New Direction for Models in Fashion Industry
September 16, 2009 by Lauren Razavi
Published in Fashion
The fashion industry has certainly taken some blows over the past few months with the publication of Gavin James Bower’s ‘Dazed & Aroused’ and a selection of films and television programmes revealing fashion’s less attractive side. And the negative press doesn’t seem to be stopping.
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Earlier this week, fashion model Crystal Renn published her controversial autobiography. Titled ‘Hungry’, the book describes Renn’s personal experience of working in the fashion and modelling industries as a model – as both an anorexic and plus-size at different points in her life.
“When I started modelling in 2002 – and to a slightly lesser degree, today – the look of the moment was nearly skeletal,” said Renn. “Starting in the early 1990s with the rise of Kate Moss and of heroin chic, the fashion industry fell in love with depressed-looking, emaciated girls.”
Renn was spotted by a modelling agency at age 13 and immediately told to lose five stone – almost 50% of her overall body weight at the time. A year later, smaller than a US size zero, she secured a three-year modelling contract worth $250,000 and moved to New York City. Her career flourished as she became increasingly anorexic.
Interestingly, though, Renn’s career really took off when she started to eat and shaped up to a UK size 16. Renn says many industry players “still love to gawk at the ultra-slim” but that the fashion world is developing an appetite for “the natural shapes a woman’s body takes when it’s not being deprived of food”.
“Thankfully the pendulum seems to be swinging back, at least a bit,” she says. “The 2009 face of Marc by Marc Jacobs is Daisy Lowe, who has a curvier body than has been in style lately. The looks of Jennifer Hudson, Adele and Beyoncé are generally admired, not reviled.”
Two months after Renn returned to the fashion scene at size 16, Anna Wintour asked her to feature in a special ‘Shape Edition’ American Vogue. Following this, Vogue photographer Steven Meisel immediately hired Renn to feature in a non-weight-related edition of Italian Vogue.
Since, Renn has appeared in Italian Vanity Fair, Italian Elle, and CosmoGirl. She is the only plus-size model to appear on a Harper’s Bazaar cover and she has appeared in four international Vogue editions as well as runway modelling for Vena Cava, Heatherette and Jean-Paul Gaultier in his prêt-à-porter 2006 collection in Paris.
Gary Dakin, Renn’s agent at Ford Models New York, which represents models who are UK size 12 to 22, says that the appeal of using super-skinny girls is coming to an end. He believes models will be photographed for one reason alone: because they are beautiful.
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