaking up the status quo through a wholly DIY approach. She shows us that not only is it cool to go against the grain but it’s necessary in order to usher in a new era of culture as well as ways of authentically and wholeheartedly existing freely. Instead of subscribing to the homogeneity of what’s considered ‘cool’ and performing only within the parameters of established industries, aesthetics, or cultural niches (i.e. what you should look like, what you should be like, what sort of things you should love or hate), Danzig has an eclectic amalgamation of interests, passions, and perspectives that demonstrate how refreshing it is to just allow yourself to take a leap of faith, focusing less on external perceptions and outcomes and more on the journey of finding new ways to express the multitudes we all possess within ourselves.
“I feel like I’ve always been very in tune with myself. I just follow my gut and I don’t question it. Like, my gut is always going to tell me what to do or how to feel about something, or which direction to go.”
Alongside Goldin, she cites people like Greer Lankton, Richard Hell, Kathy Acker, Courtney Love, Young Thug, and Jim Jarmusch as personal inspirations, and it checks out. Like Danzig, most of the aforementioned icons have thrived on the fringes of mainstream society, cementing themselves as transgressive vanguards of their zeitgeist to push culture forward through authenticity, experimentation, and just straight up not really giving a fuck.
In the end, what this all really comes down to is her unwavering trust in herself at the core and the courage to embrace new pursuits and experiences, even if the road ahead looks murky or unpaved. It’s not easy picking up new creative outlets, or moving to a new city, or starting new careers. And it’s even scarier when you do so while challenging a myriad of societal conceptions and paradigms of who can participate and how. But Danzig’s self-belief and the conviction required to take risks proves to forever be a component of what makes her so compelling, so special.
“I feel like I’ve always been very in tune with myself. I just follow my gut and I don’t question it. Like, my gut is always going to tell me what to do or how to feel about something, or which direction to go,” Danzig says. “I just try to stick to that and not overthink. I’m naturally the person I am and there’s no reason to try to be anything but.”
Similarly, Danzig reaffirms this outlook when reflecting upon her identity: “I live my life every day just as a woman. I don’t really talk about being trans that much because it’s almost secondary to me. It’s like, I’m a woman who happens to be trans, you know?” And she has a point—identity, as amorphous and as constantly shifting as it can be, all starts with a radically unabashed belief in one’s truth.
Of course, there are also moments of doubt and insecurity—Danzig is still human, after all. “You know, you’re always going to sometimes think, ‘I’m not good enough,’ or, ‘My work isn’t good enough,’ but it’s not good to think like that,” she advises. “I just try to do my thing, keep my head down, and not really think about how anything is going to be perceived by the outside world. I just try to do what I want to do, and if I want to try something, I’ll try it. If I like it, I’ll keep doing it.”
By Emmy Liu.
Homepage image by, Quinn Batley. Homepage video by William Strobeck. This story first appeared in the New Order Issue, guest edited by Nile Rodgers and Nancy Hunt, co-founders of We Are Family Foundation.
