A lot of work — and airbrushing — goes into modeling. Here are (from left to right) Alessandra Ambrosio, Crystal Renn and Brooklyn Decker posing for Victoria’s Secret. And in this shot, they’ve been caught without a whiff of airbrushing. Look how … normal they look (well, Renn and Decker, anyway). [FashionIndie]
“I have been every single size in women’s fashion. I really don’t think anyone can say that. I’ve been a double-zero, children’s clothes, at 95 pounds, and I’ve been all the way up to a size 16 and everything in between. So to come to this place of being a 6, 8, sometimes a 10 depending on what designer I’m wearing. And that’s an interesting place to be in fashion, where extremes are the norm.”
– Crystal Renn talks to “Entertainment Tonight” about her weight. It seems like nobody can believe that a woman who works in fashion — and struggled with anorexia in the past — could be completely comfortable in her body and be okay with being somewhere in the middle. Pretty crazy, right? It’s like the media wants her to be as fixated on how much she weighs as they are. Gross. [ET Online]
No woman in this day and age is exempt from the overwhelming pressure to be whippet thin. Most popular depictions of females and femininity are marked by protruding clavicles, razor hipbones, and legs like string beans. High fashion models of today are the worst perpetrators with many models bringing skeletons to mind. It’s no wonder that the appearance of these girls leads many people to wonder if they ever eat at all! Epicurean pleasures — my personal favorite — are lost on them. How depressing is that?
And yet a trend of sorts has arisen recently in editorial photoshoot: models enjoying food. Read on for Terry Richardson‘s photos of high fashion models stuffing their faces, followed by a couple candids of models eating food in — gasp! — real situations.
No matter that in the real world women come in a bevy of shapes and sizes, in the model world, you’re either “regular” or “plus-size.” And for the past several years, model Crystal Renn has been at the top of the plus-size game. But Renn has been catching flack lately for a rather surprising reason: some say she’s not plus-size enough. In yesterday’s Daily Mail, the model was criticized for appearing at a Metropolitan Opera opening in a slinky gold number, “now virtually unrecognisable from her days of ‘big’ modeling.” Nevermind that Renn is still not considered thin enough to model in the ultra-warped world of “regular” modeling, it seems Renn and her new, slimmer figure just can’t seem to win. Where critics of plus-size models say they provide unhealthy role models, others claim Renn’s sold out from her original plus-size form.
Earlier this year, Renn addressed her weight loss in an interview with Ford models. “A lot of people wanted to point their finger at somebody. They wanted to find a conspiracy when there actually was none,” she said. “I feel pressure probably more than any place from the public and the media. I think by placing a title on my head—which is plus-size—and then the picture that these people have created in their mind about what plus-size actually is, I basically fail you just with that, because I couldn’t possibly live up to that.”
There is a magazine out there called Tush. That is the first important piece of business I would like to note. Also, model Crystal Renn looks surprised to be in a leather collar/leash type of thing, as photographed by Ellen Von Unwerth. Maybe she needs some S&M tips from Rihanna? [NYMag.com] Keep reading »
You and I aren’t the only ones wondering why “high fashion” fetishizes the gamine, undernourished look of 14-year-old girls fresh OTB from Belarus: recently, two insiders from the heart of the industry itself have vocalized their distaste for the fashion world’s embrace of the skeletal-thin female form. British designer Giles Deacon, who is the creative director of Emanuel Ungaro, and model Erin O’Connor (left, in 2009) are both chiming in with “high fashion” critics like plus-sized model Crystal Renn to say, Enough is enough already. Keep reading »
We’re beginning to wonder if the size debate surrounding model Crystal Renn will ever die down. She’s been hailed a plus-size icon but keeps stunning audiences with her fluctuating weight. For her latest work, she modeled for Zac Posen‘s pre-fall 2011 lookbook and can hardly be called plus-sized by these photos. We become more and more confused as to whether we should be praising Renn, or critical when she loses weight. (In the end, we don’t mean to make judgments, bash, or use her as a global example; it’s just that it’s hard to not talk about it.) In these pics, she’s not stick-thin, and it feels almost stupid that we can praise just that. But … she does look very svelte, especially in a pose where she wraps her hands around her entire waist … can anyone do that besides incredibly thin people? [Vogue UK] Keep reading »
The last time we checked in with (former?) plus-sized model Crystal Renn, she was having an orgy with a plate of spaghetti. Now, she’s gone a few steps further down the weird trail with a new editorial in Vogue Paris — the December issue is guest-edited by designer Tom Ford — in which she plays a plastic surgery victim and frolics with young men. She also bares her cooch and generally looks like a loon. Check out some more examples of Crystal gone wild after the jump. Keep reading »
Crystal Renn loves these Eyebrow Glasses from Prada’s fall/winter 2010 collection so much she’s going to turn them into her prescription glasses. We’ve been seeing a resurgence in the cat’s eye glasses trend; however, these are a real first. Playful, feminine and possibly a little snarky, these glasses could be really cute on the right girl. So tell us, is that girl YOU or do you think these are best left for playing dress-up?! Keep reading »
“In the past, I avoided exercise because it brought back terrible feelings. I wasn’t ready. And I was scared that maybe I was going to be addicted again. That’s a fear that goes through your mind, whenever you’re getting over an addiction or a disease like anorexia, yeah, I absolutely was worried. But then I guess you could say my life changed in a really drastic way. For one, there was a split-up that I went through that was very difficult, and I thought, ‘You know what? I need to be in a good place. I need to find me again.’ So I went with my grandmother to Patagonia.[...] And I went backpacking for three weeks and I came back and I had lost some weight. And basically I’ve been traveling ever since. This is just how my body is now. It’s great. I have to be honest, when I was a size 12, I was just like, ‘This is how it is. Just accept it, like, love it. And I did.’ And then to have it change all over again, it’s kind of been an adjustment for me. It’s been strange, actually, because it’s not something I’ve been trying to do.”
— Crystal Renn talks to New York magazine about embracing exercise again after an eight-year hiatus, and how her new lifestyle has changed her body. [via NYMag.com] Keep reading »
